Tag Archives: dream

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Work dream

Last night I dream that I am back at work.

I get called to do an emergency surgery. I am a Family Practice Physician. I assisted in surgery, C-sections, and did minor repairs of lacerations (yeah, we don’t use small words like cut) and biopsy of skin lesions (lumps, right?). In the dream I do the surgery, but it worries me. I am not a surgeon. I talk to Dr. L. afterwards. He is a surgeon and has worked here for longer than me, and I’ve been here for 23 years. We get along well.

“I shouldn’t be in the surgical call schedule.” I say.

“Don’t you have the certificate for appendectomies?” he says. Now, that isn’t really a thing. My brain made it up.

“No.” I say.

“Oh.” he says. “I thought you did. Great job on that surgery. We need you.”

“But I am not a surgeon, I would need more training.” I say.

“Oh, we’ll figure it out.” he says. I am worried that I’ll be called for an appendectomy. Or something way worse.

I wake up with a very stiff neck. It has relaxed now, but clearly some part of me is not totally on board with work. I need to be careful what I am getting in to. I am not sure, what if I get pneumonia number five? We are short on physicians though. I can argue with myself very easily. Ok, ok, says the part of me that really wants to return to work: we won’t do appendectomies.

The head of our Legion says that some of his people wish I were working again. I really got along well with my veterans and liked them almost always. They could be really gruff and growly and I would growl back. Then they’d be cheerful. Another person at an outside dance said he missed visits with me and appreciated the time I took. Last night a third person asks how they will know if I start a Long Covid clinic. They have two friends who may have it.

I don’t know. I am mostly absent from medicine right now, but still doing my continuing medical education. I have about 30 hours on Long Covid now, which means I have a lot of strategies to improve things but I can’t cure it. May the research will get there eventually. I am maintaining all of the certifications: medical license, board certification, DEA, membership in the American Academy of Family Medicine. But I also listen to dreams.

For the RDP: absent.

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Comfortable with angles

I am thinking about monsters
That I am comfortable with the monsters
in my dreams
but terrified by the angels.
Though I type angles.

But I also dream that all the angels fall
all are made to fall
they fall down then back up
when they fall down they burn
if they fall here
burn in the atmosphere
then they are red or black and burnt
and we think they are devils: monsters.

If angels are monsters
and monsters are angels
and they go back and forth
and I type angles
because everyone makes mistakes
even angels
and to make something perfect
is an offense to the Beloved
because only the Beloved is perfect
and ineffable.

Still the angels.
I am afraid.
So was Mary, sore afraid.
Monsters are easy: at worst they can kill me
and they never have
in my dreams.
And they are sad and alone and weep.
I comfort them. Which makes them afraid,
because they are not used to being loved.
I wonder if I frighten them
like the angels frighten me.

And then I can understand
a little
of why the angels frighten me so much.
I too am not used
to feeling loved.

written September 13, 2023

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: bread winner. But I can’t eat gluten any more and my lungs are too vulnerable for the work I love. So how bread and how winner? Maybe the angels and angles and monsters will tell me.

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Comfortable with monsters

I am comfortable with the monsters in my dreams.

I dream of monsters howling and I go to them. They could be sick or hurt or need help! I must go to them! And the monsters are very noisy but they are babies. Abandoned and dirty and dark and hungry and cold.

This has nothing to do with my childhood. Do you believe me?

I have a pack and supplies in the dream. I carry the monsters up up into the light. I feed them and bathe them and diaper them and wrap each one in a blanket and hold them. They howl until they are too tired to howl and then they sulk. At first they do not know how to respond to kindness and love. But they learn and grow and are beautiful.

I am not comfortable with the angels.

I dream that all the stars start falling and then I see that they are angels. I am so frightened, why must they fall? I don’t want to be an angel and then I am falling and crying. The angels are at perfect peace with falling but I am not. I don’t understand, Beloved. Why do the angels fall?

I ask the Beloved over and over. My poems are questions. Why, Beloved, why?

The angels fall down and up, over and over. They are good then bad, or labeled bad, then labeled good.

Just like people.

The angels are seen as black or white. But I see them as black on white heaven or white on black heaven, it doesn’t matter. Do not let the color be a label. And after someone falls, they are burnt in the sky. They are seen as a devil or a monster!

