Drug Dreams

I take a lot of medicine these days, even when I am, as now, between courses of chemotherapy.

I take sleeping pills because without them I have a tendency to wake in the middle of the night and then toss and turn in the darkness. I take two different types of anti-depressants for obvious reasons. I take medicine for my heart, medicine for my prostate and a medicine – it’s usually given to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder children – to help me battle fatigue. Of course I take vitamins. And, when I’m getting chemo, I take anti-nausea pills and steroids.

My doctors ask if the anti-depressants work and I have to say I don’t know. The only way I could find out is to stop taking them and see how depressed I get. I don’t really want to do that. The same with the medicine I use to fight my exhaustion. I seem to be a little perkier. I’m writing a few hours every day, which had become difficult before I started the new drug. Of course, it may be psychological. I don’t care.

There is, though, a side effect to one of these drugs, or maybe to some mix of drugs. And it's a side effect I’ve never read about or heard of. For the last month or so I’ve been having very vivid, very brief dreams, sometimes when I’m napping and sometimes if I go back to sleep after waking during the night. These dreams are so real that they wake me and when they do wake me I feel as if I’m actually in the situation I was dreaming about, no matter how goofy it is.

Wow.

Just the other day, for example, I dreamed I was talking on the phone to my sister in law, Jennifer, who lives in Richmond. When I woke, I hollered to my wife that she had to get to the phone, her sister was waiting to talk to her. After Lynne stopped doing what she was doing and answered the phone only to hear a dial tone, she wasn’t happy. I don’t blame her.

Once I dreamed that I’d lost an important book in my bed and I came awake to start stripping the bed frantically until I realized there was no lost book. I've come awake to answer a doorbell that hasn't rung and to express my anger to my wife for leaving me even though she hasn't.

Last night, I went to sleep wearing ear plugs to block the sound of the wind that often screams around our waterfront apartment when, like now, there’s a tropical storm nearby. The ear plugs are made of some substance you might get if you crossed wax and thick bubble gum, only not sticky. I jam them in my ears and push until they block the ear canal. They’re not very attractive, but who cares. They work.

About four o’clock this morning I dreamed I was eating a gum drop. I wasn’t. I woke to find one of the ear plugs in my mouth. Apparently it had fallen out and somehow turned itself, in my dream, into a piece of candy. I’m glad I didn’t try to gulp the whole thing, it might have killed me. As it was, it was just funny enough to make me laugh, after I spit the earplug out.

I guess I should tell one of my doctors or maybe all of them what’s going on. But I’m not going to. At least not yet. I don’t think I’ll sleepwalk and go for a drive or eat a frozen dinner or even a whole bunch of ear plugs. If I wake and find I’ve done something really goofy or dangerous, I’ll let the doctors know.

For now, it’s kind of interesting. And it’s great, for now, to know there’s a good chance that the next time I go to sleep, I’ll wake up and start laughing. It’s a nice way to wake.

I got a phone call yesterday from one of the radiology techs at the VA hospital. We scheduled my next chest cat scan for three weeks from now. The last one was pretty good. The main tumor had grown, but not much. If this one shows what we expect it to, more growth, I’ll be starting chemo again.

I’m not caging for sympathy, I’m really not. I’m just stating the truth. And the truth is that when I start chemo again, even though it keeps me alive, it’s going to be a bit harder to find reasons to wake with a laugh or a smile.