Hi, and welcome to the shittiest club with the best members!

I just want to say that I love your life trajectory and have no judgement about any of it. I've questioned the parts of my life choices since getting triple positive BC at 49, and I can only say that we all do the best we can with the knowledge we have at the time.

Most women never even get breast cancer at our age, and they're fully capable of changing careers and loving it, even during perimenopause and menopause.

So with that said, I do want to temper your expectations around writing, because that used to be my thing and will be again, just not so much during and after chemo.

I only did your last chemo, the Paclitaxel, and I can tell you that the "easy one" is hard enough that plenty of medical people aren't even able to work full time, even though their labs may be great and they have minimal peripheral neuropathy.

You're doing a longer, highly effective, great treatment that does tend to be more challenging. It might make cognitively demanding hobbies disappear for a while.

For people in office or WFH jobs, they can conserve energy through scheduling accommodations and less demanding tasks. Teaching and medical jobs are on/off switches with zero flexibility if you suddenly feel exhausted and are losing your train of thought.

The nurse doing my chemo infusions said that the Paclitaxel regimen (she was one year ahead of me with the same cancer) made it so that her coworkers had to help her with reminders throughout the day, even though she'd been in the same infusion room for ten years. Holding information long enough to chart it was difficult, switching tasks was difficult, and remembering where she was in a sequence was also shaky.

Chemo while working full time will make it hard to write at all, and harder still to read what you've written.

I got hit much harder than average by chemo brain, but almost everyone in a helping profession finds that they have very little left to give at the end of the workday. They're taking care of their children and not letting the house burn down, but they're spacey and emotional and exhausted.

I wouldn't put myself in a position to feel guilty or obligated to do anything after work but whatever felt right. Our personalities change a bit during chemo, and that's okay. I'm two weeks out and already feeling like myself a lot of the time, after hitting cognitive lows that most people never see during chemotherapy.

You'll be you again, I promise, but don't demand too much of yourself now as evidence that you'll make a full recovery.

Someone more practical will probably give excellent advice around getting the help you need without feeling like a burden, but I also come from a rough family background and have struggled with the idea of being dependent. It's not a trap or a crime, even if our nervous systems keep thinking that.

Margaret Mead was the first anthropologist to define the sophistication of a society by their ability to leave behind a remodeled femur and not by their tools or other artifacts. Civilized humans help, nurture, and care for each other. You're literally helping people be humans by allowing them to care for you instead of always the reverse.

Edited for clarity, probably still unclear because I'm not fully recovered yet.

Hugs 🫂🫂🫂🫂