Angels falling, fallen, monsters.

And I am here for the monsters. Who are angels, in disguise.

_______________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: disguise.

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Dream stealer

I am taking your dreams because you don’t want them.
You don’t want him. Your small child.
You let him out to play with me, for a while.
But you say you you are always happy.
You say things are perfect.
You say our friendship is forever.
Then you start to back away.
You take music first: I can’t sing along.
You stop teaching me your instrument.
You stop me from listening to practice.
You sing to me on my guitar
but you never listen.

You keep me from your friends.
You keep me from your family.
You don’t want to say
that you love me as a friend.

The connection dies as you hack parts away.

Only the beach is left.
Your small child plays and laughs with me
at the beach.
And that is gone too.

I am hurt. I block the connection for a year.

A year is gone.
You won’t come back.
You can’t come back.
I do not want you back.
But I open the connection.
I want your small child
and all the monsters you keep hidden.
Bears and monsters, come.
Come with the small child and play.

Is it unethical to steal a soul
if it is not loved?
If it is not listened to?
If it is trapped and frightened?

I am stealing your dreams because you don’t want them.
And I do.

___________________

I look for dream stealer myths. Not a succubus. Nor a dream weaver. Something else. Maybe something that is not textbook. Or a kitsune?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: textbook.

I took the photograph on North Beach yesterday.

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Perchance to dream

I have been dreaming regularly since mid-January, nightmares. The cause is my sleep apnea machine. I got it in December, but two days before I flew east to my son’s for Christmas. I did not take it with me. I delayed getting back for nine days to visit an ill friend in Michigan and help out. On January 11, I took the class on how to use the machine.

My initial “mask” was the “nasal pillow” one. I go to sleep by slowing my breathing and using the Zen Buddhist and Jon Kabat Zinn’s body scan to relax. However, if I slow my breathing, the CPAP will start to blow pressure when my breath out drops below a certain volume. Then I was breathing against pressure and it woke me up. Also I would sometimes open my mouth, which lets the air out and the machine instantly increases pressure and is much noisier.

I got another mask within ten days. This is a face mask. It did not have one strap around the head, but four. The hose is attached to the top of the head. The main pressure point is where the four straps meet right at the back of the skull.

The dreams started. Nightmares every single night. About being trapped and trying to escape. An octopus grabbing me by the skull. One dream about trying to rescue a man from a building that was under attack or going to blow up and he kept saying, “But I’m not READY. I have to PACK.” I’m arguing, “You can get more stuff! We have to go! We’ll get killed if we stay! Come on, I am here to rescue you.” He keeps looking for his stuff because he can’t believe that a 5 foot 4 female could actually be a heroine and there to rescue me. Dumb male. I wake up and laugh. Even men in my dreams have little respect for me. That is a pretty sad illustration of my lifetime experience with the other gender.

Anyhow, to have the insurance pay for the stupid sleep apnea machine, I needed 21 out of 30 days with more than 4 hours on the machine. And I have to do this within 3 months of getting the machine. I got it in December, remember? So I was motivated and hella grumpy with it. At least twice a night I would wake up from a nightmare and rip the darn thing off my head. The cats do not like it when it hisses.

I took to using it during naps too. Since I was NOT sleeping well on it, I was sleeping longer. Nine or ten hours a night, at least three or four OFF the machine. Pretty pathetic.

Last week I had my visit where I am blessed and the insurance will now pay for the machine. I begged a little to talk to the mask guy. They said no at first and then yes. He gave me another octopus headdress. This one also goes around the back of the skull, but the hose is hanging from the front. That means the weight is more in front.

It still took three or four days before I got to four hours on the new one. It works better and I am not dreaming about escape rooms twice a night. Phew!

The interview to have the machine paid for was pretty amusing. The insurance wants me to say I am sleeping better to qualify for the machine. I answered that I was sleeping longer. There are a bunch of questions. Mostly I could be positive except for the “are you waking up less?” “No, more.” “More? Why?” “Because the octopus has me by the head or I am dreaming I am trapped.” I had the nurse laughing at my answers, but I still qualified.

Anyhow, if I can invent a different mask that doesn’t feel like an octopus, I could probably be a gadzillionaire. I think I will look at some bondage stores, seems like they have various masks that could be adapted. Then they could do double duty and I will be a double gadzillionaire!

