The Dream

I had my first "treatment dream" last night.


I'm used to "teaching dreams" -- I have them all the time, and I'm sure I'll be getting some of them very soon, as the start of the semester approaches. But this was the first dream I've had that involved getting a cancer treatment.


At the start of the dream, I was in the treatment room, waiting to begin treatment. It was smaller than I remembered. It looked like I was the only one there, and I was happy to have the room to myself. All of the big comfy chairs lined the wall, except one, which faced the others. I could see that chair had its own TV, so I thought I'd take that one so I'd have a TV to myself.


But then the door opened, and about five other patients came in. They all seemed to know each other, like maybe they'd all come from the cafeteria together. In the confusion, someone else sat in that chair that I had chosen. It turned out to be Sal "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero from The Sopranos. He turned the chair around and pushed it back so that when he reclined, he was pretty much in my lap. But given who he was, I felt like I couldn't really say anything about it.


The nurses came in and started working on people at the other side of the room, so I figured I had some time before they got to me. I thought I'd slip out and go down the hall to the Study Abroad Office, since one of my students was apparently interested in studying in England. I left the tretament room, and saw that the building was a combination of a university building and a hospital. I was a little confused about which direction to go to get to Study Abroad, but I figured it out, walking past my friend Ilene as she stood outside her office.


As I approached the Study Abroad office, I could see I was in the right place because I recognized the four year old girl playing there as the daughter of our friend Heather, who runs the day care center at our church. Apparently, in my dream, she's now running the university's Study Abroad Office. I could see that Heather was busy talking to someone, so I thought I'd just slip in and see if the 4 year old could help me find a brochure with a British flag on it. But Heather saw me and we chatted a little bit. She asked me which department I was in, and I didn't know if she meant my academic department or my medical department, so I said "oncology" after a second. She said she didn't know I had cancer.


I went back through the maze of hallways to the treatment room, passing my friend Cindy along the way; she was throwing white powder on top of a large spill or leak. When I got to the treatment room, I looked up at the clock and realized it was 7:30 at night. I panicked -- I told everyone that this was going to be an all-DAY affair, not an all-NIGHT thing.


That's when I woke up.


I told Isabel about it, and we were both fascinated by the mix of elements in dream, covering my medical life, professional life, personal life, and even my TV viewing habits. (Though if I had my choice, it would have been Paulie Walnuts who came to see me -- he actually had cancer on the show.)


I have these kind of dreams about teaching, as I said, where everything seems fine for a while, but then they always end with my classroom breaking down completely into chaos. Since that almost never happens in real life, I'm going to assume that everything will be OK on Friday, too, and the dream is just a way of letting off a little psychic steam.

Though, if Mr. Bonpensiero shows up, he can have any damn chair he wants....