Ask HN: Tech After Chemotherapy | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Tech After Chemotherapy

5 pointsmeltyness4 comments

I start chemo soon. My disease has got a pretty good prognosis, but I'm still paralyzed with fear and uncertainty.

How has treatment impacted your career, mind, life?

Speaking as a chemo spouse, but it's the fatigue that's worst of all regarding work. The source of the fatigue differs depending on what drugs are involved - might be a mix of nausea/loss of appetite/brain-gut chaos, autoimmune, cardiovascular changes, sleep disruption, and/or nerve damage - but you'll feel miserably tired and it'll take time at best to adjust to the new cap on your energy.

There's also chemo brain, which is easier(?) for people to consider lately since it sounds similar to long covid brain-fog. Your memory isn't as reliable, you think a little slower, you can't multitask as well as before, or at all. This also doesn't necessarily go away after treatment stops.

If you need steroids to combat allergic reactions to chemo drugs, that adds even more emotional volatility.

For my spouse, it was a wretched combo of chemo constipation/nausea/puking sapping them of sleep and fluids, anti-nausea meds exacerbating the chemo brain, and a prolonged initial treatment plan attempt involving steroids and a drug they were violently allergic to. They couldn't work through it.

This is the worst phase, the waiting. Paradoxically once you start chemo, it's better. You're moving forward, and through. Just walking through the calendar to the end date.

Started a year ago. 5 months of chemo. Clear scan at 6-month checkup. :)

Chemo was my full-time job for awhile. It consumes a lot of energy. There wasn't much room for anything else. I could go thru the motions of other tasks, that's about it. And that's OK. Big picture, we're saving our lives, so that we can get to the other tasks later.

Brain function was fine all through chemo, and afterward. Not a cognition problem, thankfully. More an energy problem. I could think fine. Just couldn't act on it. Again that was OK.

It's so important to give ourselves some grace ... chemo's not a side project. Accepting that, makes everything else so much easier.

Very best of luck to you, and take ALL the anti-nausea drugs. They really work.

Please watch these videos in the right order:

1 Please watch this video for why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YLy27KR4zM

2 Please watch this video for how: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-LsLd4RP5g&list=PLR2PQ0Jd_k...

3 Please watch this video for what: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkX-TPaodoM

4 Please watch this for when: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

Final note: I believe in the good so much all the time, but it is hard to keep believing in the good all the time.

Please watch this when you are having a hard time believing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADP65wbBUpc

I hope you receive courage, wisdom, temperance and moderation.

*Let´s connect on Linkedin. (You can message me anytime)

Ron.

On the positive, a loved one getting chemo does not seem to have any of the bad symptoms. It is a weaker therapy due to age. So pls don't freak out about side-effects (we did and it was for naught). Good luck!

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