Lost my mind on chemo, real living nightmares

I am posting currently with a group doing chemo in my same time frame, and made a few posts in other places.  I have run into a very scary problem and would like to hear if anyone else has had this happen to them.  Below these first couple paragraphs is a summary of my cancer and treatments, but I wanted to start talking about losing my mind.  I have just spent the entire morning associating everything I do, see, or think with a portion or piece of a nightmare from somewhere ago, and I don't undertand why I feel like I'm experiencing an awake and dreaming state of strangeness.  It's like having a dejavu experience for six hours straight, which my understanding comes from not enough sleep.  I have been taking a sleepy antinausea, phenergen, for last two nights, just to break the cycle of six straight nights of nightmares and a new symptom of sore feet.  And while I finally got sleep for two nights, this morning I was truly unnerved by pure insanity taking over my whole sense of well-being, scaring the daylights out of me, and I can't make it stop. 

I have had plenty of mental problems, depression, anxiety, panic, been thru drug-induced hallucinations in hippie days, had 105-degree pneumonia in hospital on Xmas Day, and got so wierded out by a bad psych counselor when I was around 30 (I'm 60 now), that I started seeing in 1-dimension where people looked like cut-out cards, but THIS, this awake dreaming state is one of the most disturbing mind games I've ever had to play.  Aside from it just being chemo poisoning side effect, the only other thing I can figure is I bought some Boost type vitamin shake with Glucerin or something in it for diabetics (I'm not diabetic, but sometimes want some vits, and this brand I've drank it before and liked it) and I drank it about when the second chemo came around and bit me in the behind and opened up what wound up being a whole week of nightmares. 

My situation is, when I got breast cancer, I was unable to exercise like I used to, didn't eat right because I can't cook anymore, and I'm 70 pounds overweight.  I have Invasive Ductal Carcinoma, and I just found out instead of having just one large growth (no one has ever officially gone over my mammograms), an ultrasound showed I have three approx 2.5cm growths and then an unidentified one, which I assume is one I happened to see at my regular woman's doc mammogram offices, and I saw my name on a mammogram as we discussed other things, and I asked this really good tech is this mine and is this a picture taken from above, and the lady who had done my pictures said yes.  It looked about 5cm, so I assume this is the unidentified one found on ultrasound, and it is located just behind my nipple part.  So, their plan is give me ACT treatment, followed each time with a Neulesta shot, with AC x4 every two weeks, and T x12 every week, and THEN do the surgery, following which I may have Rads and probably take a Pill for a couple years.  There has been some lymph node enlargement in various places in my breast.  My doc calls it a very invasive type of cancer with an inflammatory presentation (my boob was hard, swollen, painful, and had a red mark on the skin).  It is described as Grade 3.

Okay.  So, I finished my second round of AC Thursday before last.  The first round, I had a weekend of nightmares, fever, sweating, terrible body aches, woke up every couple hours, got up one morning at 3am.  BUT after four days, I started to improve a couple inches per day, until by about Day 11, I felt almost normal and could go out of the house.  Second round, I was expecting the same thing, and thru the weekend, it was just like before, except I didn't have to wake up and get out of bed in the middle of the night.  Also, a new side effect, I had very painful feet.  But here is where I began to lose my mind:

I thought I was coming out of the worst few days, just like the first chemo, but WHAM, I felt exactly like I had just gotten a second chemo, was knocked back really hard for another three days, lots of nightmares (I hardly ever dream), really painful body and feet, fevers, lotsa misery.  So, I wake up yesterday and notice my aches aren't as bad, just had a trace of a nightmare before I woke up from solid sleep, and thought I might make it.  But last night I woke up, coughing up blood.  I finally decided it was probably coming out of my stomach, as it has been bothering me a lot this time, but did worry me as far as a lung problem, so am waiting to see if it happens again.

So, when I finally woke up this morning, most of pain is gone, think maybe I'm done with the worst, but... ALL MORNING LONG, nonstop, everything I do, everything I read, everything I think... it all seems connected with some dream I've had years ago, or recently, or this kind of dejavu experience, and I almost freaked out about an hour ago!!!  I am awake but dreaming?!?  What is this?!?  Why am I having double chemo side effects that last twice as long as last time? 

That is what I am asking about, has anyone else had this wierd awake dreaming association with everything I'm doing?!?  I mean, talk about madness!!  I have had mental issues in the past, but mostly depression, anxiety, panic disorder, all coming from a bad car accident that has given me lifelong back pain from fracturing it in three places and has finally disabled me about five years ago (I'm 60 now).

The only thing I could think to do when I began to cry about an hour ago is, take my tranquilizer, my usual pain pill and nerve pain pill, eat fruit and protein and drink milk, drink water, breathe deeply, and right now, as I've been writing this, that dream state thing seems to be lifting for longer periods of time.  But we shall see!  I will know more as the day progresses.  But I figure an entire morning of six hours of awake dreaming is REALLY UNNERVING.

I am so glad to get this off my chest.  I have posted, as I said, in another forum where a few days ago I burst in midweek and said I was getting slammed a second time from the same second chemo, and I was in abject misery, inconsolable.  I went on and on about how I don't know enough about my cancer, etc.  Right after that post, my breast surgeon's doc assistant called me to give me some more results, and I told her I was so glad she called becuz this second chemo was all goofed up.  She really had nothing to offer, so I'm going to make an appointment to see my real breast surgeon just before I begin chemo three.  Maybe he can make some changes in my meds or something, because I cannot MAKE IT if I were to keep having these awake nightmare glimpses day after miserable day. 

I keep thinking they gotta stop this chemo before it drives me mad, or at least make it tolerable with drug corrections and maybe lowering dose or WHATEVER, and I'm seriously thinking of asking doc to forgettabout the Taxol coming up for twelve weeks and just PLEEEEZ do a simple mastectomy and get all this crap outta me.  They can send in a cleanup chemo crew of mild toxins for a while if they want, even a few rads (I will NOT let them radiated me dozens of times the way some girls have had to go thru), but then I worry all the cancer won't be killed and the previous chemo and the upcoming surgery will be for naught, which would be an even worse scenario. 

AND THEN (will she ever shut up?) I find out from doc assistant in that call this week, that the CAT scans showed I had a tumor on one of my ovaries.  Now, get this, my mother's mother died of ovarian cancer.  Mother had complete hysterectomy long before the age that her mother died, so we'll never know what she might have had happen.  But what I'm thinking now is, WHAT IF this very wierd breast cancer that I don't know how come I got, seems so out of place, WHAT IF it has come from that ovary, which I'm going to ask my breast surgeon to remove when he does my mastectomy and send the whole ovary and cyst to the lab.  I mean, WHAT IF?  Wouldn't the biopsy have shown that my breast cancer did not originate elsewhere? 

Look, I live in a town where health care is excellent, Trauma Two medical center, they got a whole woman's cancer center all set up, three floors, skylights, very long "avenues" of offices remiscent of an airport, beautiful scenery out of a chemo room's windows.  But I'm telling you, I really feel like I'm just one more patient in a typical majority treatment plan factory, robots fixing my parts like building a car, and I WANNA GET OFF THIS BUS!!!  GG