Day 51 - Sleep with Dreams
Ow. Ow my eyes. Ow. The light at the end of the tunnel is getting really bright. I'm almost done here, but I already feel like the worst is over. The end of last week was pretty bad for me. I didn't get sick, but I genuinely felt in the gutter, and getting shots every day felt a bit like routine torture. I made a pretty big realization about chemo this weekend though: A lot of the torture we do to ourselves.
The worst thing about chemotherapy is that not much is going on, but there's a large amount of time to reflect upon it. You're waiting for your body to flush out poison and you have dozens of hours to reflect on what that means. What that feels like. What it smells like. I noticed I didn't smell like me. I'm not sure if the chemo affected my sense of smell or I if could literally smell the chemo in my sweat and piss. Whatever the reason, while I lay up in my room it was a constant morbid reminder of the sickening nature of what was happening to my body, and this had a proportional affect on my psyche.
My vacation from having a life was stupid. Yes, I was slightly immobilized by chemo, but to just give up and stay inside during heavy chemo sessions was a horrible idea. The human brain should not contain itself in such tight quarters for such a long time. You need to allow yourself to think about other things. Go on walks, go to coffee shops. There's always other things to do besides partying. But if you put your life on hold, you'll just make things worse and become more consumed by the chemo. More immobilized.
I honestly think I didn't dream during the whole week. Maybe when you're focused exclusively on chemo, there's nothing to dream about. But on Saturday night, I sat in the darkness for hours thinking about my life, my career, and exactly where I was going next. It felt so good to be thinking about something other than chemo, I kept it up all night. I had my first dream in a week, and then another and another. And none of them were about chemo. They were about opportunities, goals, and women. That night I figured out where my life is going to go next, instead of wallowing in where it has been.
Things are going to be different after this is all over. Convensional wisdom promises everything returns "back to normal," but why should "normal" be behind you? This experience has changed me, and it has become a part of who I am, perhaps more so than where I grew up, or my heritage. The new normal will not be the old normal. It will be better, more enlightened, more aware.
The light at the end of the tunnel is bright, and when I look behind me, the light at the beginning of the tunnel is so dim in comparison. And so I step forward to normal.
The worst thing about chemotherapy is that not much is going on, but there's a large amount of time to reflect upon it. You're waiting for your body to flush out poison and you have dozens of hours to reflect on what that means. What that feels like. What it smells like. I noticed I didn't smell like me. I'm not sure if the chemo affected my sense of smell or I if could literally smell the chemo in my sweat and piss. Whatever the reason, while I lay up in my room it was a constant morbid reminder of the sickening nature of what was happening to my body, and this had a proportional affect on my psyche.
My vacation from having a life was stupid. Yes, I was slightly immobilized by chemo, but to just give up and stay inside during heavy chemo sessions was a horrible idea. The human brain should not contain itself in such tight quarters for such a long time. You need to allow yourself to think about other things. Go on walks, go to coffee shops. There's always other things to do besides partying. But if you put your life on hold, you'll just make things worse and become more consumed by the chemo. More immobilized.
I honestly think I didn't dream during the whole week. Maybe when you're focused exclusively on chemo, there's nothing to dream about. But on Saturday night, I sat in the darkness for hours thinking about my life, my career, and exactly where I was going next. It felt so good to be thinking about something other than chemo, I kept it up all night. I had my first dream in a week, and then another and another. And none of them were about chemo. They were about opportunities, goals, and women. That night I figured out where my life is going to go next, instead of wallowing in where it has been.
Things are going to be different after this is all over. Convensional wisdom promises everything returns "back to normal," but why should "normal" be behind you? This experience has changed me, and it has become a part of who I am, perhaps more so than where I grew up, or my heritage. The new normal will not be the old normal. It will be better, more enlightened, more aware.
The light at the end of the tunnel is bright, and when I look behind me, the light at the beginning of the tunnel is so dim in comparison. And so I step forward to normal.
posted by sleepwithoutdreams at 10:54 PM
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