I still have short-term memory problems, concentration problems, problems with processing information I've heard vs. information I've read, problems speaking (a new and not-amusing stutter), and balance problems. The only thing that was keeping me halfway happy was the thought that I would bounce back one of these days. Now that I've found out I probably won't, things look bleak.

It's been almost a year since my last treatment, and while it's not as bad as it was, say, four DAYS after a treatment, it is still noticeable, both to me and to others.

And it pisses me off to know that this is a real, observable side effect of chemo and oncologists don't tell you about it. As someone else on the newgroup said, "I guess I should be happy I'm alive, but no one asked me if I wanted to be alive and stupid." Yeah, it would have upset my onco guy's stats if I had refused the chemo and dropped dead at the age of 38, but I would have had to seriously weigh this side effect. Nausea passes and hair grows back, but is being a little less on the ball worth it?

I am miserable. I realize that these deficits are minor, indeed, compared to what someone suffers with a stroke, but they are still a pain in the butt to me. Worse, I'm worried that I won't really be able to hold down a job. I'm still drawing unemployment until we get settled in Washington.

Has anyone else gone through something like this, and if so, how did you cope with "dumbing down"?

-Yes, the fibro-fog I experience is something like it. I forget things I promised at meetings, I even do not remmeber Being in the meeting, let alone what was said! I call Leo John, and Roger Dan, and those are not even remotely alike. I have a lot of stumbles. Mine is due to laxk of delta sleep, and soemtimes, once in a blue moon, when I sleep more than 5 hours in one stretch, I might wake up and feel a bit of the former me. My boss called me over-emotional. Me, whose nickname was ice-gueen before! I am still learning to cope with it: write everything down, finally
(never had to before) use a diary and dayplanner. I hate it! As I try to play it down: I only forget important things. I use a lot of sticky notes. But I have to be very cautious. If I only write down name and telnumber, I will not know who that was!

-not exactly the same thing you went thru, but some of your worries seem REAL familiar .... I had vrey similar fears when I was 18 and went thru pretty traumatic head injury that put me in a coma for three days and very much "out of it" for a long time < flew thru the air head first into a tree at 50 mph> .... and recall sitting around the house being kinda useless worrying about how dumb I was going to be and how much I had lost.
(there WAS brain damage) ... finally accepted (took years) that it had become a situation unchangeable by ANYone except me and how I dealt with it. It still sucked, but the fuzziness became navigable. I had friends who told me that I had changed, which wasn't terribly comforting except to know that I wasn't totally imagining thing ... however, after stumbling thru a semester after sitting out a semester, things got a bit better, although to this day I can get lost while driving to work (essemtially same route for 11 years ...) I blame that on the brain damage .... it provides a GREAT excuse if you want a silver-lining ... and it did force me to "accept" the ways things were, rather than how I might like them to be. The depression part went away gradually .... (patience helps there because like it or not, sometimes you still have to wait)

As to your worries about employment, from what I've seen you have a whole lot more than most folks re "on the ball"-ed-ness. The information-processing thing is at least partially situational .... and a recuperation epoch doesn't honestly lend itself to a realistic self-evaluation; hold off before you assign any kind of "forever" label there. ... studies are often flawed. I worried a lot about "forever"-stuff ... but forever is also a funny thing; it changes in perspective when you get close to it. or look back on it.

I stutter sometimes ... esp around people who also stutter ... go figger.

and for what it's worth, you seem to have a good fighting attitude about it all.