7/3/2026

Lost Words and Peach Fuzz: My Dance with Chemo Brain

It was Tuesday at 10:14 AM when I stared at the spatula in my hand and completely forgot what it was called. Not just the word—the entire concept of it. (I literally called it the "pancake-flipper-helper-thing" to my dog Pearl, who just tilted her furry ears and stared at me like I had grown a second head. UGH.)

The Fog in the Room

The cold vinyl of the infusion room chair is long gone, but the fog? Oh, the fog is a stubborn beast. When they pumped those chemicals into my veins to kill off the Stage 2b Serous Carcinoma, nobody told me that my vocabulary was going to be collateral damage. I used to be quick. Sharp. The girl who did crosswords in pen. Now? My brain feels like it is permanently wrapped in damp wool.

I call it my chemo brain tax.

(Honestly, some days I think the chemo ate the nouns first, just to be petty. It left the verbs, but only the exhausting ones.)

Is this my new NORM? Constantly using a dictionary, a thesaurus, or Google just to remember what basic words I am searching for? And what is worse: my chemo brain has somehow landed on my husband Travis, too. It is like he is channeling his own inner "chemo brain" now. We are both only 55 years old, babe. Words should NOT be this hard.

I will be mid-sentence, talking to my husband or my sister about something totally normal, and BAM. The word just evaporates. Left the building. My mind goes completely blank, and the doom thoughts start creeping in. *Is this permanent? Am I always going to feel like a dial-up internet connection in a fiber-optic world?*

But then I look in the mirror at the ridiculous, soft white / grey mix peach fuzz finally growing back on my head, and I just have to laugh. You have to. Otherwise, you will just sit on the kitchen floor and break down. And I do not have time for an emotional 911 today. I have dog bowls to fill and a life to live. Pearl needs her momma, even if her momma currently speaks in charades.

The Unfiltered Truth

Here is the shift, though. Losing my words has forced me to find a completely different kind of depth.

When you cannot find the fancy, filler words, you are forced to get quiet. You have to use simple, raw, heavy declarations. My survival skin is thick now, and it does not need polished sentences to prove it is still here. I do not need a massive vocabulary to tell you that I am terrified of my next scanxiety cycle. I do not need perfect grammar to tell you that I am incredibly grateful to be breathing.

The Heavy Weight of a Zero

Speaking of scanxiety... I just got the results of my very first Signatera test. (8 weeks in the waiting. It is the first of many. Once every three months. For the rest of who-knows-how-long.)

The result? 0. Negative.

Meaning there is NO sign of cancer DNA in my body. NONE.

I should be screaming from the rooftops. I should be celebrating by downing an entire cheesecake. And I am happy, —I really, really am. But why does a zero still feel so heavy?

Because this stubborn, awful cancer doesn't play by the rules. It could return at the drop of a dime. I want so badly to move on, to heal, to grow, and just enjoy this life. But that looming fear—the terrifying knowledge that any number higher than zero could show its ugly face at the next testing cycle—is always there, hiding in the dark.

How do I move on and actually live, instead of just sitting around stressing about the "Next Test"?

Healing is Not a Straight Line

If you are reading this and you currently cannot remember where you parked, or why you walked into the kitchen, or how to breathe through the terror of your own test results—please give yourself some darn grace.

Our brains and bodies took a massive hit so we could survive. We are healing at our own pace, and that healing pace is allowed to be messy. It is allowed to be slow.

Maybe survival skin isn't about being fearless. Maybe it is just about holding the beautiful, glorious ZERO in one hand, and the terrifying "what if" in the other, and choosing to walk forward anyway.

Keep going, sister. We do not need perfect words to have a beautiful voice.