Let's Start with Chemo-Brain

Chemo-Brain
The American Cancer Society describes chemo brain as a mental fog; many doctors describe it as chemotherapy-induced cognitive dysfunction/impairment or cancer-therapy associated cognitive change. 

Cognition
... is the set of all mental abilities and processes related to knowledge: attention, memory & working memory, judgement & evaluation, reasoning & "computation", problem solving & decision making, comprehension & production of language. Cognition is by humans conscious and unconscious, concrete or abstract, as well as intuitive (like knowledge of a language) and conceptual (like a model of a language).

For me it feels like I have lost days or hours and can't remember sometimes details of the day before. I start a project and can be distracted easily just by walking into the house and seeing that something else needs to be done. I forget to turn off the garden water often. This leaves the back yard flooded. My excuse - The plants needed a deep feed. ;)~  Words, I can think of a word in my head but have a hard time making my voice create that word into sound.

I have a very patient and understanding husband. He repeats stories for me and we joke about my forgetfulness. I sometimes ask the same question over again. I start many conversations with "I'm sorry if I have already told you this." or "I'm sorry I forgot to tell you ......."  This is all a very frustrating process.

How about a better subject?  Last Friday my son and I took a day trip to Yosemite. We love to hike and the challenge of the experience. So......crazy me wanted to hike to the Upper Falls. This is a 3.5 mile hike with an incline of over 2000 ft. Let's add the temperature was over 90 degrees as we began our early afternoon adventure.

 Needless to say my chemo filled body would only allow me to make it half way. I was very frustrated and had a little bit of a temper tantrum when my son convinced me it was time to turn around. I am very stubborn. We quickly descended and easily walked over to the Lower Falls. 
 

The water level is very low this year (CA in a BIG drought) and we easily climbed over the large boulders to the bottom of the falls. The water is very cold but Cris still accepted the challenge of swimming across to get a picture directly under the falls. 
He has done this before during a camping trip we took with friends many years ago. Afterward, we had to take the most difficult route back to the trail. That is just the way we are, pushing the line to see what we can do.

Our adventure Friday was strenuous but left me with that sore all over feel good kind of sore. Makes me feel alive during this "little bump in the road we call life"