I’m doing some contract work for one of the strangest people I’ve ever met, a lady that seems to value her position in the community and runs a successful nonprofit organization . . . but when I talk with her, she is one of the most demanding, paranoid, and bordering-on-abusive people I’ve had the displeasure of dealing with.
I’ve asked around about her a bit in our community, and my impressions are confirmed about her . . . but I’m also told that she has brain cancer.
Would such an illness cause personality changes that would account for this lady’s bizarre behavior? I’m inclined to be charitable in either case, but somehow it would help to know that she’s not really responsible for the way I see her acting.
It certainly made a great difference in the case of my cousin’s husband. He went from being a jolly, friendly, helpful guy to a real son of a bitch in a matter of months before he died.
It quite possibly can be the medication he/she is on. I won’t go any further, but someone quite close to me whom I loved had a somewhat of personality change just before she passed away, attributable to the Dexomethizone (sp?) and the cocktail combination of other drugs.
The tumor affected her vision and reflexes, but her mood was affected more by the drugs meant to keep her going.
Tripler
Chemotherapy isn’t exactly fun either. My mood would change if I had to go through it.
Brain lesions can cause major behavioral and personality changes; this has been well documented. It has been seen in patients who have had strokes, brain trauma, infections, and tumors.
It’s very hard to predict what sort of changes may come about, and two people who have the same type of lesions in the same general area can have very different changes.
A friend of the family who passed away a few years ago from abdominal cancer had a serious personality change the last year or so. He turned mean like a snake, because of the drugs they had him on. It was a huge difference, he had been a really sweet guy, and I know it was very difficult for his wife. So it may be the drugs, not the cancer itself.