"As soon as I picked up a book, read a chapter, when I went back to it, I couldn't remember what I read," Oathout recalled.
Oathout had chemobrain, a condition that clouds memory and disrupts concentration after chemotherapy.
"I kept thinking cancer has won," she said. "Even though I got rid of it, it's still winning."
Dr. Gary Morrow, a cancer researcher at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, New York, says chemobrain lingers long after treatment in more than 30-percent of cancer patients.
"Either fatigue or chemobrain can actually significantly impact and interfere with their ability to make a living," Dr. Morrow explained.
The drug modafinil (Provigil), already approved to treat narcolepsy, may be the answer. It helped strengthen memory, attention and learning in a study of breast cancer survivors. Doctors say it's not amphetamine-based so it stimulates the brain only when required.
"It tends to level things out," Dr. Morrow described. "It tends to sharpen the focus a bit." The drug cleared Oathout's mind.
"The fatigue was gone," she said. "The memory problem was gone. I can now read books again. I can live again."
Oathout pays more than $800 a month for the drug because her insurance won't cover the experimental treatment. For Oathout, it's a small sacrifice with a big payoff.
"I'm still on it because it works," she said. "I won."
No one knows what causes chemobrain, but it can persist for years after treatment. The cancer patients in the study took modafinil two years after finishing chemotherapy. After the trial, some women found the drug so helpful they traveled across the border to Canada to get it.
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