In My Dreams

My health often intrudes in my dreams. Most notably, for decades now, nocturnal asthma will trigger dreams of suffocation, strangulation and drowning.



Last week, when the asthma was not well controlled? I didn't worry too much because, although I woke up tight and unable to 'pinch an inch', I didn't have any dreams. Which told me I was breathing okay.



I just took the albuterol inhaler every morning and before exercise until I stopped waking up so tight. Easy.



A few years ago there were the nightmares of heart attacks due to a benign sinus arrhythmia jacked up on caffeine and new baby sleep deprivation. Those dreams scared the bejeezus out of me since they featured angry ER staff screaming I was going to die.



I would wake up from those dreams and have to talk myself out of calling 911. They were that frightening. My heart jerking around like an over-enthusiastic puppy on a short leash didn't help.



Now the gallbladder is getting in on the action. The first night, it simply woke me up by rattling my ribcage. I rolled over to take the pressure off and that was it.



Then last night. Whoa. There were dreams of appendicitis and an abdominal aortic dissection surgery. On an UFO, no less. When I woke up, the pseudo appendicitis pain was there, explaining the dream. Although I'm still confused on the UFO bit.



In a recent issue of Oprah magazine focusing on intuition, there was a profile of a woman who discovered her colon cancer because of her dreams. She had intensely disturbing dreams for weeks, and kept going to her doctor, saying something was wrong. The doctor blew her off, citing impeccable physical results. So, the next time, she had the dream, she begged it for more information.



"Go deeper," the dream told her.



When she woke up, she asked her doc where the deepest part of the body was.



"Your colon."



And that's how she had a colonoscopy and discovered a pretty serious colon cancer that would have killed her without the impetus of her dreams.



My dreams are not that exciting (thankfully), but the story illustrates their power. The connection of our health to our subconscious.



However, me personally? I would not complain if my body left me alone in my dreams. It would be nice to have a safe haven.

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Dreaming of Cancer

The woman asked if I dreamed about cancer. She does. She is four years younger than I am, was diagnosed with the same stage (2A--the A makes it seem so tender, like the AA in one's first bra size) about a year behind me. She had chemo only four times instead of eight, and she had reconstructive surgery that started when the mastectomy was done. She had short curly hair and said she had terrible night sweats. And she dreamt a lot about cancer.

I never have. I have recurring dreams about failing to reach someone on a telephone. There are troubles with the buttons, I can never get the right numbers punched in. I have dreamed for years about having to put something large and opaque on my eye--like a leaf or a rock. I think this comes from my unconscious being freaked out by the thought of putting contacts on my eyeballs lo these many years. I dream about France and Houston and Eastern Europe. But I never dream about cancer.

Whenever someone says they've dreamed about me, I always ask: What was I wearing? In John Sayles' movie Passion Fish, the main character, who is paraplegic after an accident, dreams of being able to use her legs. I've never asked B, who has MS, if he dreams of walking and running. He probably does. There's an anecdote in Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search For Meaning. He tells of being in Auschwitz and hearing another prisoner cry out in his sleep. He wonders which would be more painful: to let the man continue his nightmare, or to wake the man up so that he could return to reality, in an extermination camp.

I wrote down my dreams for decades. When I was packing up this summer before moving, I threw files of them away. They were boring. I didn't want to re-read them. I didn't want to re-create those images in my head, those pieces of not-reality that would crowd out memories of things I really experienced. I know that Freud called dreams the royal road to the unconscious. I know that I threw out a written record of my unconscious. But I'm tired of analyzing. I've analyzed myself to the tune of $40 and $50 and $80 an hour while sitting on couch after couch with boxes of Kleenex close at hand. Once I even got health insurance to reimburse me for an hour of re-birthing. I have many faults and most of them are the same ones I've always had. I'm lazy and undisciplined and insecure and defensive and self-conscious. Prozac and its brethren got rid of the persistent lump in my throat. And for that I am grateful. Those pills have have also scraped away at my memory and my word-retrieval functions, but that is another story.

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