Dark Waters: a nightmarish dream, a nightmarish migraine

My wife’s migraines

My wife is prone to migraines. With the moving, and the stress, she has been having more of them. She has some very strong meds, which usually knock her out, leaving her motionless on the bed for an hour or more, but then the worst of the migraine passes.

Suddenly, however, out of nowhere she has an extremely bad migraine three days ago. She needed to go to the hospital for it. Because I was at work, friends took her. When a nurse asked her, “out of ten, how much does it hurt?” She answered, “A nine.”

My wife is a tough woman, who has experienced a lot of pain, including giving birth to five children and having countless migraines. She is not prone to dramatics. If she says she was feeling that much pain, then she was. 

The migraine left when they gave her some meds by IV, some scalene to rehydrate, and the equivalent of four of her powerful meds. Once home, however, it started coming back. She needed to take four more to keep it at bay. Then later, four more, and then one more dose. 

Fortunately, I was off work and able to help. It was a terrible time, a terrible migraine. 

A terrible, and a strange migraine. She had not been tired, had not been around perfume or any of the normal triggers. It just came out of nowhere, with four times the intensity of anything she has experienced before. And she has experienced a lot.

What is always surprising to me about her migraines is that when they passs, they pass. She is tired, but the dark storm is gone from her body. She is her happy, caring self. And life can go on again.

As we were talking in the evening two nights ago, we got to talking about how our journey has changed us. She said — and I agree — that it will always be hard to be part of ministry, because missions is so important. But we have seen such a dark side of it, it will be hard to ship off young couples to…what? Have no support, and ruin their lives and their marriages? To be in terrifying places, with idealized expectations, and no real plan if disaster strikes? And for what? Often, the church is stronger there than it is here, or the field is mismanaged, and the missionaries arrive to find that they are not even needed, and end up shuffling paperwork for years before returning. That was our story. It is a very common story.

Another thing that she said she can’t believe in anymore is being opposed to physician assisted suicide. “Like, if someone is really really suffering — isn’t it just cruel to make them keep going through that?” We talked more about that. I can’t say that I totally agree with her, but I understand her point. “Like…if I had to keep going through the pain of those migraines over and over. That would just be cruel. Wouldn’t it be better to just let someone die?”

“You mean someone who is terminally ill already?”

“Well, yes, but even if they weren’t. If their life was only pain…wouldn’t it be better to let them have another option?”

Our conversation bothered me.

That night I had another symbolic dream. I did not write it down at the time, because it is not related to my parents, and so did not seem part of this journey. But now it seems important enough to write down.

Much of the dream is now gone, but I remember that we were on a boat. We were crossing an ocean with a lot of other people along as well. There had been a number of storms, which shook us around and made us all sick. Nobody liked that. Then the ship’s captain (or scientist?) came with some very grave news. There was a “big” one coming.

He explained that storms were caused by a combination of seismic activity, and atmospheric activity. This time, there was no seismic activity…so his readings say that there must be lots of atmospheric activity. In other words, a really big storm.

The next image that I remember was my wife swimming. She was in a dark cove, in dark waters, in a storm. The land was in sight, but too far to swim to. She just had to keep swimming and swimming. 

But I just had this overwhelming sense that she did not want to swim anymore. These words are painful to write.

The dream was so vivid that I talked with her in the morning. “If you got really sick, would you keep fighting? Would you try to push through…for us? For me?”

She said she could imagine being in a place where she would want to die. But for the sake of our children, she would fight through. “I am a fighter,” she said, and I know that that is true.

In a previous dream, I talked about the “suicide switch” which seems like it may be “tripped” through traumatic experiences. I feel like whatever her conscious mind may think, her subconscious mind is still struggling with life. Her inner child has been through so much pain and trauma — especially with Africa, but also along our missions journey — that it is not entirely sure that it wants to live. That is what I fear, anyway. 

With my own experience with PTSD, I know what it is like to have parts of the brain stuck in crisis mode, and to have parts of me feeling like they don’t want to live, even if the conscious parts of me are happy and loving life.

