Sarah Addison Allen Quotes

I fear if I cannot think again, if my mind suddenly goes blank. It will be embarrassing.

The thing with cancer is that it's usually the chemo rather than the disease itself that makes the patient feel so ill, particularly at the start.

There are times, they occur with increasing frequency nowadays, when I seem to know nothing, when everything I know seems to have fallen out of my mind like a shower of rain, and I am gripped for a moment in paralysed dismay, waiting for it all to come back but with no certainty that it will.

I never did think I had brain damage.

Dad's cancer experience included periods of relatively good health as well as bouts of hospitalisation as he coursed his way through a variety of different chemotherapy treatments.

My great frustration is that, more and more, my memories come and go, and friends all my life are not recognized. Many of the things I say and do, I can no longer remember even right afterwards.

The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.

For somebody who has injured their brain, every single thing they say and think will be the subject of their own questioning.

God, my brain really goes to mush when I'm pregnant.

The thought of having sclerosis of the synapses is alarming. I wonder if in later life I will pay the price for having overstimulated my mental apparatus in my twenties.

The Lyme disease had so severely affected my brain functioning that it was extremely hard for me to think, form sentences, and stay focused.

Chemo is awful!

I don't know what's wrong with me, My brain doesn't work anymore. I haven't any memory. I can't write. All I can do is sign my name. I tried to write the other day-it looked like I was writing in Braille.

Hey, if you can't remember, don't worry about it. I'm having a few memory problems myself in this place. Little things like how long I've been here, what my purpose in life is, which feet to put my shoes on. Stuff like that.

Like a tree losing its leaves. I forget even the thing I was thinking.

It's much easier to go through something and deal with it without being under a microscope... It was stressful. I was terrified getting the chemo. It's not pleasant. And the radiation is not pleasant.

The brain may die, but my compulsion for useless trivia lives on.

I'm maybe not quite as sharp as I used to be.

Stupefaction, when it persists, becomes stupidity.

Why do people write books that say it's better to be older than to be younger? It's not better. Even if you have all your marbles, you're constantly reaching for the name of the person you met the day before yesterday.

It's the closest to death I have ever been. The chemotherapy takes you as far down into hell as you've ever, ever been.

I have no memory for things I have learned, nor things I have read, nor things experienced or heard, neither for people nor events; I feel that I have experienced nothing, learned nothing, that I actually know less than the average schoolboy, and that what I do know is superficial, and that every second question is beyond me. I am incapable of thinking deliberately; my thoughts run into a wall. I can grasp the essence of things in isolation, but I am quite incapable of coherent, unbroken thinking. I can't even tell a story properly; in fact, I can scarcely talk.

I can't read music and I'm crap at learning lyrics. Especially since the accident I have memory problems. I can't remember words, names, places.

A lot of people have dementia, which is great, because then they don't recognize me.

There is no greater misfortune in the world than the loss of reason.