I know that other people's dreams are usually boring, so I'll try to fly through this one really quickly.
I dreamed that I missed the first night of a journalism class at Well-Regarded University. I was excoriated, and P, who used to teach there with me, defended me on TV, saying that I had eaten a pepper that had made me sick. This was a fabrication; I had gotten the date wrong. But then I tried to insert my real disease (polycythemia vera) into the excuse so that it wouldn't be 100 percent false. I do, after all, turn red from PV and I did go to the hospital recently (in real life and in the dream), directly-indirectly because of PV.
This illustrates my confusion about how important my disease is to me and my mortality. My hematologist is pretty sanguine shall we say about my prospects. I read online that people live 3 or 5 or 10 or 20 years after a diagnosis. Usually men over 60 are the patients. I am not a man over 60.
This week I got a prescription for hydroxyurea, scary medicine to reduce my platelet count. I got it filled today and took one of the garish capsules. So far I have not suffered nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, diarrhea, constipation, severe decrease in blood cell counts, signs of serious infection, seizures, brown urine, blackened skin, yellowing skin, purple skin spots. I have not had tingling/burning/numbness of hands/feet/legs, though I had itching that is a result of the disease, which I'm taking another medication for.
***
This happened more than 50 years ago, in Brooklyn.
A young woman was set to meet her sweetheart's family. She was sheltered and an only child, and was accustomed to acting with decorum and wearing white gloves when she went out. She went to the family's apartment in Brooklyn (she lived in Brooklyn, too) and they sat down to dinner. At the table, everyone yelled. She was so upset she cried.
And then married the man and over time became a loud person herself.
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