Last month, my husband and I attended the first performance of the season of the Alberta Ballet, the classical ballet "Don Quixote."

Our regional ballet company put on quite an ambitious production, with Don Quixote riding a live horse onto the stage, which to me was a typically western gesture.

The ballet reminded me that I wanted to read the novel "Don Quixote" because the phrase ‘tilting at windmills’ had lodged in my brain, and I thought it might have some relevance to my myeloma journey. I wanted to go to the source of the phrase, which I knew was from "Don Quixote."

This novel was written (in Spanish) in two volumes, in 1605 and 1615, by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.

The novel tells the story of Alonso Quixano, a Spanish nobleman who reads so many novels about chivalry that he becomes delusional and decides to revive chivalry under the name Don Quixote. He sets out, ac­compa­nied by his friend Sancho Panza, on what he thinks are chivalric quests, during which he mis­un­der­stands many ordinary people and scenes as being part of his chivalric dreams.

In what I think is the most famous scene in the novel and the origin of the phrase ‘tilting at windmills,’ Quixote encounters a field of almost 40 windmills on a wide plain. He mistakes their revolving sails used to catch the wind for the arms of giants, and attacks them while riding on his horse, using his lance.

I think I have been ‘tilting at windmills’ at times in the last five years since my myeloma diag­nosis. What I may have mistaken for menacing giants were probably only incidents that medical science can now manage.

I became somewhat delusional for a time when I was taking dexamethasone ^[1] (Decadron). For example, I mistook the hooting of owls for a visitation by an ancient Roman goddess. I was adamant that the wearing the semi-precious stone turquoise in jewelry had healing powers.

For a while after diagnosis, I was ‘tilting at’ another giant in my mind. I was afraid I would not survive very long because the information and survival statistics I found on the Internet and in books were out­dated. Whereas I know of people who did not survive very long even a decade ago, we now have better treat­ments available that give many of us more than a ‘fighting chance’ to survive longer.

At the time of my diagnosis five years ago, Velcade ^[2] (bortezomib) and Revlimid ^[3] (lenalidomide) had been re­cently approved for use here in Alberta (Revlimid actually was not available until six months after my diag­nosis). I received and benefited from both drugs, and of course the literature I was reading did not include the extended survival associated with these drugs. It was only as time went on that I fully realized just how fortunate I was to have received these new drugs. I am less fearful now than I initially was about my survival, and of course I am grateful be alive five years after my diagnosis.

Another example of a windmill in my mind was the fear of never being able to hike or ride a bike again, after back injuries suffered due to the myeloma. My husband and I had lunch at a myeloma patient education conference with a specialist from the Mayo Clinic back in 2009, right after my diagnosis. He assured me that I would be back on my feet walking and riding my bike again. This was hard for me to believe at the time, but he was accurate in his predictions.

Just as there were four vanes on medieval windmills, a fourth delusional fear I had was that of dying alone and abandoned. Although this seems somewhat silly to me now, at the time it was a real enough terror. It wasn’t until I realized that I am supported emotionally by a large circle of family and friends, and that also there is a system for palliative care which would help me if I became terminally ill with myeloma, that I relaxed a bit about that fear.

Your mind can play tricks on you, especially when you feel isolated, in pain, and fearful of the future.  As you probably can confirm, most fears turn out to be delusional.

The Merriam Webster dictionary defines ‘quixotic’ as ‘hopeful or romantic in a way that is not practical.’

It’s sometimes difficult to strike a balance between being overly hopeful or optimistic, as Don Quixote was, and recognizing that some of the windmills you encounter are just figments of your imagination.

That, to me, is especially true when it comes to dealing with an illness such as multiple myeloma, which is generally incurable, but treatable.

You wouldn't want to become an ‘incurable romantic’ and assume that a cure is imminent. At the same time, you shouldn’t fear the vanes of the windmills so much that they ruin your present day life.

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The quotation for this month is an excerpt from Don Quixote: “Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”