Is It Metastasis or Menopause?

Ever get the funny feeling that something’s wrong?

Like things are a bit “off” but you can’t be sure? I’ve been dealing with that ever since I got off letrozole, an endocrine therapy for breast cancer with a reputation for being difficult to take.

As of this posting, I’ve been off letrozole for 117 days exactly–yes, I’m counting. I’m still shaking off side effects like stupid-crazy joint stiffness, but at least I can tell things have improved.

That’s not what I’m talking about here.

Right now I’m having some “really intense” memory and focus issues. I’ve put “really intense” in quotes, because I talk in superlatives so that my concerns are taken seriously. It’s a bad habit, especially when speaking to an oncologist, because it’s a sure way to end up in an MRI tube. Again.

In the past, my oncologist suggested that my memory problems might have been related to anxiety and not the medications I was on. That’s quite possible, although it’s hard to tease apart “anxiety” and “med side effects”. I mean, simply being told you have cancer causes an immediate spike of the Stress-O-Meter. For someone as anxiety-prone as me, it’s like I’m constantly red-lining.

Now I’m off the endocrine therapy and my memory and distractibility seem to have gotten even worse. What I had before wasn’t like THIS.

It’s kind of like saying, “This hurts. I think I’m being hit on the head with a hammer.” But then you actually get hit by a hammer, and think, “WHOA, now THIS is being hit on the head with a hammer!”

If thoughts are beads on a string, my beads are dropping off at a constant rate, leaving me wondering what I was about to do three seconds ago. And getting distracted by shiny objects. Couple that with having to learn a complex new financial system for work (grrrrr, Larry Ellison), not having helpful documentation to do so and having to go through that while being mainly confined to my bedroom for over a year…yeah, it’s a mess.

Because my breast cancer was HER2+–which has been associated with metastases to the brain–my anxious little self immediately thinks, “Wait, maybe this is cancer’s spread stealing my thoughts???” I think that I will forever be jumping to that as the first possibility.

That’s not completely unreasonable, either. According to “Medical News Today”, memory problems are listed as one of the symptoms of brain metastases, along with headaches, stroke, seizures, confusion, dizziness…okay not really experiencing any of those.

And the Mayo Clinic metastasis website asks: what are the most likely causes of my symptoms? So, I admit, a brain tumor probably isn’t, given all the other more likely possibilities: menopause, work stress, loneliness, lack of purpose…and *cough* listening to Twitch video streams while I’m trying to focus.

So really, these memory issues could be a completely normal effect of menopause, but in the cancer context the possibilities are frightening. It takes a lot of perspective to be able to look at what’s going on and realize that it’s not aberrant or dangerous. I feel like an idiot for jumping to the worst conclusions, but here I am…

It’s a survivor thing.