Chemo Brain

So I spent 2.5 hours on campus as part of the chemo brain study. I spent an hour alone inside of the MRI machine. Even though I had earplugs in, the constant jack-hammer sound was unnerving plus I could not move the whole time except to answer questions by pressing buttons with my fingers. They fitted me with goggles which had the questions on it. They would flash-emphasis on flash, 4 letters then another letter and you had to quickly indicate if the last letter was one of the original 4. No correcting for mistakes. In the part of the brain you are using, more oxygen is consumed and this is recorded. I did get to see my brain-no tumors that I could see but they warned me that this was not a diagnostic MRI only a 'functional' MRI. My brain did not look very symmetrical-lots more folds on one side vs the other. They gave me additional tests outside of the fMRI. One had 5 little arrows on the screen and you had to quickly indicate which way the middle arrow was pointing. I got eye strain from that one as I have 'blended' glasses and the reading portion is the bottom of my glasses. I said these arrows are way too small for those over 40. Another test was repeating digits. First forwards and backwards. I was good until I needed to repeat 7 digit numbers backwards. We will see what chemobrain actually does.

Trying to talk myself into a run. Very windy out there.

Tomorrow is our 'mother's group'-the last one I will be able to go to for a while. Sadly 2 of the moms can't make it-one has her sister flying in and the other to see her boyfriend that she can only see on weekends. Very hard these days to get us all together.