Cancer Hiccup

Diaphram spasms. Scary monsters. And how to dispel them. Hint: communion is the cure.

The first big hiccup of my chemo experience was…the hiccups.

I imagine it sounds like a silly thing to complain about. But I kept waking up with the hiccups the first couple nights after my first chemo infusion.

I didn’t know why initially. I later learned that hiccups are a side effect of one of the drugs I was given to help reduce nausea: dexamethasone.

And I’m not alone in struggling with hiccups amid cancer treatment. The good folks at Cancer Research UK note that “hiccups can be tiring and difficult to cope with.”

Spot on, in my case. Tiring, because I couldn’t stay asleep. I would try to get rid of the hiccups with a trick I learned at Kristen P’s house in high school. After too many beers from playing “quarters,” I would drink water “upside down”--with my head bowed forward.

This tactic works. But it proved just a temporary fix this past week. And with all the water I was drinking, I kept having to get up and pee.

So the hiccups were exhausting and difficult to cope with.

Until I stopped fighting them.

Partway through the second night, I gave up on trying to fall back asleep right away. Instead, I started making short audio recordings of the vivid dreams I was having.

This shift in strategy not only got rid of the hiccups, but let me capture some observations I don’t want to fade.

***

The “sleepiphanies” had much to do with the movie I watched earlier that night with my dear pal Jason.

Forbidden Planet is a sci-fi classic from 1956, rich with philosophical and technological puzzles.

SPOILER ALERT: plot revelation coming.

The movie is about a rescue mission to a faraway planet, where a lone human scientist and his daughter have been living for more than a decade. The scientist, Dr. Morbius, has been studying an ancient, advanced civilization known as the Krell. But a dark secret surrounds the fate of the Krell–and Dr. Morbius’ former space travel companions.

The secret has to do with what one character calls “monsters of the id.” The id is Sigmund Freud’s notion of an unconscious portion of the mind that impulsively reacts to basic urges and desires.

Monster of the id from Forbidden Planet. If you’re having trouble finding the monster, look for the giant mouth, sharp fangs and white-hot eyes.

With its all-too-real incarnation of Dr. Morbius’ id, the film suggests that people are plagued by repressed wishes, fears and primal instincts–and that the id inevitably will wreak havoc.

It is a grim, glass-half-empty view of humanity.

One I dispute.

***

Jason and I have a running joke that borrows the tagline from Fred Sanford of the TV show, “Sanford and Son”: “You big dummy.”

We often apply the line to ourselves in a self-deprecating way, when we’ve goofed up somehow.

As we discussed Forbidden Planet, a version of the joke seemed to fit.

“Yes, ‘us big dummies’ are capable of terrible behavior when we don’t become aware of our impulses and injuries,” I said. “But can’t we notice them, heal them? Keep them from turning into monsters?”

“I hope so,” Jason said.

He went on to criticize the Krell for being so smart but not wise enough to recognize the dangers of the id.

“You big dummies,” he said.

True that, my friend.

It struck me that our pet phrase also applies to ‘monsters of the id’ themselves.

Those giant demons are dummies–ignorant of their root causes.

Men, I think, are particularly susceptible to “big dummies” running rampant in our psyches and harming our relationships. At a young age, we’re steered away from key tools for self-reflection and for recovering from suffering–tools like self-compassion, connection and contemplation.

Still, men–and human beings in general–can regain those tools. We can build self-awareness. We can acknowledge our needs and the needs of others. We can recognize the slights, bruises and traumas of our personal and collective pasts. We can work to meet needs, bind up wounds and face fears.

At least that’s what I’ve seen in my own life, in the work I do with men in the ski industry and beyond, in the recent protests protecting the most vulnerable among us from cruelty and abuse.

***

Then my subconscious weighed in.

As Jason slept in the other room (Rowena was helping our youngest kid move into a new home in Santa Cruz), I dreamt two dreams. They spoke to questions of human nature, violence and redemption.

The first began playfully. My high school friend Mary E. and I were carting drinking glasses in the kind of racks you’d find in an industrial kitchen.

I asked Mary if she’d want to be a stevedore–a term I’ve always loved. We discussed the parallels between stevedores and sherpas. And I reminded Mary I once was a professional dishwasher (true!).

But then things got sinister. A malevolent force came upon us. I was tempted to run away, but part of me knew I had to remain present. Had to face the challenge.

Still, to avoid getting killed, we had to cross a bridge. And in the course of crossing the bridge, I realized one side represented fear. That was the side we were coming from. The other side was faith. Trust.

At the far end of the bridge–at the threshold between fear and faith, my legs acted like a dial. Sticking straight out, they went from pointing toward fear, to pointing directly upward, and then swinging down to point toward faith.

And once I tipped over to trust, I recognized that the force that seemed malevolent on the fear side wasn’t bad. It was misunderstood. Then the two of us hug!

In the context of Forbidden Planet, the dream was about a “monster of the id” transforming into a friend. This can happen once we face fears, move past them and embrace a mindset of faith, trust, abundance.

I said this into my voice-recorder at the time:

“It's like we have this power that's beyond our understanding. And we're afraid of it. With the faith piece, it was still kind of scary, but I'm sticking with the force, and there's many possibilities opening up–good stuff.”

