Bad dreams about skin, good night with the Dems

Eight years out. Fewer relapse nightmares.

Graft vs. host disease, mostly of the skin. More dermatological nightmares.

For example, in my dream last night I was going to Florida. Or maybe summer camp. It wasn't clear, but I had to pack for warm weather. When I got there, my first thought was that I didn't want my parents to leave. The second was that I had forgotten my bathing suit.

Some other women (girls?) said no problem, they had extras. So I took one and went into a bathroom and tried it on. It was a two-piece with a top that didn't fit over my stomach, which in real life has popped out due to the GVHD of the skin. (No, it is not the same as normal aging, it is what the doctor described accurately as feeling like a band.)

I thought I would just wear a shirt over it. Everything seemed OK until I looked down and saw some raised spots on my abdomen. I went to a doctor who paged the dermatologist. The doctor said he wasn't sure but he thought the new spots looked ominous. I was seriously distressed.

I woke up in a panic.

Then ...

I gave Maddie her morning hug and went downstairs and had half an orange and opened up the free guided meditation that I have bookmarked and did a 10-minute (well, 9:52 min) calming meditation. Then cereal and off to fun tennis (pills, water and coffee in the car), then Starbucks to discuss the headlines, home to walk the dog and this evening, attending a meeting, "Mobilizing the Democratic Party from the Bottom Up: Using our most strategic political tool to resist Trump and reclaim our democracy," held before the Northampton Democratic City Committee's Caucus.

I rode with neighbors from the South Hadley Democratic Committee. After they explained caucusing to me, it sounded interesting and important enough that I might want to get involved with the local Dems. All in all, I got a boost from the commitment and enthusiasm in the packed auditorium at Smith Vocational High School. The pizza was good too.

The really really weird dream show

Sometimes my dreams are more interesting than my life.

Last night I dreamt that while I was still at the newspaper, a friend who is president of a large corporation offered me a job. I would get paid more and work in a much nicer place. For some reason I knew that my newspaper days would end in the near future but I wasn't sure I was ready to go.

I asked what I would be doing and she said that I would be working with people who were recording oral histories. My job was to make sure the recordings had a good ending.

I said I would be good at that because I knew this from my news writing: "Use the best thing first and save the second best for the end."

But then I wouldn't be writing. I would miss that too much.

And I said that I would be more comfortable at the grungy newspaper with the dirt falling onto our desks from the ceiling vents. (This really happened. Every day we would have to come in and wipe the desk calendar off.)

So I went into the office and went to my desk (which in some of my work nightmares has disappeared along with my computer terminal or my lamp and which in some cases is occupied by somebody else) and saw the spookiest thing: The calendar that covered my whole desk, and on which I had scribbled dates and reminders, was still on April.

April was the last month I worked in 2003 before going to Dana-Farber for cancer treatment. I wrote it in my little book. April 4, 2003, last day of work.

I thought I should change it but I didn't do it.

A moment frozen in time.

The night before I had a nightmare that is part of a series about things that have happened to me.

This time it was my skin.

I went to the dermatologist to have her check out a scaly spot on my ankle. (A spot which is actually there but which I'm not supposed to be worried about.)

She said it looked horrible and started slashing at it with a knife. She cut up so much of my skin that I had to wear a cast on that leg. Then I went out with some people to go somewhere and encountered a swamp full of muck. I had no choice but to get the leg thing dirty while we waded through the muck. I was nervous about messing up my skin but we got to dry land and it seemed to be OK.

Was it a good dream or a bad dream?

In my dream, my mother died before my father. That wasn't the way it's supposed to be.

I was worried that he would be unable to take care of himself. I went to the apartment to talk to him. He was so unsteady, I worried he wouldn't even be able to make it to the store. I suggested he get rid of the apartment so he could come out here and hang out with the other elderly men at the JCC. I told him I had seen them congregate in the lobby, where they seemed to be engaged in lively conversation. He said he wasn't ready.

Meanwhile, my mother came back to tell me it would be OK. I asked her what she did when her own mother died. She said she let herself feel her feelings. Some days she was sad, but on others she was fine. I love it when she is sitting right by me. I like to believe she is really there.

On another topic, I dreamt I had to leave work (at the newspaper) for what I thought would be a quick visit to a doctor. A previous examination had suggested the possibility of breast cancer. (I had read a story about someone undergoing treatment, and my porous cancer-sensitive mind absorbed it and must have stored the fear that it could be me.) After two hours, I still had not been seen. I tried to text Mimi back at work to say what had happened, but my phone wasn't working properly. I never did get in to see that doctor.

But then I realized it didn't matter how long I was gone because the paper was closing in one week anyway, and nobody cared what we did. Still, I wanted to finish up a couple of stories. I went back and found some newspaper peeps and said how much I was going to miss them. I suggested we make a group email and send it out so we could try to get together in a year. Somebody said that wouldn't work, and I realized it was a far-fetched idea.

People were wondering what they would do next. Realizing the end of the paper was near, I had sent out some queries and had been offered a news writing job at the Hartford Courant. I told somebody that I was afraid I would end up covering meetings while all I knew about was writing features. The person said not to worry.

Cancer relapse/technology trouble/parental dying/newspaper nightmare all in one night.

But on the positive side, my mother came back to tell me it was OK, and I had a job.