_______________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: dreams.

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On a bus

I am in a bus. The driver is a man and quiet. It is night and I can’t see much besides road. I am standing by him.

“You have strong emotions.” he says.

“I am so glad that I can be myself with you and not hide them.” I lean my cheek against the back of his right shoulder. He doesn’t answer but what I feel is acceptance.

I wake up. It was a bus but I don’t know what or who else was on it. I don’t know where it is going. I am worried that I did not have a seatbelt on and I am just standing in the front of the bus. Unrestrained. Unrestrained emotion?

Once a woman says to me, “Your emotions are too strong.”

I think, “My emotions are too strong for YOU. They are normal for ME.” I avoided any discussion of emotion with that person for two years.

The people in dreams are aspects of ourselves. The quiet man is an aspect of myself and he is driving the bus. Emotion riots around but is not driving. Life is rather like that bus. We don’t always know where we are going or what is next.

I have had a very medical January, working to help three other people. I talk to another friend yesterday. She says, “You are being called back to medicine.”

I frown at the ceiling since I am on the cell phone. “I guess so. I am thinking about how I want to do it. I don’t know yet.”

She is off on a trip for three weeks. “You’ll figure it out.”

And where will the bus take me next?

I wish I had an ambulance that unfolds into a clinic.

___________________

I had rather a grand time pulling out action figures and dolls from the basement to set up scenarios with the Barbie Ambulance. Here the baby has a facial rash. Probably 5th disease, parvovirus. This baby’s rash resolves when you wash her face with cold water. I am pleased that Barbie Doctor has a mask.

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silence

You are silent.

I try a little more but I am tired. I am tired of drama, trauma drama. I dream and dream and dream. I dream that my ex touches a live bat. The bat changes in my dream, from a tiny brown nose bat to a huge fox bat with fur and stripes. It is unconscious.

“Don’t touch it! You touched it! Now we have to take it to the Health Department!” I am eyeing the bat and thinking of throwing something over it. A container. It’s huge.

My ex laughs. “No we don’t.”

“Yes we do! Rabies! It could have rabies! If we don’t take it in, you’ll need rabies shots!” Poor bat, I think, it will be killed to test for rabies.

My ex keeps laughing. “I’m not going to be tested, I won’t have shots, and the bat is fine!”

“WHAT!” I say, “No, you could die!”

I wake up. What was that dream about? Oh. It’s about you, refusing to test for Covid after being exposed. You said you would hike with me. “Not if you won’t test,” I say, “I can’t afford to get Covid again, I can’t be around you for 15 days if you won’t test.”

And you go silent.

And I try a little more and I let go. You will have to break the silence if you plan to keep your promises. Will you or won’t you? I am supposed to trust you. But people say trust me, and then sometimes they are drunk, and lying, and you can’t trust them. “I will never hurt you,” is a lie. Try this instead: “I will try not to hurt you and I will listen if you feel hurt.” And change, maybe?

Maybe.

________________

Dreams are funny. Fox bats ARE the largest bats in the world, but they do not have stripes: https://allthatsinteresting.com/giant-golden-crowned-flying-fox.

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Embodying a dream

I wrote about the two dreams I had one night, with seven people. Two babies, a boy and a girl. Two professionals, a woman physician and a male policeman. Two rebels, a woman and a man, the man lying or at least misleading the rebel woman. The rebel woman trying to do something that she suddenly realizes is not important and is, in fact, foolish and dangerous. And a quiet woman.

I have been thinking about the quiet woman ever since. My Meyers-Briggs type in medical school came out INTJ, but we are not one thing or another. We have preferences, but we all have to use all the skills. I can be extroverted. I had to work on feeling, that was the really difficult one for me after a frightening childhood. I can pay attention to facts though I sweep them into the intuition very quickly. Medical school is facts and facts and facts, except then there are parts that turn out to change as science changes.

The eighth person is a quiet man. He is not present in the dream. I am thinking about him. I wonder if I will have another dream when I am ready.