***

There was a final scene of this dream. One I forgot about at first. My audio recording reminded me of it. And I’m glad it did, because it was cool–if I say so myself! (Are you allowed to take pride in your dreams?!)

The scene had to do with a final glance back across the bridge. Mary is no longer there (sorry, Mare. Not sure where you went!).

Here’s what I recorded:

“I look back and there's like another representation of me that had been the fearful one, and it was dying. Getting blue and veiny. And I think I recognized that that was Okay–Okay for the old to die.

“I don’t remember much more, but I think this is kind of important. Bridging to faith, not fear, and that is a way to overcome death, if you will.

“This could be part of what it really means to die physically as a human being. But it felt bigger than that. Like it was about the spirit moving from doubt to trust and faith in the abundance and the goodness, the possible goodness.”

***

As I thought of conveying this dream, I immediately thought of illustrating it. With the kind of simple line drawings that I’ve done throughout my life.

I will not win any awards for verisimilitude. But I’ve been told there’s something about my little pictures–which I used to stick in my kids’ lunches when they were in elementary school. And I’m trusting my gut more and more these days.

Then another mini-miracle came down the pike. My cousin Rich and his wife Julie sent me 72 coloring pencils and a set of “adult coloring books” to help calm me during the worst chemo treatments.

(Rowena wondered whether these books would be filled with black-and-white images of private parts and orgies that I would fill in with fleshtones. No–they are of picturesque nature scenes. The only nudes are animals.)

I’m so grateful for the gift! I can imagine coloring the mountain vistas to ease my mind amid chemo malaise. And yesterday, when I had recovered from the first chemo round, I was excited to put the pencils to use in capturing my dream.

So below are the key scenes. I’ve taken some artistic liberties. For example, in my dream, I’m not sure what the malevolent force/misunderstood creature looked like. In the drawings, I took my cue from the arresting image of the “monster of the id” from Forbidden Planet. I also represent the creature pulling me across the bridge. In real life (dream life?), it wasn’t so literal.

But overall, I think I’ve approached the spirit of my dream with the images. May they help you understand what I experienced.

***

My second dream was far less symbolic. No bridges! No Lands of Fear and Faith! No deaths of the past! The second dream was mundane–but still meaningful.

I dreamt about a childhood friend of mine. Call him Mike. In real life, Mike struggled as a youth. His parents were divorced, and there seemed to be a lot of sadness in his family. Mike was similarly troubled in my dream.

I also dreamt about a young relative of mine. Call him Peter. Peter also is struggling in real life, with intense strains in his family.

In the dream, Peter was drunk and acting out. He made lewd remarks about a neighbor of mine and her daughter. Mike came to my neighbors’ rescue. But in an extreme, tragic way. He gouged out Peter’s eyes.

How could this nightmare be at all redeeming?!

Because from its inception, I saw how to prevent the awful ending.

I saw Mike in his suffering. I saw I could have intervened to ask him about his hurting. I could have helped him heal. Same with Peter. I knew I had the power to help him move through personal pain so that he wouldn’t be tempted to demean others.

In the dream, I chose to distance myself from both of them. I thought their problems were their own. But Mike’s gruesome attack on Peter revealed the fiction of my separateness.

I suffered right along with them.

“Oh my God,” I said into my voice recorder. “This was so clearly likely to play out this way because of everybody's particular wounds. I didn't involve myself, and I think I have to. We all have to, probably, do what we can do to clean the wounds and heal them so that we don't play out these lash-out scripts.”

***

The dream reinforced for me that we are each others’. We are interdependent, social creatures. With the power–with the responsibility–to help each other move through our most difficult moments. So that we grow wiser and kinder rather than meaner and smaller-minded.

So that we’re all healthier and happier.

The very lesson I was learning in my dreams was playing out for me while awake that night.

Was helping me heal from the hiccups.

Dexamethasone is thought to trigger the hiccups by affecting the nervous system. In doing so, the drug appears to be tapping into a primal survival function.

Researchers speculate that the hiccups are a vestigial activity that stems from our amphibious ancestors, who may have hiccuped to keep water from getting into their lungs. Another theory is that the origin of the hiccup is a mammal behaviour that eliminates extra air from the stomach when nursing, so more milk can get to the young.

It strikes me you can see hiccups among adult human beings as an overreaction to a perceived threat–the fear of not getting enough oxygen or food.

In this sense, aren’t hiccups a kind of “monster of the id?”

And as with those primal fears and impulses, we can resolve the hiccups. We can calm ourselves. We can take individual action, like drinking water upside down.

But what was more effective for me that night was less aggressive. And was more an act of communion. I was recording my dreams not for me alone, but in the hopes that I might help others.

I was in implicit dialog with you, dear reader.

I was sharing what I was learning about moving from fear to faith and about our profound familyhood. I was doing my best to be my brother’s – and sister’s and sibling’s–keeper. And in doing so, I was being kept safe, was being cared for by you all.

This wasn’t my intent. I wasn’t even trying to get rid of the hiccups as I spoke to my phone in the dark. But by surrendering and trying to serve, the hiccups went away.

And I rested easy.