We don’t always see the impacts cancer treatments are having on us clearly, but most of the time if something is off you know it. Maybe tasks that were easy are now harder to process. Maybe your memory is not working like it used to. Maybe you are struggling to remember the names of people you have known for a while.  Maybe you were like me, allergic to one of my medications.

Have you ever had that happen? You are just not quite right, but you can’t seem to right the ship either.

About a year out of chemo, I was struggling. I was a technical project manager for 2 decades. Figuring out software without a manual was my super power. Yet I had spent countless hours trying to update my website and I could not finish the home page layout.

Then I started having physical challenges. I was full of fluid. Months later a friend said, “You looked off, not yourself, now I realize you were puffy.” But I was not overweight so it was discounted by my doctors. Then I started gaining weight for no reason. I was eating less, exercising more, and kept gaining.

The physical issues could not be ignored. The mental processing challenges were harder to pin down.

It was not until I stopped taking the hormone therapy that the fluid came off and my brain started to clear up. I was having an allergic reaction to the medication. I am celiac and the med had gluten in it. Brain fog is also a symptom of uncontrolled celiac disease. I had been gluten free for so long I never considered my medication had gluten in it.

If something is wrong and the side effects are impacting your daily life, understand why taking the medication is necessary. In my case I was allergic. I had to figure it out on my own and insist that there was a better way. I was not continuing to take something that was making me sick at the time to reduce my recurrence by a few percentage points.

 I was ok with the risk. That is a choice everyone needs to make, once you have all the information.

Have you had a circumstance where you were having bad side effects but not being given the facts on why enduring the side effects was necessary?

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