Dreams..

[Phil M]

Has anyone else experienced very strange dreams since DX? I sure have, ans almost all of them are about my past, and include people I haven't seen in many years. Some of my dreams are about things that I would never think about while being awake (Way out there!). If you know what I mean!

 

[hopeful warrior]

Phil~ my husband agrees with you. He chuckled when I read him your post and immediately said he knows where you are coming from. Ah, dreams. They can be a trip in themselves, can't they?

 

[irismarie]

Yep, I dream enormous epic dreams. Very much about my parents, dead for 30 years now..........;;
tho I think I may be missing out on something here;-)

 

[Phil M]

tho I think I may be missing out on something here;-)

What? Dreaming about me? :mrgreen:

 

[irismarie]

Heeheehee...:-D

 

[Ladyinn]

Yep! My dreams are now in vivid technicolor and filled with people from various stages in my life. Strange part is that many have never met one another but in my dreams they seem to be friends. I have always dreamed but never in such brilliant colors and never with so many familiar faces and places.

 

[dixie]

Over the last week or so I also have has very vivid dreams, relating to the past. Funny thing is I can remember every thing about the dreams the next morning and days later.

 

[sadiemae]

Oh boy, this is so true with Les. Vivid is the term the doctor used when we asked him about it a week after the DX. We thought it was from the Zanax, which causes vivid dreams, but maybe it is not from the drugs. HUGS Lori

 

[pepsiman]

I'm not an ALS patient but I used to always dream like you describe Phil. Since Liz passed, not so much. In fact I hardly ever remember my dreams now. I miss them, they were so very interesting, epic as irismarie said. I hope they come back someday.

Liz never remembered dreaming, even after her diagnosis, as far as I know. Only when she was taking Chantix to quit smoking did she remember having those vivid dreams.

Dick

 

[indigosd]

I USE to have those incredible Technicolor epic dream journey's! I am soooo sleep deprived now that if I do dream I do not remember it at all. Web spends most of the night coughing, choking and gasping so needless to say, I do not sleep very well. I spend most of the night with one ear open all the time and then turning him on his side to open his airway! He sleeps on his back and will not sleep on his side! Supposedly his PFT's show that he is still having good respiratory status but....oh what to do... I am going to ask him if he is dreaming at night. I know that he seldom dreamt or remembered his dreams prior to ALS. Very interesting!

 

[Ladyinn]

Not sure if this dream belongs on this thread or on the paranormal.....

From the time I got married I dreamed of a big old house with lots and lots and lots of rooms. The rooms were not always finished but at various points would become finished. Just as I thought the house was completely finished - there would be a hidden room that appeared and filled with cobwebs, dirt, and garbage. Then, in my dream, we would begin refinishing and refurbishing .... Now, during my married life, we moved often, so I always associated the dream and discovery of a new room with a move.

After moving here, my husband fell ill and my dreams stopped. Like Kay Marie, I was too sleep deprived to dream.

A week after my husband's memorial service I dreamed of the house again. I was conducting a tour and showing off the rooms. The rooms were filled with people - people from my childhood, my teenage years, college, and our married life. It was like a huge cocktail party with laughter and fancy clothes. The house was beautiful - decorated with the best of the best furnishings, candles and fresh flowers. As I approached the last room the one that was undone in my last dream (years before) I opened the door to find a man who I did not know in the bed. He smiled at my embarassment as I backed out of the room all flustered. And he called me by name and told me he would see me again.

I never had the dream again. But a year ago, I started going out with a new man who had been a guest at my B&B for the past two years when he was conducting business at the School of Mines. And, I began dreaming again. This time there was no house and no unfinished rooms. Instead my dream is outside in the green meadows or on a flat rock in a beautiful mountain stream or flying thru the air and feeling movement where I no longer have movement when awake. Last night my late husband was in the dream and he told me how happy he is and how pleased he is to see me enjoying life again. He told me not to hurry and to enjoy the moment - he said I earned it.

Wow - I believe the house dream was my life as it was with my husband and the last dream, with all the rooms finished, was the end of that life. The new dream is my new life - free to enjoy the pleasures around me now - without the work of creating or working as hard. Today I feel joy and a sense of peace.

Okay - call me crazy but I believe our dreams help us sort emotions out and that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Diane

 

[t34gib]

I have always had very vivid and wierd dreams and have thought about asking this of others. But since this disease they have increased and involve people I have known throughout my life. Last night i dreamt that my uncle sent my mother (who has passed) old furniture that had belonged to her mother and father and everything that was in the dressers and chests was like it was when I was a child. I remember discussing all the things with my mother and how I remembered all these things from when I was a child. And then I saw my grandmother and it was so real. I hugged her and my mother and I could feel them and yet at the same time in the dream I knew they were gone. When I woke up I wanted to go back to sleep so i could see them again, but of course I could not.
I have these kinds of dreams about others both living and gone. I cannot speak anymore and have wondered if it is a way of trying to communicate because i also have dreams of being able to speak again. Anyway all the dreams are very vivid and real at the time.
I wonder if it is because of the motor neurons dying or if it is a way of preparing for that which is to come, or the mind coming to terms of our own mortality. I would be very interested in an explanation.,
NancyS

 

[pepsiman]

Ladyinn,
That is a beautiful picture you paint of your past and current life. I know for a fact that dreams help us sort emotions as well a lot of other things. Back when I was writing a lot of software, when I had a particularly difficult problem to solve, I would invariably come to the solution in a dream. The next day would be a flurry of code writing and the problem would be solved. This happened again and again, enough that I came to trust that I could count on it happening during particularly stressful deadlines.

Dick

 

[irismarie]

WOnderful dreams and it really makes you wonder, doesn't it!
tHANK YOU for recounting

 

[joelc]

I have periodically had dreams throughout my life but not the frequency I have experienced lately. I dream every night now.

I am always healthy and back in business for myself. It is always interesting to see what I am doing in my dreams. It is also fun to experience being healthy and active again, I am never disabled and am once again very active.

I also spend time helping PALS and designing devices to make life easier, then I travel around to install them. It is a fantastically rewarding life I live in my dreams. Then I wake up and am slapped back to reality.