My wife had Dexamethasone (aka Decadron) as part of chemo cocktails. There are a lot of possible emotional side effects to the stuff, and they can’t tell in advance which ones will hit any given person (just how likely they are in the normal population). Her treatment had her receiving single doses along with the infused drugs, once every other week. A single dose seemed to run for about 36 hours, and involved distinct phases whose timing was like clockwork. It was included in her regimen mostly for its anti-nausea effects, along with some of the anti-inflammatory effects. The immune moderation was a negative, and yet another drug was on the list to counter it.
She didn’t get much of the “energy” phase, as the other drugs really hit hard. Without the I expect she would have been truly out of it. After a few hours “the fog” started to roll in, along with some irritability. That would be gone in a few hours, when the fog was in full effect. (more later). Under fog, she was pretty passive, and as it wore off, she faced a luckily brief, but deep bout of depression.
When we went thru the drug list with the oncology nurse, when it came to the decadron, she did go thru the “no heavy machinery” item, but she added an anecdotal warning “no heavy decisions either. Deciding its lunch time is fine, but if you decide to work on your will, you may discover that you left your fortune to somebody else’s cat” (and terrifying to think that Трумп is taking it)
Brain fog, chemo fog, etc. You can’t think straight. My wife was simply brilliant. Undergrad, Dartmouth, Summa. PhD, pure math MIT A public health degree. 80+ papers in refereed journals, with almost 10,000 cites to date. An Erdös number of 2.
Anyhow, when the fog started reading started to become work. When it hit full force, watching the least demanding TV, those pick 1 house from 3 shows on HGTV was too complex to follow. She was bored, and frustrated that she couldn’t do anything about it. (one thing that did help at least in daylight, the Cornell bird feeder cam. Color some motion, no dialog)…
In the case of Трумп, there is enough apparent natural impairment, its not clear how much less coherent he could be (and still manage to operate twitter). I do hope that they are keeping the dangerous bits away from him, even if the campaign would not allow an “official” transfer under the 25th amendment…
All I know is that it’s thoroughly unpleasant. It didn’t hurt a great deal, but it was a slow progression, starting with my nose, and sweeping back to the back of my skull over a period of a few days.