The podcast episode that I chose to listen to was "Cancer-Related Cognitive Dysfunction". After reading the titles of the episodes, I chose this particular one because it is something that I thought probably affects a lot to people and I didn't know much about it so it seemed to pick a good choice for me. People that have cognitive dysfunction during or after dealing with cancer and the treatments that go along with it is something that I have been able to witness in a couple people, but I didn't realize how wide spread it is and how OTs can help in the intervention against it. The main person that comes to my mind is a family friend who has had brain cancer twice. I have noticed many cognitive changes in him over the years which makes sense to me because of the type of cancer that he has, but I never really thought of it affecting so many that suffer from breast cancer and other types. During the podcast they said that 75% of patients with breast cancer suffer from some kind of cognitive dysfunction. A lot of times people will refer to it as chemo brain or chemo fog, but it can be caused from the cancer itself and from many of the other treatments administered for cancer. It can cause problems with problem solving, short-term memory, and multitasking among other things. These side effects can show up and continue up to even 20 years after the person's last treatment. Because of the many thing that can cause cognitive problems and changes when a person has cancer, cognitive dysfunction often takes a long time to be diagnosed or it may not ever be. This puts more stressors on the person while they are trying to get back into a normal routine and living the life that they want to be able to. This is where an OT can come into play.
Even though most often there will not be a doctor's order for OT treatment for a cancer patient, hopefully if they are being challenged by cognitive dysfunction they will make it to an OT somehow. Cancer-related cognitive dysfunction can affect a person in many ways including mentally, physically, psychosocially, and in their whole healing process. An OT can help these types of clients to find ways to cope and overcome these delays by helping them to make a routine for their day. This can help them take on one task at a time, know when they are most capable of performing tasks, and to plan ahead and be prepared for certain tasks that may be more challenging. They can also help to get the family involved as much as they are willing and the client would prefer to hopefully help with smaller tasks or more social situations like remembering names and carrying on full conversations with others. Many times when a person might be dealing with cognitive dysfunction, they might not even realize how bad it is or they might become depressed in not being able to do what they want to and this is where family members could also help in getting them the correct diagnosis and intervention.
Cancer-related cognitive dysfunction is not something that is told to cancer patients many times as a lasting affect of the cancer itself or treatments. Because of this, people are not as prepared as they possibly could be many times and then that makes the challenge even harder to overcome. With the younger and younger ages that breast cancer is being diagnosed, this is leaving moms of young kids to have to deal with these symptoms when they are trying to take care of themselves and their kids. I hope that more podcasts and studies like the one I listened to are published to make this a more well known topic and to hopefully help cancer patients that have already been through so much to be able to heal and return back to the life they want to live.
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