We talked about her getting more counselling. Especially, more hypnotherapy to try to change what is going on inside. Often, when the conversation goes this way she says, “You can’t fix me,” and I know that is true so I back off. This time, she said, “I am taking a lot of counselling…I am working on getting better.” I know that is true, and that reassured me. I asked if she would do another session of hypnotherapy, and she said that she felt that she had already had a great session, and didn’t need another one. “You can’t take my words seriously right now,” she said, “when I have a migraine…maybe I say things I don’t mean. But I am well now. This is me!”

But what if you get really sick, and are like that for a long time. What will you say? What will your inner child say? Will you fight? Will you fight hard enough…for me?

I told her that it felt “weird” for me. I trusted her with so much of my heart — and now I gave her even more. My inner child was dizzy thinking of living without a mom, and then it attached all of that need for comfort to my wife. What would we do if she left us? What would we do?

All of yesterday passed without a migraine. 

Then, just this morning, she got up to help one of the children and was suddenly hit with a wall of nausea and hot/cold flashes. Luckily I am home. What will she do when this happens if I am at work?

I helped our child, and gave her four meds. 

But she still moaned and writhed in bed, while I prayed helplessly next to her. 

“I’m scared,” she whispered.

“Scared of what?”

“What…is happening to me?”

We both knew what she meant. Her sister had headaches before they found her cancer. 

“I’ll go to the doctor in the morning.”

She is resting now. I am just shaken. 

God, this is not right. This is so not right. Could it be? Could it really be cancer? At 36, with five children? Right now, right here?

“I have brought you here to suffer, so that the sufferings will not be multiplied.”

It is what she had secretly feared. That God was bringing us to our hometown, before something really terrible happened. So that we could be sick among friends. 

I told her not to think that way. Maybe God has good for us. Maybe He just wants us here so that we can rest, and be at peace. Sometimes, God only wants good for His children.

But now…maybe…she was right.

We took a stress test five years ago. It said we were both “off the scales” for stress, based on what we had been through. We were something like three times the maximum number on the stress scale. It said, “people with this level of stress usually develop diabetes, cancer, or some other type of major disease within five years.” The stress levels have not really come down much for us since then…especially not for her.

If she has the genetic marker, it would be something that would prevent her body from detecting and fighting micro-cancers. So they are allowed to grow. “Normal woman have about a 15% chance of getting breast cancer in their lifetimes,” she had read, “but with this gene, the chances are 40%.” 

She said that news just made her want to give up. 

Between stress, and genetics, it suddenly feels terrifyingly possible that she is sick.

And what to think, what to do about her mind? 

“What is life? You live, you suffer…why? To bring more children into the world to live and suffer? It makes no sense.” She has said that a lot to me, often while sick.

“The thoughts are the hardest, when I am sick,” she told me.

They are hard for me to hear, imagine how hard they are for her to think!

“God, this can’t be. This can’t be! Not right now! Let my wife get healthy first. She can’t handle this right now. Her mind isn’t right. Her spirit isn’t healed up yet. This will take her out if she gets it now. She needs to heal up emotionally. Her inner child has been so scared: it needs to be reassured that life is worth living. Otherwise, it will not be on her side. Otherwise, she may not be able to win this fight. Dear God, oh dear God, please please let this not be happening…”

“I will go to the doctor in the morning.”

She is resting now. And so we will wait and see…

It is selfish, but I also fear for myself. I fear for being left behind. Yes, I fear raising five children on my own. But more than that, I fear losing her. I trusted so much of my heart to her. What would I do without her?

This whole journey makes me so mad at the church, and at missions. It seems to me that if she has cancer, it will be as a result of all of the stress we were under for so long. Why do they do that to people? Place expectations on them from their childhood that they should run off and have these missionary adventures? And when they grow up and try, they find out that it’s not like that, and they nearly kill themselves trying to live up to the expectations? 

What church could I ever pastor? I feel closer to God, but further from religion than I ever have.

These thoughts are incredibly selfish. But I suppose a career is a lifetime. It’s what life is supposed to, “be about,” isn’t it? And right now, I just don’t see how I could pastor a church, and send off missionaries to their doom. I’m fuckin’ done!

Religion has taken so much from us. 

God, be our strength. We have no life, and no future apart from you. 

Give us peace, amen.