Goldfishing

So The Husband and I came up with a term that more people should be familiar with: goldfishing.

We all know that goldfish have a memory that lasts 3 seconds, right? Wrong. Goldfish have memories that can last months. For the purposes of this post, we are going to stick to the idea that goldfish don't remember so well, though, because I have a point to make here.

Chemo-brain (similar to mommy brain or pregnancy brain) has made me quite similar to those goldfish. Maybe having 30 doses of radiation aimed at my brain shortly after having not one but two brain surgeries did have some effect on my short term memory.

I want you to know, I keep on getting distracted as I'm trying to write this d*mn blog post.

A scenario:

Me: ... blah blah blah stuff that happened blah blah... [I trail off into silence...]
The Husband (TH): Are you okay?
Me: I forgot where I was going with that story. I don't know.
TH: [very kindly does NOT laugh at me]

My attention span is shot, and my short term memory is a joke right now. I'll set down my phone and immediately forget where I put it. I'll pick up a pen to write something down and suddenly be unsure what that something was.

I'm not stupid. I promise I'm not stupid.

But the effects of what I've been through are no joke. All in all, I have had very minor cognitive defects. Sometimes I have trouble finding the right word. Sometimes I lose track of time. Sometimes I get distracted and forget that I was in the middle of something else.

[I just got distracted by my cat.]

What was I saying?

Oh yeah! For all intents and purposes, I have healed remarkably well from all of the stuff that has happened in the last six months. I didn't need occupational therapy. I didn't need to re-learn how to walk, talk, or read.

However, because of where my tumor was located, the issues with attention span and short-term memory are unsurprising.

Some days, I have full attention span and no memory issues. Some days the opposite is true. I let The Husband know when it's a bad goldfish day, and he is always so understanding when I get stuck on a word or forget that I already told him this or that thing.

Goldfishing is frustrating, though. I wasn't like this, and I don't know how long it will take to get back to how I was before. In the meantime, I make notes to myself, I set reminders, and I do the best I can. But I can't help but feel a sense of loss of who I used to be.