Pipe Dream

When I posted this photo on Facebook, friend Tim said it looked like a dream with a pipe sticking through it. (I challenge you to identify what it really is. Hint: Think macro lens.)

I came back with "Pipe Dream" as the title of my photo. Then I looked up the definition of pipe dream, since I don't trust my own mind these days, finding: n : a fantastic but vain hope (from fantasies induced by the opium pipe). Okay. I was right, but didn't know the derivation of the term -- which makes perfect sense. I think the introduction of a bit of opium just adds to the photo.

Third cancer treatment went well except I felt a little wired afterward (despite the small dosage of steroids added to my chemo cocktail to combat side effects; just one-third the amount I had last in 2007, when I didn't sleep more than three hours at a crack for three months).

Monday night I slept from about 9:30 until 12:30 (as in just past midnight). Yesterday, Tuesday, was one of those days when I had to continually remind myself not to tear anyone a new poop shoot or slit my wrists. I called for help and was given yet another sleep aid, adding to the two I'm already taking during chemo.

I slept. Deeply.

Today is a bright and sunny day inside and out!

So what's all this got to do with pipe dreams? I'm entertaining the pipe dream that this regimen of chemo (I'm one-sixth done with the nasty part) will continue to go as well as it is. I still may not have the rhythm down, meaning what to expect day one, day two etc., but this has clearly not been as debilitating* as four years ago . . . yet.

But there is this to consider: Chemotherapy is talked about in the medical field as given in "cycles." For whatever reason, the number of times you are injected has nothing to do with a "cycle." A cycle just means three weeks. Three weeks is a cycle. Three injections, given weekly, then means I've completed one cycle (out of a total of six -- in my case, 18 weeks). And if you think that was hard to follow, you ought to try a conversation with my oncologist! (Name withheld just for you, Doc.)

The pipe dream continues. Hair loss typically happens after one cycle. So there is still the hope I may be among the lucky few who do not experience this. Other side effects too creepy to go into on a sunny day often do not begin after just one cycle. Again, I may get lucky.

I've never had an opium pipe dream, but I'm entertaining the notion of smooth sailing and pleasant dreams on my other various and sundry drugs. What can it hurt?

*The so-called rhythm of my weekly treatments seems, so far, to be: for a few nights I cannot sleep without a lot of help from my sleep-aid friends. Forty-some hours later I experience a pounding headache and face-tingling with subsequent intermittent occurences of same. I've learned to ward off these spells with Tylenol and naps. After ruling out allergies and other non-chemo reasons for the headaches, Doc has now suggested the "forty-some hours later" may mean the steroids have worn off. This is a good thing (for sleep) and a bad thing (for the vigilant care required to keep away the pounding headaches and tingling). I write this for myself as much as anything, so I can keep track of a baseline after one cycle, for future reference.