If You Give A Neurodivergent a Cancer

*Want to hear Allison read this article out loud? Register here for our upcoming Perkatory event on May 8th!

Raise your hand if you’ve ever read the children’s book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. Keep your hand raised if you identify with that curious little house rodent on an incredibly personal level. Keep your hand raised if you’ve ever been diagnosed with ADHD. Continue to raise your hand if you’ve also been diagnosed with cancer. At this point, I’ve probably lost quite a few hands, but let’s keep going.

Keep your hand up if you are an adult who also deals with ChemoBrain, severe imposter syndrome, crushing depression, disillusioned self-worth, and an asshole inner monologue.

I’m Allison, and I’m here to tell you how easy it is to navigate the adult world while managing cancer and ADHD. Spoiler alert: It’s not. Being a neurospicy, cancer-y adult is hard.

Like many women, I was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. Though the signs became glaringly obvious in my early 30s, motherhood skyrocketed my symptoms, impeding my ability to function as a wife and mother. Desperation led me to my first therapy appointment in Spring of 2022.

I was introduced to these lovely little things called SSRIs and stimulants. Like Jack Skellington, my “What’s This?” moment occurred when I started to feel…functional. What’s this, what’s this? Clear thoughts and minimal feelings of impending doom? What’s this?!

Months after I began therapy, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. And again, in September of 2023. My stem cell transplant was that December. Lastly, for good measure, I received even more chemotherapy until July of 2024.

You don’t need a medical degree to imagine how much chemotherapy I endured during those two years. I’m talking, like, massive amounts of poison. ABVD, BEAM…all the poisonous acronyms. I stopped taking my prescribed medications during treatment.

I was afraid the chemo would negatively interact with them, sending me into full-blown, heart-exploding tachycardia. I weighed the options of continuing versus discontinuing my meds: “If I stop taking them, my brain will revert back to how it was, ADHD will take over, and I’ll become depressed that I’m sick. Maybe I’ll beat the cancer, which should put me in a better mood. If I continue my meds, my mental health will thrive, but I’ll probably have a massive, deadly heart attack sitting in the infusion chair.” I made it this far without medication, what’s a few more months?

*Morgan Freeman’s voice*: “It would be much longer than a few more months.”

There’s nothing like taking 3 steps forwards, and an entire mambo routine backwards. And that is exactly what happened to my brain.

Now I’m in remission and I wish I could tell you that my survivorship features a 37-year-old MILF who’s “thriving.” Instead, my survivorship features a main character who is absent-minded and talks out loud to herself, constantly breaking the third wall. Plot twist: The show isn’t funny.

Simple mental math. Visual attention. Basic executive functioning skills. Word finding. Reading a word or number correctly in my head but then saying it incorrectly… repeatedly. It’s humiliating.

I’m overstimulated, which manifests as anger. Vile outbursts erupt from the mouth of a hideous person I don’t recognize. Overstimulated, I am physically unable to be a good wife and mother. Even with medication, my brain just doesn’t function like it once did. It’s one thing to be betrayed by your body; it’s an entirely different thing to be betrayed by your thoughts.

I can’t wake up in the morning. My boys could slap me in the face with their Sonic figurines (true story), and I hardly flinch. Wanna feel like a failure? Overhear your 5-year-old tell his little brother, “Let Mommy sleep. She needs to rest.”

I am rarely on time for work. If I am on time, I definitely forgot something, like deodorant. Or my laptop. Mornings are hurricanes when you have two toddlers, without being poisoned. Most mornings I feel like I set myself up to fail.

I should be as kind to myself as I would be to anyone else in my position. My entire body is still healing. The damage that was done to inevitably save me won’t heal itself overnight. If chemotherapy can make your hair fall out and stop your menstrual cycle, I’m pretty sure it’ll fuck with your brain, too.

I use humor to cushion the painful blows to my self-esteem and to distract myself from the embarrassment I encounter daily. Sarcasm and self-deprecation are louder than my moments of angry self-talk, but not as loud as the exchanged glances and comments from others when my brain is 10 steps behind. I’ve been called ditzy and air-headed more times than I can count. F those people.

“So, you’re good now, right?” I would be elated if I never heard this question ever again. I have to stop myself every time I begin to give an honest answer. No one actually wants to hear the truth, especially if it makes them feel uncomfortable. Your cancer already made them uncomfortable. Please don’t let your survivorship make them feel uncomfortable, too.

If I was able to tell the truth, I’d discuss the unearthed, uncomfortable topics regarding survivorship as a neurodivergent adult. I would go down the child-raising avenue and explain what it’s like to constantly feel like your kids deserve a better, present mom who isn’t Jeckyll and Hyde.

I would go down the employment route, admitting how it feels to be a shitty employee and how oversleeping, calling off, and going to thousands of appointments are just a few of the reasons your coworkers resent you and your boss probably wants to fire you.

I would discuss marriage, and how it feels to wonder which trait – the ADHD or survivor’s confusion – will be the reason my husband has had enough and leaves me for someone more functional and less traumatized.

I could go into the if-you-give-a-mouse-a-cookie mental spiral that I experience daily, and how they always lead to one underlying cause.

My paychecks aren’t great, because I’m not working 40 hours a week. I’m not working 40 hours a week because I can’t wake up on time to get to work on time. I can’t wake up on time because I am exhausted from the day before. I am exhausted from the day before because I exerted the rest of my energy after I got home from work, to reassure my kids that I am a good mom, and to prove to my husband that he’s made the right choice by not leaving.

I worry that my boss wants to fire me, that my kids don’t like me and that my husband wants to leave me, because my brain and inner monologue tell me these things, while simultaneously assuring me that I’m crazy for feeling this way and then go on to blame my brain chemistry and my faulty wiring. My brain chemistry and wiring are worse than they were, because my body was poisoned for two years. My body was poisoned for two years because, well… you know why.

If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to ask for a glass of milk.

If you give a 37-year-old neurodivergent wife and mother the topic of cancer and its relationship with adulthood, this is what you get.