I dreamed that I was living in an apartment building that had balconies that ran the entire length of the building, with dividers between each unit. I was inside when I heard meowing outside on my balcony. I looked and there was a kitten in very poor health. When I got her to come to me, she stopped meowing and settled to rest in my arms.
Somehow, in the way things happen in dreams, she came with a piece of cloth to wrap her up in and note that said her insides (i.e. intestines) were all twisted up. Her belly was swollen and I could feel a lump roughly the size and shape of a Vienna sausage. Her legs were swollen too and, for some reason, I took this to mean her kidneys were failing.
The balcony dividers didn’t reach all the way to the floor; there was enough room for a kitten to crawl under. My first impulse was to knock on my neighbors’ doors to see who she belonged to but then I realized that if they cared about her, they wouldn’t have let her suffer like this.
I knew she had to get to a vet right away but I had two pets (in my dream) that had been there recently and those visits had pretty much eaten up whatever spare funds I had had. Still, I knew I had to take her and that the most humane thing to do would be to put her to sleep to end her suffering.
I didn’t get out of the apartment before I awoke but toward the end I had the thought that maybe someone threw her from an upper balcony hoping she’d land on a lower one or, if she didn’t, hey, there’s trees and bushes on the ground to hide her as she lay dying.
I told you it was a very sad dream. I’m choked up right now feeling sad for a kitten that isn’t real.
As I was writing this, I was wondering what the dream meant. Probably nothing. Dreams are just dreams, seemingly with wills of their own. (Though, yes, I know about lucid dreaming and how you can train yourself to control them.) Then I got to thinking: I got a letter from my clinic yesterday saying they’d set me up to get a pelvic x-ray and a vaginal probe this Thursday. Apparently my last pap smear, done nearly a month ago, had turned up something not right. I did have an follow-up appointment to see my doctor but things kept coming up and I kept postponing it, figuring if there was something wrong, she would call me or have the receptionist flag my file so she could tell me to get in there if I called.
Though I’ve decided not to worry about it until more is known, maybe my subconscious has other ideas. Maybe the kitten in the dream is me.
That really brought a lump to my throat the first and second time I thought it.
But intellectually and intuitively, I don’t know. I did go to my doctor because my female plumbing had been very irregular all of December and half of January. There were many days of light to heavy spotting, and more period-like days than there should have been, with days of nothing sprinkled between. I’d had hyperplasia before and figured I had it again. Finally, when I saw my doctor for the pap smear, things had settled down and I’d had several days of nothing.
Or so I thought. My doctor said that there was still a tiny bit of blood in there and that it might affect the results, which maybe it did. She also said that I probably didn’t have hyperplasia because my innards didn’t feel swollen. (There’s that word. Oh my.) Also, I’m about due for menopause to come on. She thought what I had been experiencing might have to do with perimenopause.
Since then, my cycle has returned to normal. No problems at all.
Still, my sister was diagnosed with uterine cancer, so there’s that to think about. But she’s been in remission for over three years now and is doing quite well. If I have it too, there’s no reason to doubt I won’t do any better.
So anyway, that’s what’s on my mind tonight. On the brighter side, the results of my blood fasting test came back and everything is as normal as could be. TikkiDad tends to worry that I’m diabetic because he thinks I drink a lot more liquids than I really do but I showed him! Now, if I could get him to worry about his own health and take care of that cough of his.