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The Potato Says...

I should preface this post by saying that I am more or less following a plan to get control of my mood swings, irritability, occasional bouts of depression, and generally erratic behavior, and that this plan involves eating a potato every night at bedtime. The potato is designed to boost my serotonin levels a bit—emphasis on a bit. Too much potato = too much serotonin = headaches and wild dreams. So this could all just be the potato talking.

Last night I dreamed I had breast cancer. I also dreamed that I went to visit my dear friend and former roommate Pat... who died of breast cancer in 1998. I can't remember if the two dreams were intertwined, or if one came before the other; I just know that both dreams were vivid and memorable.

Pat Dream: I have no idea where we were, except that it was wherever Pat happened to be living (or not living, as the case may be). There was another woman there whom I know I should have recognized, but I can't think now who she could have been. Anyway, I remember that Pat proposed going on a bike ride, and I said, "I almost packed my biking shoes and clothes because I thought you'd want to go for a ride... but then I remembered that my bicycle isn't here, so having the right shoes and clothes wouldn't help." Pat and her friend rode their bikes, and I kind of tagged along on foot. I remember trying to catch up with Pat, both literally (I was obviously slower on foot that she was on a bike) and in the "what have you been up to?" sense.

Breast Cancer Dream: I was in a doctor's office or hospital (though the chair I was sitting in was more like a dentist's chair) getting some tests done. I remember the doctor being really nice and very professional, and I remember him telling me all kinds of things about the test results and going over "options." I remember looking at (and getting a copy of) the test results. As soon as I left the office, however, I realized that we'd talked a lot about what seemed like breast cancer treatment options... but that he'd never actually said I had breast cancer. Did I have breast cancer???

I went back to the office and asked to see the doctor again. He'd gone out or into surgery or something and wasn't available. I asked to see someone else, but I couldn't get anyone's attention. I remember looking at the nameplates that were hanging on the wall beyond the receptionist's desk to see how many doctors were in the office.

The next major chunk of the dream was spent in trying to find someone, anyone, who could tell me whether I had breast cancer or not. It took a huge amount of time and effort on my part to find someone who wasn't busy—or who would even look at me. Finally I found a nurse practitioner who would give me the time of day. I remember she was blond, with a bob haircut (and now that I think of it, this archetypal woman has been in several of my dreams lately). I said, "I had a, um," and I totally couldn't remember the name of the test, so I waved my hand in front of my chest as I "ummmed".

"Mammogram?" she supplied.
"No, it wasn't a mammogram," I said. "There was no squishing involved."
"Oh, I know the test you mean," she said. I couldn't remember if she told me the name of it or not; if she did, I can't remember it now. I just remember that it involved lasers.
"Right, well, these are my results," I said, indicating a sheet with two lines on it, one much longer than the other. "Does this mean I have breast cancer?"
"Yes," she replied.

Oddly, I felt a little relieved—finally, I knew for sure. "Is it bad that my line [on the results] is so much longer than the normal, reference line?" I asked. The nurse rubbed her forehead with her hand, and I knew it *was* bad. "Jeez," I muttered. "Now everyone's going to blame me for not getting a mammogram. I'm 37, for chrissakes! How many mammograms do you really need in your life? And what do they do for you, anyway, besides scare the crap out of you?" [Aside: Pat got regular mammograms, and she had to go through several scares over what turned out to be fibroids... and they didn't catch what did turn out to be cancer until it was too late. She had some weird inflammation that the doctors wrote off as a 'systemic infection', but we suspect it was her lymph nodes getting attacked/trying to fight off cancer.]

The nurse replied, "mammograms are good for finding masses, but that's not what you have. I don't think a mammogram would have found anything for you." Just then a bell rang, like a school bell at the end of a period. The nurse said, "oh, 6:00, gotta go," and like everyone else pouring out of their offices at that moment, she turned and ran for the elevator. I was left standing there, wondering how the hell I was going to get down from the 39th floor with the elevators so jammed with people.

Of course, that wasn't the only thing I was wondering. As I made my way to the stairs with an idea of walking down to my office on the 37th floor (hello? I work at home) and working a while—at least until the elevators were clear—I started thinking about what my plan should be. Should I bother with chemo and radiation in an attempt to prolong my life, when those treatments were so likely to drastically impact the *quality* of my life? Or should I just try to live the best life I could for the next year or year and a half that I had left? I was leaning toward the latter when I slipped on some files someone had left on the stairs, landed at the bottom next to Jack Herrington's (my old cubemate's) cube, said hi to Jack, and then got lost looking for my cube because I didn't recognize the office at all after the Macromedia-Adobe merger.

I don't remember whether I woke up because I was lost, or because I heard Austen wake up in his crib upstairs. I just know that I heard Austen give his "I'm UP" squeak shortly after realizing I was awake. Both dreams were vivid and immediate in my head, as if I'd dreamed them simultaneously.