I had a dream....

I dreamt last night that all my friends and I had colonized the moon. We had created little villages, and built cute little bungalows of pastel colors; soft pink, sky blue, grassy green. Our kids played games outside: basketball, softball, kickball, hopscotch. We all felt such relief at leaving the damaged earth. We gazed up at the earth, like we now gaze at the moon. We watched as it burst into a blazing ball of fire. 

This was not an uncommon sort of dream for me but was a little more specific than usual. My dreams usually involve me floating, flying, or sliding through the air or in the water, but generally do not occur in any identifiable location. Vague waterparks in the sky are the foundation of many of my dreams. They are wonderful.

I feel lucky because I know folks who consistently have awful dreams: they are being chased by someone with a gun or a knife, they're being abandoned in a lonely town, they are falling off cliffs. My dreams are rarely, if ever, like that. And if they are, I'm experiencing it as an adventure. As a cool place to explore. As a mystery to solve.

But, still, the MOON? Where in heaven's name did that come from?

Then I remembered that the last thing I read before I fell asleep was an excerpt of Carl Sagan's A Pale Blue Dot from The Sun magazine. With the NASA photo:  

(Google it and you'll find a better photo, in color even)

Many folks might disagree, but I find this photo to be very comforting. Rather than being the center of the universe, our Earth is but a minuscule dot, barely the size of the period at the end of this sentence. We just aren't that important. Whatever "stuff" we're going through doesn't mean a hill of beans in the grand scheme of the cosmos. 

As many of you know, I'm undergoing treatment for metastatic breast cancer, or MBC. Will my next scan show progression? Will my next treatment cause worse symptoms? How many drugs are still available that can help me? How many years do I have left? When I run out of drugs, how will I die? Who will take care of my husband? All are heady questions and all cause me great anxiety

But for some reason, when I look at this photo, I feel my anxiety melting. It's as if my worries are dissipating in the vastness of the universe.

Still, life seems so complicated these days, the world, our country, our politics are all in shambles. Heck, I get upset when I see an empty parking lot at the local pizza joint, or a car that's broken down on the side of the highway. Human suffering is everywhere. 

But we can do simple things like donating a little to causes we believe in; smiling at a stranger; chatting with a neighbor. 

Little acts of kindness can make us feel bigger than that tiny dot. 

And for fears that devour us, set them free. They are but a tinier dot in that tiny dot.

DOXIL on deck

I've been on chemo for over a year, mostly IV chemo. Many folks ask me what is it like and what are the side effects? In my last post in October, I mentioned fatigue. And, yes, for me, that's the most frequent and critical effect.

I tried to come up with some condition that a non-chemo person could relate to that would help them "feel" what I'm going through. The closest thing I can think of is a very bad case of the flu. No respiratory symptoms for me (for the most part), but a continuous, unabated, relentless, fatigue; aches and pains; and brain fog. It's not for the faint of heart.

You lose your train of thought before you even reach the depot. A friend talks and you have a response but as soon as he stops talking, you forget what your point was. You even forget the topic. In those cases, it's just better to go out for ice cream.

Speaking of friends, I now have a 3-hour limit on how long I can be with friends. Luckily, that's also pretty much the extent of time most of my friends want to spend with me, so we're all good.

I just had a scan that shows a bit of progression to my liver.  DANG IT!!!! @#$#!^%*(&&

OK, I'm better now.

I start on Doxil next week. Doxil is a kissin' cousin of the dreaded Red Devil, Adriamycin or doxorubicin.  I call it killer chemo. Most patients call it killer chemo.

I was on a low dose of Taxotere, which thankfully kept my counts at a livable stage. But my cancer simply scoffed at that, "Ha ha, I'll show YOU!! You think you can kill me without killing yourself?! Got another thing coming, girlie."

And so the bugger came back. It's a delicate balance between getting enough chemo to damage the cancer cells without doing permanent damage to my dear person as well.

It's just an all-around CRAP SHOW!!

So, onward and upward to Doxil, may the best (wo)man win...