A Little Nightmare

I woke up this morning in a panic.  I had a dream I’d gone into the office to see everybody and made the mistake of sitting at my desk.   Before I knew what was happening my inbox was filled with files and a temporary employee was telling me it was work that was left for me by another employee and that it had to be completed before I left for home.  I looked around to see if I could leave the files with someone else but the office was a ghost town, emptied out with the exception of me and the temp.  I called the person who had left the files on my desk and explained I was ill and had not yet returned to work, but she became very angry with me.  "If you weren’t ready to come back to work why are you even in the office?" she yelled.  "I’m not feeling well either and need to be home!"  I could feel the panic sweeping over me.  I wanted to help, but emotionally and physically, I just wasn’t ready.  I tried to explain, "I still have another cancer, I can’t do this yet."  Her reply was icy, completely void of sympathy.  "Then you shouldn’t be there."  Her anger was so palpable.  Why?  I hung up the phone and slowly sat down in my chair.  The weight on my shoulders was painful.  I looked around and  somehow the files had multiplied 100 times over, surrounding me from every angle.  Resigned, I opened the first file and that’s when I woke up. 

I’m not kidding, when I opened my eyes, my heart was racing, pounding against my chest.  I got out of bed to pace the floor for calm.  It literally took me a minute to realize it hadn’t been real, it was only a dream.  It had felt so real.  Damn.  Does this dream represent the residual effects of chemo?  Or am I just losing it?  I decided to blog it before I forgot it.

My son asked me a question a couple of weeks ago that has been on my mind.  “More or less, with surgery you are being given the gift of time.  Will you live life the way you’ve been living it, or do something different?”  Perhaps this is my subconscious just trying to work it all out.


“If you obsess over whether you are making the right decision, you are basically assuming that the universe will reward you for one thing and punish you for another.

The universe has no fixed agenda. Once you make any decision, it works around that decision. There is no right or wrong, only a series of possibilities that shift with each thought, feeling, and action that you experience.

If this sounds too mystical, refer again to the body. Every significant vital sign- body temperature, heart rate, oxygen consumption, hormone level, brain activity, and so on- alters the moment you decide to do anything… decisions are signals telling your body, mind, and environment to move in a certain direction.”
― Deepak Chopra, The Book of Secrets: Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life