"chemo brain"

anyone have experience with this directly or through a loved one?

My mother is undergoing 2nd round of chemo and is terribly confused about everything, forgets everything, thinks irrational things like saying to me she'll visit us in 2 months, sleeps all the time.

I was trying to explain this to someone and they said "sounds like chemo brain". Will google it now, but anyone know if this is a real thing or just some made up stuff?

I feared it had spread to her brain and lesions were pressing on something but latest scan shows no further spread (or reduction)

She's 68 but this issue has become extremely evident only in the last weeks. She's on morphine and chemo. Yesterday we had to explain to her 5 times in one day how many more chemo sessions she has and when. She's wake up in a panic after every nap and skype us that she has to do chemo and we'd say "you did it yesterday, next one is on 10/1 when I'm there" and she'd say "oh right next one at one" or something absurd like that. She's confusing numbers, dates, times and it makes her panic. In her case I think it's all chemo/morphine related. But I was wondering if it was the actual cancer doing stuff to her.

that's my question. It wears off? If so, how soon?

It was a common topic of discussion in the general cancer support group I went to. The ACS has a nice website on chemobrain if you Google for it. For some people it seems to wear off, for others it's a long term problem. It's a difficult thing to study, since many cancer patients are undergoing age-related cognitive changes, their hormones get screwed up, they're under stress, they're sometimes depressed, and they're having a lot of medical procedures and treatments that can affect mental function--but chemo itself seems to be the culprit in some cases.
There are coping mechanisms.
Cure magazine (free print subscriptions for patients) had a nice piece on it: www.curetoday.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/article.show/id/2/article_id/1642

It is a real condition caused by the drugs people take to combat disease. I had a grueling 88 week battle at one time that took my mind into a swamp of drug-induced fog. Two weeks after I stopped the medication it all cleared up. It was brutal.

Best to your mom.

dg, I think it's real. We had a close friend on extended chemo who reacted for months like he had dementia. Once he was off it (and in remission!), he was back to his old self. Hopefully that will also be the case for your mom.

Jim

thanks for the thoughts and for the two links which explain the situation perfectly and which I have forwarded to both my mother and sister so she can translate and forward to her oncologist and radiologist (he's her true advocate because of their shared religious community).

Tony, no doubt the morphine is playing a role, but we started her on that in May and other than feeling high and sleepy, she was sharp. Nothing like now. Since then they have introduced two courses of chemo 4-5 sessions), more radiation, surgery to put screw in her femur, same amounts of morphine, and daily tablet of prendisone which actually helps her most of all (given her prognosis we didn't think of long term effects of this).

As far as the morphine goes, she's on fixed amounts of oxy-contin but the oramorph has been given to her on a "as needed" basis. The level of pain she was in was such that the oncologist said to treat it as such. Basically if she feels pain coming she takes the oramorph. Her pain was very severe, made her cry, howl and beg for her mother to come help her. Her mother died in 1966.

She said a cute thing today talking about her current memory issues. She said that she realizes that the hardest thing for her to remember are things with numbers because she's never liked numbers and what they represent. She's an artist.

Anyway, thanks for links, confirming what this is, and that most often it goes away.

My friend, a 12 year breast cancer survivor, talks about her chemo brain. It developed for her after chemo treatments. It's not severe, she just somewhat often picks the wrong word for something when speaking. It's usually a little humorous, and certainly not a significant problem for her. This is many years after treatment, so it's apparently a permanent side effect.