Like being shot...

I haven't posted in a while... the last few months have been a little rough, physically, mentally, and psychologically. Many times I wished to be over with it and just be dead already. My body aching all the time. Out of breath all the time. Gaining weight uncontrollably. And to top it all, meds are making a wreck of me. I can't concentrate, I can't sleep, I can't wake up, I forget things, and I am basically a bipolar monstrosity: one minute I am yelling and shouting like a mad man, throwing and kicking things around the house, and the next I am crying wishing I was dead. It's been hell... and just kept getting worse.

The only semblance to a silver lining was the fact that one of the drugs (Rituximab) might actually have been helping. This was about the only thing that kept me going: the thought that I might actually, at some point, recover completely (or close to it) and be able to get off the meds. And then... it was no more. Whatever it did, it was over. I started getting worse again, so I don't know anymore...

I had this recurrent dream. It wasn't the same all the time, but the situation was always the same. In these dreams, for one reason or another, I got shot. Sometimes it was a robber that assaulted me on the street, or I got and some fight and someone pulled up a gun and shot me. The fact was I got shot. Usually in the abdomen. It was not an instant kill, but somehow I knew it was a fatal shot. Also, in these dreams, help was always out of reach. If I was robbed, I wasn't near a hospital, and the robbers took my phone. I could walk a little, but I knew I would never make it anywhere before I was dead. And so I had a sudden realization that, within minutes, I'd be dead. It was over. I was bleeding internally to death and there was nothing I could do about it...

Needless to say this is one of the most harrowing dreams I've ever had. I would lie there, with this profound emptiness in my chest, facing this horrible truth, thinking about all the things I wanted to do, but hadn't done yet. Knowing I would never, ever see my children again, and even at the moment I could not say anything to them, not even good bye. And as I pondered this thought I'd realize the imminent moment was even closer, and I realized that soon everything would turn black, and I would never again reach anything I loved... Every time I had this dream, I woke up unsettled, with my heart racing, sometimes crying, but very thankful it was only a dream. I'd hug my wife lying asleep next to me, get up and kiss my two little darlings...

The way I felt in that dream, that is exactly how I felt when I fell sick. When they told me what I had, how severe it was, and what my future looked like. When I made my own research and learned about this disease that came upon me in my young adulthood, taking so many things from me. It was like being  shot...

Only this was a more long term shot, as I've been bleeding very slowly. Instead of a few minutes, it would take me a few years to get there... but it would eventually get me. And there was nothing I could do about it. And I've been, just like in the dream, thinking about all I wanted to do, and won't have chance to do anymore. I can't play soccer with my children, or hold my little one up in the air. I can barely stand a full day out before I become completely exhausted. When I walk upstairs I feel like I just ran a mile since my lungs can no longer keep up. I've lost over half of my ability to absorb oxygen from air. If exert a little too much, I get dizzy as I feel oxygen failing to reach my brain...

It was like that... life took a big shot at me.

However, very recently I had another dream. In this dream I saw a cousin of mine, who was very dear to me, and was shot and killed a few years back, in that crazy violent place that has become my home country (Venezuela) over the last decade. When he was killed, for days nobody could reach me to tell me, and I could attend his funeral, which killed me... He was in this dream. He was looking at me in the eyes, and he had a gun. He was pointing it at me, and I wanted to take the gun from him. He said "If you even try, I'll shoot you". When I moved, he shot me... in the abdomen again. I grabbed the gun with both hands, he still holding it, and then he said "Why keep trying? You know you're going to die". And I don't know why, but I said "I might as well die, but I'm going to do this". He shot me three more times (this is the first time I got shot more than once in these dreams), but I kept on it, until I took the gun from him... at that moment, he disappeared. I had been shot 4 times, bleeding badly. But unlike the other dreams, I didn't want to give up... there were other people telling me "you're shot badly, you're not going to make it", then I said "maybe, but I will die trying". And then, I don't know how, I started to walk... you know how in a dream you can't really feel pain... but I could feel the pain, I knew it was there. I knew it was getting worse... and then I collapsed. Everything went black...

In the previous dreams, this is where I would wake up. But this dream was different. I did wake up, but I woke in a homely place. I can still recall what the place looked like, but I don't recognize it. Yet, in the dream, it felt like home. I was lying down on a bed, or couch... I can't remember. My abdomen was bandaged. In the dream, I could feel it still hurt a little, but it was better. There were people taking care of me, who felt like family (I can't recall exactly who, but I think my sisters and wife). They told me how I kept walking and how I reached a hospital, and they healed me... and I had been unconscious for a couple of weeks and they had been taking care of me...

I woke up from this dream and realized the irony in it (irony here meaning the deep message within it given by slapping you in the face). All this time I've been living like on the first dream, just waiting to die, thinking about all I've lost, regretting losing the chance to do many things... but forgetting about what I can still do, letting the sorrow drown me in a huge wave of depression and self-pity. And yeah, the fact that a lot of this are symptoms from the meds doesn't help, but I know I've let it take the best of me.

Maybe I will die a few years from now. There are many things that can go wrong, and just a slim chance of recovery. But until then, there are still many things I can do. And I don't have to live those days thinking about how bad things are, feeling sorry for myself... because that will only bring forth that day even faster.

I realize I want, and will live, from now on, like in the second dream. Yes, I was shot, but I don't have to give up... if you keep going, there's a chance everything will get better. And yeah, maybe nothing will ever be the same, but that doesn't have to be a horrible thing.

And to my cousin, Dann Albert, wherever you are, I love you. You were like a little brother to me. Knowing that I will never talk to you again brings sorrow to my heart every time I think about it, but thank you for coming to me at this moment in my life.