Dreams

Treatment Progress Check: As I write this I’m on Day 4 of a 21-day cycle. Currently I have completed 2 out of 5 cycles. At this moment I have a bit of a head cold, which is making the first week of post-IV-treatment a bit tougher than it really needs to be. I’m still quite cold-sensitive, and as another fun side effect I’ve lost a lot of my ability to taste food. Combined with a general diminishing of appetite, I find myself in a real “food is fuel” place where I’m just sort of…putting things into my body because I know I need the energy, and not because I enjoy it. Which is sad! I like food! I want to enjoy it!

I think I struck the work/life balance this week a little better than before, which was good. However this weekend I’m really suffering with this cold thing I mentioned, on top of trying to keep the kids enriched while Lori works. I’ll get through this, I know it.

I didn’t have a lot from this week to talk about in terms of my personal journey, so I decided it was time to share my cancer journey playlist. It started on Spotify as something I’ve been slowly adding songs to since basically the beginning of this in May, and while most of them may be obvious choices, some of them are maybe not, and I wanted to highlight a few entries. Maybe it’s something you can find a bit of inspiration from as well.

Note: If you don’t have Spotify you can try this YouTube alternative I made just for you 🙂

I invited Lori to listen to it early on and one song in particular that has stood out for both of us is called Look At The Sky by Porter Robinson. I know the lyrics are about being creative and finding your spark again, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked up while outside and said, or sang: “Look at the sky, I’m still here / I’ll be alive next year”. This has become a meaningful…prayer? Request? Mantra? Statement of intent? Something along those lines.

Most of the rest of the songs are about acceptance and meeting ones circumstances as they are, about not being afraid to ask for help, and about knowing that there can be something good beyond your present experience. I’ll highlight two others:

• Times Like These by Jack Johnson – this one’s notable because the radiation technicians started playing it as one of my treatments started, and while I still don’t like to think about that machine, it was a lovely song and reminder that “what will be, will be” as I went through those treatments. I’m not the first person to encounter hardship and I won’t be the last.
• All Together Now by OK Go – this was actually written and recorded while the band sheltered-in-place during that global pandemic we had a few years back. So a lot of the lyrics are about who we plan to be on the other side of a life interruption like this. Our best selves? Our worst? The line that strikes me each time goes “Nothing changes until one day it does / and there’s no going back”, which is, you know. Pretty relevant.

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An unexpected side effect of something I’ve been putting in my body — who knows which thing exactly — is that in the past few days my dreams have become quite vivid. Not scary, just very real-to-me and difficult to separate from reality on waking. For instance, just this afternoon, while napping, I dreamt of stumbling on to a huge supply of free canned mushrooms. I was excited because I felt it’d be something we would use in our household. Even as I woke from my sleep I couldn’t wait for Lori to get home so I could show her how good they could be, and it took a long time of lying awake to realize they didn’t exist. I could even picture the packaging! I had been chopping them to saute some!

There was a lot more to the dream but the point is that it felt very real and natural in a way that I’m not accustomed to outside of being ill. Actually, my fever dreams are a lot less coherent and more repetitive than these. I guess we’ll see if they back off, or if I can trace it to something in particular over time.

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The last few days haven’t been easy. None of this really is, but I don’t need to belabor the point. I’m technically over the halfway mark of this treatment plan but the rest feels uphill from here. If you can spare a prayer or vibes or whatever, please; ask for a bit of hope for me and for us. I’d really appreciate it.