Pre-Surgery Dreams

[cbdheartman]

Did anyone else have pretty regular dreams about heart surgery and stuff? I am under two weeks out for my surgery (aneurysm repair and likely David Reimplantation) and I am frequently dreaming about surgery and occasionally about non-surgical worries (rodents in the house).

 

[geebee]

For awhile after surgery (couple months) I had nightmares about being chased by "green people". After I mentioned it to my SO, he reminded me that the surgical garb at the hospital was green.

All the meds, along with the pump, can take some time to work out of your system. Until then, sleep issues can be a problem.

Some meds (especially beta blockers) can cause vivid dreaming so you should look into that also if you are on any new meds. I take Inderal and it causes very vivid and odd dreaming.

 

[netmiff]

I am almost two years out, and remember one dream where the surgical staff, gowned up and in the OR, had me opened up and were tossing my heart around like it was a basketball!

I think we use dreams to clear our conscious minds of things that are bothering us; for instance, when I did not have a regular dentitst, I had frequent dreams about my teeth falling out. I think it is fairly normal to have these kinds of dreams, and if you are a dream-type person, they are probably all the more vivid.

 

[Bina]

Since this is pre-surgery it is only anxiety. Pop a chill pill if you want complete rest.
(ativan, xanax)

 

[Ashkir]

Hmm. Oddly, my doctors gave me medication just in case if I had a bad dream. I never really had a bad dream, ever in my life. The only time I ever had nightmares according to my mom was when my best friend died when I was fourteen.

o.o.

But, I guess bad dreams before huge events can be seen as common. I kind of expected mine and knew it and accepted it.

 

[Jkm7]

I only had one 'concious' day's notice I was having my first OHS as was in CICU loaded with meds so no dreams that I remember. It was an emergent situation.

I did have some odd dreams both before and after my second OHS (four years later) but they ended just a short time after my surgery.

I had a harder time sleeping at all after my first OHS than after my second. I think the having 'been there and done that' before was in some way comforting mentally in that (unless something unexpected happened) I fairly well knew what to expect of myself and those involved in my care. Not to say it wasn't just as traumatic because it was.

 

[Ross]

Since this is pre-surgery it is only anxiety. Pop a chill pill if you want complete rest.
(ativan, xanax)

Yeap, your getting tensed up. Normal, but perhaps a little more then most people.

 

[abbanabba]

I had some pretty graphic "heart surgery" dreams, but oddly enough they didn't freak me out. Then again, given some of the bizarre and freaky stuff I normally dream of (chainsaw wielding bikies, serial killers, falling of cliffs... that kind of thing), it was all pretty tame in comparison (there was a pretty cool one where I was looking at an X-ray of the wires, only it looked like I had swallowed an entire bale of the stuff!). I think it was just my sad little brain working through it all.


A : )

 

[Trinityheart8891]

hey,

I have lots of surgery dreams, like people have said here its your mind trying to work through things I was doing pretty good for a while, but they started up again, when I thought about it I realized its because I have a few followup appts coming up that I am nervous about I also find that alot of my dreams are really subconscious memories, but sometimes they are pretty warped, the last time I had open heart surgery I was 4 years old, so some of the dreams I have had were from that perspective, it took me a while to realize where this stuff was coming from, but before my ablation in march alot of these dreams came back, and I realized that it was alot of subconscious fears I had about the procedure

hope this helps