Sign from God?

I had a strange vision last night - a vision rather than a dream, since I was awake.

I saw a stack of papers - documents, research papers, articles - on a little table next to my bed. (The little table was real, the stack of papers was not.) The pile of papers was about one meter high. It wasn't a neatly stacked pile of papers with the sheets nicely lined up at the edges. Instead, it was quite messy and chaotic looking, with corners sticking out here and there.

The image and background were in black-and-white, but there were three sheets of paper in the pile that stood out because they were purple - one near the top of the stack, one in the middle, and one near the bottom. These three purple documents were scientific articles about a drug called Femara, which has recently been in the news because new research has shown that the drug can cut the risk of breast cancer returning by 61 percent.

I should put this vision into context. I'm currently on my fourth round of chemotherapy since I was first diagnosed just over two years ago. After the first course, I was cancer-free for ten months, or so I thought. Then I had a recurrence (chest wall, lungs, sternum) and began my second round of chemo with a new set of drugs.

After four months on this new chemo regime, we found my cancer had spread to my liver. That led to my third round of chemo with yet another set of drugs. After just one month of this round, we discovered that the cancer had spread to my brain and further into my liver, lungs, and bones. Now we're trying out a fourth set of drugs, but we don't know whether it's working or not because it's too soon to tell.

This is the dilemma I'm in now: It might take up to two months to know whether or not this new chemo regimen is working, but if it's NOT working, then the cancer could get me during that time. So while we're in the process of figuring out what might keep me alive a little longer, I could die.

You can see why I and my network of friends have been trolling the Internet for the past few weeks looking for information on the various chemo drugs out there. I have piles of research at home, hence, this vision I had. The chaotic and disorganized state of the pile of papers in my vision reflects the confusion and mess of all the research I've been wading through.

Maybe this vision is telling me that in the midst of all that mess lies the answer to my cure: the three purple papers about Femara. Maybe this is God's way of telling me that Femara is the drug that will save me. (Maybe God doesn't know that PINK is the color of breast cancer, not purple.)

Luckily, I have enough sense not to believe in visions. Femara is a drug that works for breast cancer tumors that are hormone-receptor-positive. My cancer is hormone-receptor-negative. Think how dangerous it would be if I foolishly ignored this fact and went along with my vision and switched to Femara. I doubt any doctor would allow it anyway.

So much for visions and signs from God. You can see why, if I had a vision of an old man in a white beard and flowing robe, I'd be more likely to believe it was Colonel Sanders in pajamas than believe it was God.