I am attending some workshops on line for treating trauma. It is quite fascinating. They talk about working with clients who have aspects like my dream: a small child with trauma. A “fake adult”, aka “adaptive child”, with the tools that the child develops to survive in their childhood. Helping the “fake adult” recognize that some of coping tools may not be helpful or necessary any longer. First, they thank the “fake adult”, for protecting the traumatized child and for surviving at all and for not giving up. I think this is so important, to acknowledge that we have to thank that part of ourselves that did what it had to, that did what it could, to survive. And this can include things that we are ashamed of or fear that others would hate us for if found out. We had a temporary doctor at the hospital who described being a boat person escaping Vietnam at age 8. They were picked up by pirates. “We were glad to see the pirates, because we had run out of water. If the pirates had not picked us up, we would have died.” So there is perspective: death by dehydration or pirates? And she went from a refugee camp and then through medical school and became a physician. Survival and success and I hope that she is thriving.

I like it when a dream has such recognizable symbols. My now retired Unitarian Universalist minister says that we can sit with dreams for a time. What do the symbols mean to me? What is the dream telling me? My dream is in part telling me that I do not need to have the rebel woman lead: she can rest and let the quiet woman take over. And that I am very tired of rebel men who mislead me or run away. I woke up and thought, oh, yes, I see! I am tired of that and ready for change.

Change and transformation can happen throughout our lives, at any age. I welcome it.

Blessings and peace you.

___________________

The photograph is Sol Duc and Elwha enjoying doll bunkbeds. And acting like siblings do sometimes. And then they curl up together.

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pink sea

In my world with the dreamy pink sea
no humans at all, my world loves me
I wander and wonder at the beauty I see
I am safe and entirely free

Good night, pink sea.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: dream world.

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Dream travel

I time travel in dreams.

Two dreams last night. In one I am in a hospital and trying to finish up and go home, but there are two babies. I check and one is my daughter. I check the other and it is a boy. He has a label saying “Call police.” The story is that he is sent from a smaller hospital for some testing that I am not sure about and that the mother was supposed to pick him up. She has been discharged but has not picked him up. I feed him and my daughter, feeling anxious. Where are the nurses? Why is my daughter here? I will take her home, but I have to make provision for the boy first. I feel sorry for him, abandoned. Both babies are clean and alert and swaddled, but the nurses are not around. I wake up.

In the second dream, I am still married to my first husband/but it’s a more recent gentleman friend at the same time. We are in southeast asia. I want to go home but for some reason we have stuff, including skis. My daughter is in her 20s in this dream. We take the skis to a house. Right before we reach it, there are police nearby, having a shootout with someone. Gangsters. This worries me and my daughter/friend. My husband/the guy meet us there and he boasts that a rich friend lets him use the room in the house. “I can have it for a whole month.” I am unimpressed and don’t care. I want to go home. My daughter/or it’s a woman friend and I go back. I think that my husband/guy is getting the car, but I hear his voice. He is singing in a karaoke bar. It is a very trashy glittery place and he loves it. I do not like the lounge style of singing and I decide to get the car myself and with my daughter/friend, get out of there. I hear my husband/guy making excuses and calling after us, but I am leaving. He lies to me and he excludes me, he wants to be the center of attention with his rich friends and when he sings, he’s afraid I would take attention away from him.

My daughter/friend and I retrace towards the building where the skis are. We have to walk on the edge of a massive fountain, with a cliff on one side. We are in a city. I think that we are retracing but then we come out into an open area. There is a police car parked there. I know we are visible, with a full moon reflecting off the fountain pool, so I wave with no concern. Just tourists here. I study the edge of the fountain to see if we could go in the water and climb to the next section, but it is not safe. I can’t tell how deep it is nor how fast the current. We will have to backtrack. The city is beautiful, with a giant lion building on the skyline and buildings with the Thai curved rooftops stacked up. It is gorgeous. Suddenly the other person is my friend and I worry: where is my daughter, where is the baby? I wake up.

My daughter is in her twenties now, not a baby, but in the dream she was a baby and then later in her twenties. When I wake I think, who cares about the stupid skis? Get out of there and leave the stuff. The babies are most important.

The first dream has three people. The second has four, because I can see the policeman. All the people are aspects of myself. My husband who is my ex now/a recent gentleman friend and then a male southeast asian policeman, though the police car is one of the large blue SUV style ones that I see at home. All of these complicate elements. Both my children have been to Thailand but I have not. Dreams are definitely time travel for me.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: time travel.