In my case, it's called "pump head." It is the well known but not disclosed side effect of spending time on a heart-lung machine. I learned of my short term memory loss in my first trial after I returned to work. I started to cross examine a witness and could not remember one thing from her direct testimony. The memory loss has not improved; my note taking ability has.

My biggest worry though is not for myself. I have a four year old grand daughter who was on chemo from the time she was two until she was three and a half. Now I wonder if she will suffer permanent brain damage from the chemo.

You need to be talking to a nutritionist. After reading that article, Im dead sure you aren't. Let me get you going in the right direction:

1) Cancer usually develops in women due to an excess of estrogen. You need to be eating lots of cruciferous vegetables. These are the smelly ones nobody ever likes (broccoli, kale, cabbage, brussel sprouts). They have a powerful substance in them that is abbreviated as IC3; its get metabolized into DIM. These are incredibly powerful anti-cancer agents, especially for women. They literally metabolize estrogen and help restore your body's hormonal balance. Take them as supplements if you won't eat them.

2) Your brain is mostly made up of fat. To help it rebuild it needs the right kinds of fats, namely a pretty even balance of the essential fatty acids omega-3 and omega-6. Since you are a woman, you should do some fish or flax oil (omega-3) and then some evening primrose oil (Omega-6) in equal amounts. The evening primrose also helps balance hormones.

3) Take a look at other hormone balancers as well. For women, the list includes the herbs Dong Quai (Angelica sinensis), Chasteberry (Vitex agnus-castus), and Soy Isoflavones.

Those are some major things you could look into - you might also want to read about phytonutrients, namely quercetin. The Linus Pauling Institute of Oregon State has excellent, if not a tad too scientific, online resources.

Don't be discouraged about whats going on - there are many things you can do. You just have change your perspective. You aren't fighting a disease in the western sense - cancer is a body badly out of balance. You just need to get back to center.

From what I remember from my quintuple bypass, the time that your heart is stilled and the pump is keeping you alive is called clamp time. Because John Ransom had those wonderfully efficient fingers, delicately tapered as the legs of a ballerina, my clamp time for five bypasses was less than two hours.

Since the recovery, some three years ago just about now, I have noticed a definite decline in my memory. I have no idea whether the decline is due to clamp time, or to the fact that I have never before been 60 years old.

There may well be adverse consequences to surviving medical emergencies, whether clamp time to heal broken hearts or chemo to treat cancer. It behooves us to remember with gratitude that, until these past few decades, the single consequence of cancer or cardiovascular disease would have been death, and all of our memories would have been lost.

The ONDCP tries to get everyone to believe that cannabinoids harm the brain, but in fact cannabinoids are neuroprotective antioxidants that have been observed to protect nerve cells from a wide variety of threats.

Here is one of the seminal papers on this subject, published by the National Academy of Sciences:

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/95/14/8268

Someone should study whether the neuroprotective properties of cannabinoids can help with the problem of chemo brain.

Any women out there getting chemo who are using pot for the side effects should be followed and compared with women who don't use pot for their chemo.

You have to work it else it become flabby. Same thing with Alzheimer's patients. Talk to an Alzheimer's doctor and they'll tell there are specific things you can do to maintain mental clarity.

I know some research has been done on this area, including some by Dr Ian Tannock of the Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto.

After chemo for breast cancer in 2001, I've had all the mental symptoms mentioned here. I remember my primary (grade) school son asking how many letters were in the alphabet, and answering 26, or maybe 23.

It definitely gets better with time. I find I almost never have trouble finding words when writing, only when speaking. I also noticed that during chemo I could only handle one auditory input. Music in the background made it impossible to follow a conversation. Now I can handle music and conversation and a little background noise. I write anything that has to be remembered on a white board, and if you want to make sure I remember something you told me, you have to ask.

I'd like to thank the author for saying she prefered who she was before being diagnosed with breast cancer. I'm not unhappy with who I am now, but I got very tired of the implication that somehow cancer must make me a better person. It mostly made me a tired forgetful one, but glad to still be here.

That all the slowly aging hippies have now uncovered that all the weed they've been smoking for the last 45 years is suddenly health food. Tell you what hippies - you smoke all the hydro you want. In exchange use your magic drug to be less of a burden on the health care system for everyone else. And oh, if it's not too much trouble? Hire an ex-con who just got out of jail for holding a quarter ounce. Yeah, please do, hire one of those people instead of the obligatory flag waving La Raza who's off the grid in the first place and doesn't have a paper trail.

Occurs to me that maybe it's not just chemo. Or perhaps chemo has caused some kind of hormonal imbalance. It's the hot flashes that pique my curiosity. Are you of age for peri-menopause? It can start quite young these days. I know some 28-year-olds and was told at 36 that peri-menopausal symptoms are QUITE common in women my age. I wasn't expecting them for another ten years...

And the worst part of peri-menopause was the brain fog, the inability to concentrate, the inability to get thoughts in order, the inability to think. I've always been intellectual and it was like my brains were leaking out of my ears!

So, your brain fog could be something called "estrogen dominance," brought on by peri-menopause. One of the other commenters mentioned it as well. There are two competing camps about how to treat it. The other commenter explained one. The one I've used consists basically of using a low-dose bio-identical progesterone creme. IF lack of progesterone is the problem, then the creme is a miracle cure. It was for me. After 2 days, the brain fog cleared. After 2 weeks, I was a new woman. I hadn't felt so good in ten years.

The good news is that since progesterone is that GYNs use progesterone in lots higher doses safely. It's very hard to OD on and the side effects are very few. So you can pick up a tube at your local health food store and give it a try... and if it works, you'll know it. If it doesn't work then no harm done.

I'm really sorry about your chemo brain, but I do wonder, perhaps since you are so focused on cancer as the cause of all your health problems that you are overlooking something very simple like aging?

ps- in my sig is a link to the blog post where I talk about my experience using natural progesterone. You have to scroll down a bit since the post also covers some other stuff. This is not really for the faint of heart. Guys may find this post icky and pathetic.