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...

I'm just so TIAAAAHRD!!

Having cancer brings many symptoms. Many of them are not fit to be discussed in polite society, but the main one suffered by all is FATIGUE.

I always feel lame when I complain about fatigue--after all, who among any of us isn't tired? Tired nearly ALL the time? You ask how someone is doing, and they'll say, TIRED! I'm SOOOOO tired!! But they still manage to work, do chores, drive in traffic, take care of the kids, cook dinner or buy takeout, walk the dog, go to the gym, climb Mt. Rainier, etc. etc. They continue to lift one leg up after the other and walk toward some semblance of purpose. They continue to have coherent discussions.

The kind of fatigue we suffer is DIFFERENT. We suffer the kind of fatigue where you feel like you've been spinning on the Scrambler amusement park ride for two hours. Then you get off and try to find the nearest cotton candy stand. Not to eat it, but to arrange the sticky stuff on your head, as you lost your wig and/or your head scarf and your baldness is on display for all. Better to look like a pastel bouffanted poodle.

Or, the kind of fatigue where you step off a curb and get trampled by a herd of elephants, which you neither saw nor heard because you're so lost in the foggy web of your own cranial matter. As you pass out, you do remember wishing you could go to the circus later. If you weren't so tired.

But I'm mostly tired of this administration.  Ooh, tossed that one out there, didn't I? Ever since November 9, 2016, we've been faced with constant, unrelenting, displays of hatred, stupidity, ugliness, hypocrisy, corruption and disrespect from this President and his cohorts. Every day, he lies and/or says something unbelievably thoughtless or evil. And his followers cheer and cheer.

It really wears on a decent person after awhile. Makes me feel like, "Why should I want to live, if this is what our country wants to be?"

Such blind acceptance of these rotting shenanigans goes against everything I learned in school and in church (and from my parents and relatives). There, I learned that "cheaters never prosper", lying is the worst, and sinning was something you should avoid at your peril.

In politics and business nowadays, cheaters and liars are the ones who prosper. You're expected to toe a very specific and deceptive line to succeed in either place. In church nowadays, sinning is a prerequisite in order to be considered an acceptable Christian.  God is someone you negotiate with. "Well, I did this sin thing, you know, giggle giggle, but so, you forgive me and I worship you and we'll be good right? And I promise to sin again real soon so we can do this over and over.  K'? K'. Oh, and I'll tithe, fer sure. 😉"

I remember hearing one "power preacher" recently say, "What has God done for you lately?" I cringed. In my church, we were taught to ask, "What have you done for God lately?"

That kind of selflessness is verboten today. Only for losers.

Having end-stage cancer and its treatment is hard to work through. Feeling that I'm fighting to live in such a wicked world makes me so very, very, tired.