When I got cancer, my dreams told me what doctors could not

'While I couldn’t tell you why two helicopters crash-landing made me certain that I had cancer, I started to take my dreams more seriously,' writes Katie Farris. Photo / Getty Images

OPINION:

As soon as I woke up from the dream about two helicopters crashing onto a highway, I called my doctor’s office and asked for a mammogram.

Nine months earlier, a nurse practitioner had felt the lump with her gentle, cool hands and told me: “I’m not worried. You’re young. It’s most likely a cyst.”

“If you’re not worried, I’m not worried,” I’d said and hopped off the table.

The helicopter dream changed all that. I’m not certain why it gave me such a feeling of urgency, but it did. I went back in for the mammogram, then for a biopsy on the lump. Not long after that a stranger called and said: “You have cancer. Unfortunately. Someone will be in touch in the next couple of weeks.” That was August 2020. I was 36, and I’d soon be facing one life-altering decision after another in response to questions that had no medically logical answer.

I’m a deeply practical person. I grew up in a Scots family of farmers, coal miners, construction workers and veterinarians. I finished college one class short of a biology degree. I understand the importance of common sense and double-blind scientific studies, but at the same time, I believe that occasionally a little bit of woo-woo can’t hurt.

While I couldn’t tell you why two helicopters crash-landing made me certain that I had cancer, I started to take my dreams more seriously, waiting at least one night before any major medical decision. When all the rational decision-making options are bad, relying on dreams offers a different kind of logic, an emotional logic, that can be a lifesaver in its own way. The dreams helped me feel as though I wasn’t simply tossing a coin over life-and-death decisions, though some may argue that I was.

After my diagnosis, I put on my turquoise ring for protection and flew to Boston for a second opinion. Because my cancer is hard to see, often invisible on scans, the doctor told me it was likely to be even more advanced than my other doctors thought, but we wouldn’t be sure until after my surgery. “There are nearly equally good arguments for and against doing chemo,” he said. “What do you want?”

That night I had a dream of soaring above a garden full of light. I woke laughing with delight, but then my laughter turned ironic — who has ecstasy dreams about chemo? Still, I took what felt to me to be the dream’s advice. I started chemotherapy.

I was halfway through chemo, and very bald, on the unusually cold day when I met my surgeon to talk about mastectomy. I’d forgotten my hat, so I was holding my hands over my ears trying to warm the ache out of them. When she walked in, I probably looked as if I didn’t want to hear what she had to say — and frankly, I didn’t. “You look great!” she chirped.

This appointment was about my “choice” between a single and a double mastectomy, and between reconstruction and no reconstruction. Double mastectomy, she said, would mean a much lower chance of developing a new breast cancer.

But not zero. “My sibling had a double mastectomy and then had a recurrence,” I told her, “and since the doctors don’t regularly scan double mastectomies, the recurrence was nearly missed.”

She made a quietly compassionate face. I’ve learned to pay attention to doctors’ silences. However, I’d already made my choice, based on the first dream I’d had in months.

In my apartment, flames were creeping up the blinds and down the back of the couch. I had two jugs in my hands, though only one was full of water, which I threw on the fire. I went to refill both jugs, but when I returned, the fire was already out. And so, with some relief and a laugh at the strange ways dreams communicate, I decided on a single mastectomy. One jug was enough. I didn’t tell my doctor about the dream, but I did tell her about my decision.

“And are you going to get reconstruction?” she asked.

I dreaded this question. I remembered how scared I’d been to see my mother’s scar when she had her mastectomy 20 years before. Someday, I suspected, I’d feel her strength, but right now, all I could feel was the fear. And I hadn’t had any more dreams.

“I think I’ll go flat,” I heard myself say. I reached out a little with my hand, almost dizzy, as if I could pull the words back. But then I imagined saying, “I guess we’ll go ahead with the reconstruction,” and I realised I’d feel the same way. There was simply no answer that felt right.

As the Boston doctor had predicted, during the mastectomy, they discovered that my cancer had spread deep into my lymph nodes. This put me into the category of a locally advanced cancer and lengthened my active treatment by three years. But first, I had radiation.

I grew to love my radiation oncologist and her team of techs. I wrote them poems and they told me jokes; we’re still in touch. But the first day was another story.

I was placed in a CT machine — topless, head turned to the side, arms over my head, a tough position after my recent surgery — and asked not to move for nearly 45 minutes. Then a six-person medical team came in and drew on my bare chest with a permanent marker. I hadn’t been touched by that many people simultaneously in my life, even with my clothes on, and this was March 2021, pre-vaccine. I was glad my head was turned away from them as I cried. I’ve never felt more like an object.

Nearly a month into radiation, my radiation oncologist found something on my scan: maybe a still-cancerous lymph node; maybe just a pocket of inflammation. If we “boosted” the radiation to kill the potential cancer, we’d be radiating through every major nerve and muscle in my arm, and I had already had nerve damage from my mastectomy. She was concerned that this could create a lifetime of pain and limited mobility. If it was cancer, this was our only opportunity to treat it, but they couldn’t do a biopsy because of its position; there was no way to know for sure.

“What would you do if it was your scan?” I asked. We were standing next to the radiation arm, which looked like a blunt, faceless creature.

She held out her hands helplessly. “I’ve been thinking about it all night,” she said, looking down. “It’s as close to 50/50 as I’ve ever seen. I would probably go for the radiation myself, but I know the damage it can do. I would struggle with the choice.”

That weekend, while I struggled, I had my last and strangest breast cancer dream. I saw nothing, as if I was in a dark room. A man’s voice, inflectionless, American-sounding, said, “You must continue with radiation.” It was as if my subconscious was drained of all the symbols, the stories, the irrational desires and impossibilities. The only straightforward dream of my life.

I did the extra radiation.

Today I’m nearly finished with the treatment my dreams led me to, and I’m currently NED (no evident disease). My chance for recurrence will never decrease, but I’m beginning to hope again.

Were my dreams infallibly correct? No. My cancer was strongly resistant to chemotherapy, but my heart was not. Shortly after radiation, at the age of 37, I was diagnosed with heart failure. My ecstatic dream of flying was replaced by the reality of a lifetime of palpitation and metoprolol. It feels a little like a betrayal. Still, if that dream helicopter hadn’t fallen to my feet in the middle of the abandoned freeway, I might have died of metastatic breast cancer. Each of my doctors opened their hands, indicating with humility that science had no clear answers for me. I’m grateful that my dreams’ guidance allowed me to make choices that felt meaningful.

It doesn’t matter whether you “believe” in science — the earth is still round. But we are creatures who need something to believe in — stories and symbols to make meaning from a chaotic universe. Are dreams the flotsam of our waking lives, washed up on the shores of consciousness? Or are dreams, like pain, meaningful messages from our bodies?

Imagine my open, uncertain, freckled hands. There’s no conclusive evidence supporting either hypothesis. But when I felt betrayed by my own body, dreams gave me a feeling of meaningful connection to, and faith in, myself. I’m as grateful for that connection as I am for highly advanced medicines, and for the doctors who spend every day reckoning with the mystery that is cancer.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Katie Farris

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