Insomnia

It's after four and I can't sleep.  In fairness, I'm usually just getting home from work around now, so it's not unusual for me to be up, but I only slept about five hours last night.  I thought I'd be winding down early.  Frankly, I'm exhausted.

I've started having skin reactions to my radiation treatments.  I've got little blisters on my chest and under my arm.  Some of the blisters have broken and have turned to scabs.  Lovely, huh?  Yesterday, when I woke up, there were welts on my skin that looked like I'd been scratching in my sleep.  The blisters do itch.  I was thinking I might have to sleep wearing mittens or something.  I had visions of having Walker tape oven mitts to my hands like the "Friends" episode where Phoebe had chicken pox.

The doctor gave me a prescription for a burn cream compound, which I carry around in my purse and smear on when the pain starts to get to me.  Most of the time, my skin doesn't hurt much but then it comes out of nowhere. The cream has a topical pain reliever.  It helps, but it doesn't last more than an hour or two.  I'm not supposed to use it more than three times a day so I wait until I really need it.

Around midnight, I was dozing off at my desk so I went to bed and turned on the TV.  There were all these holiday themed shows on.  I started thinking about last year at this time, how we lost my aunt to cancer so suddenly, right between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and of course I started thinking, what if.....what if the radiation doesn't work, what if it works but the cancer comes back anyway, what if the doctors missed something, what if I made a mistake passing on the chemo, what if this is my last Christmas and I don't even know it.....I'm sure it's normal to go through thoughts like this, I just don't like it.  I'd much rather think positively.  I don't know how to turn off my mind.