My sister and I drove back to Seattle yesterday, arriving in a storm of torrential rain. Last night, I guess I was tired from all the travel, because I slept deeply enough to dream vividly.

I’ve noticed that major life events are not immediately reflected in my dreams. For example, I was diagnosed with cancer back in early April, but this topic didn’t start showing up in my dreams until a few weeks ago. I recall a similar pattern with big events earlier in my life.

Last night’s dream was a weird one.

A general dream theme for me — over the past year or so — is that I’m in a crowded place with many acquaintances. Often this involves us being coworkers on some sort of large project, with a sense of much work to do.

In last night’s dream, I was at an event attended by fellow alumni of the UW business school. Following this year’s dream theme, many acquaintances were milling about, and I was vaguely involved in volunteer tasks: setting up displays, etc.

I looked over and saw a fellow alum, and I knew that like me, she had cancer. She was not a specific person from real life, but rather, an amalgam of multiple people that I’ve known. I saw that she was actually doing her chemo infusion right there at the event — she had multiple IV lines attached to her. (And oddly, no portable drip stand in sight.)

I cane up to see how she was doing, and share empathy from a fellow cancer patient’s perspective. Surprisingly, she seemed just fine, and launched into a “nuts and bolts” discussion of the specifics about her chemo setup. As she was doing this, she yanked at the various IV lines and they got disattached, with IV fluid squirting everywhere. She seemed unbothered by this, and “reminded me” that if anything goes wrong in the chemo process, you can always just point the IV straight into your mouth and drink the chemo. She proceeded to demonstrate this.

In the dream, I just listened and watched, with a neutral reaction, but when I woke up, I felt horrified as I recollected those details. A right proper scary dream for a chemo patient. Fitting for Halloween week, I suppose!