Do you ever have dreams about PCa and living with it?

Freud, among others, once called dreams the "windows of the soul." Be that as it may, it is for certain that our dreams say an enormous amount in indirect fashion about what is happening in our lives, and how these events are affecting us.

It would seem inevitable that the stresses and pressures of dealing with PCa on an ongoing basis would indeed translate themselves into significant and powerful dreams for many, perhaps most of us.

I thought it might be interesting and hopefully useful to have a thread that addresses this.

For example, I have had PCa related dreams, and I have been having a recurrent one in particular that, since I had it last night, gave me the idea for starting this thread.

I also decided to include the above survey, which may give us an idea of the extent of the involvement of PCa in our dream worlds.

Let me tell you my dream.Then please comment on it if you wish. While it's probably the case that none of us here are trained psychoanalysts, still, observations from others could be very useful, especially if they have themselves had similar dreams.

After I have told you my dream, I would then like to invite any of you who would like to do so to post an account of a PCa related dream that you have had yourself, and let us see if any comments we might then post would be helpful to you in understanding or dealing with it.

(BTW, note in my survey above that I ask about "negative" and "neutral" dreams, with no mention of "positive" ones. It seems to me hard to imagine that one would ever have a "positive" dream about the beast, unless it's a dream about being cured of it, of course).

Anyway, here goes:

As my dream opens, I'm sitting in the waiting room in my uro's office. I have had blood drawn at the lab for my regular PSA test a couple of days ago, and I have an appointment with him to learn the result. I am the only person in the waiting room. I don't even see anyone behind the glass of the receptionist's desk across the room. The place appears deserted. It seems that I have been waiting and waiting and waiting some more, but nothing seems to be happening. I am becoming very impatient. Finally, the door opens and the nurse, my regular nurse, comes out, smiles, and motions to me to come back with her. Glad that something is finally happening, I jump up walk over and through the door, and join her in walking down the hallway to the exam room. The hallway seems very dark and ominous. We get to the exam room. She ushers me in, smiles again, and says the doctor will be coming soon. I sit down on a chair in the exam room. The room is very sterile, and the exam table and all the medical equipment seem lit up with a very bright white light, almost too bright. Again I am waiting. And waiting. And the waiting goes on and on. I am becoming very impatient again. Finally the door opens and my uro comes in. He smiles, shakes my hand, and asks how I am doing. He then says that there will unfortunately be a delay in discussing my test results as the lab appears to have misplaced them. I am sorry to hear this, but he says he will try to get them, and I just have to wait. He then leaves and I do more restless waiting. I am becoming extremely impatient by this time. Then, finally, he and the nurse come back into the room and he says that the lab has lost my results. But, not to worry, they can draw blood right now and get a test result. I am very annoyed, but agree, and stretch out my arm. He gets the needle and draws a blood sample. But as soon as he does so, he looks up and says "We can't get enough blood out of you for a test." (Absurd, of course, but this is a dream). He then says that because of this I have to go home now, I will have to do without the test result, that's too bad, I won't know my PSA result, but I have to go home now, blah, blah, blah. I now become very angry indeed, and say No! You will get a sample, do the test right now and tell me the result! And I mean now! But he and the nurse just stand there, still as statues, staring at me and saying nothing. Then I become almost white with anger, and then …

… I wake up.

A strange dream to be sure, but maybe not so strange in view of the pressures which the beast can cause. Probably some kind of "venting" dream since it involves anger, just my subconscious blowing off steam. It may also be addressing the sheer frustration of having to do so much waiting and waiting all the time to ever get any results or answers in our seemingly never-ending journeys with this thing. But, still, a strange dream to be sure.

If any of you care to play psychoanalyst with this and give me your take on it, please feel welcome to do so.

Otherwise, would any of you now care to give us an account of one of your own dreams, your own "winged messengers of the night," and let us see what we all think of it?

I generally don't remember my dreams. (For many people dreams are never transferred to long-term memory, they fade away as one wakes up and are gone.) But I often have a sense of what I was dreaming about because I wake up thinking about the dream and I will remember thinking about it but not the dream itself.

Because of that I am fairly sure I don't dream about prostate-cancer-related things. While I am awake I am fairly obsessed with the psychic side effects of my ADT which I feel as "something not working in my head". It is the first thing I think about in the morning and the last thing at night. But I always have the sense that as I wake up whatever I have been dreaming about fades away and is replaced by fretting about the smothering wet blanket that the ADT drapes over parts of my psyche. But it's always a change of topic, not a continuation.

Which is to say. No, I don't seem to dream about PCa-related things.

Peter, take Larium, for Malaria which admittedly you won't need in upstate NY and your dreams will become 3D epics. That's how I discovered my PCa actually.

the absolute worse thing I experienced with this experience was sleeping/waking up that first month after diagnosis.

Every time I woke up I relived the emotion of being told I had cancer. I was horrible and I think a lot of the PTSD comes form those moments.

It went away after a month or so.

sorry, I didn't want to sound "new age". My wife and I had pretty bizarre and serious reactions to weeks of larium and went for check ups upon our return. All my tests included a PSA test and that lead to the PSA red flag. My doc was good enough to throw that test in since I was 40. Don't recall if I might have said something to him about what I was experiencing that would lead him to order the test.

I had insomnia too after diagnosis, but when I did fall asleep it was sound. It was the waking up part which was punishing.

I never dream about PCa. I guess that is a good thing. My dreams are the same old anxiety-type dreams: I forgot to attend a class; I am ready to go on stage for a concert and my tux is nowhere to be seen; I bought a strange house for some unfathomable reason; etc, etc.

However, now, I rarely dream about anything sexual. I miss that. I hope that comes back after ADT. I did have a wonderful dream while on vacation this summer. My wife and I were probably in our 20s and all my "equipment" still worked. She was so beautiful (and she still is!) and was successfully enticing me. It was a beautiful dream. It seemed to represent our marriage. It was weeks before I could tell my wife about it without fear of getting all choked up. Sigh, sniff .. darn Lupron.

SC

Well! Such interesting input from several of you on this very interesting topic, our dreams and whether or not PCa is in them.

I'm actually a bit surprised at the poll results, with a clear indication that most of us seem not to have PCa-related dreams, if we even remember our dreams at all. I originally thought there would be wider spread in the answers, with votes in several of the other categories of the poll. Interesting indeed.

But maybe not so surprising in a way. Dreams have been with us since the beginning of time, and even after thousands of years we actually are still not much closer to understanding what they are and what they mean than our ancestors were.

In a book I read about dreams some time ago the author made the point that dreams are most likely to have evolved in humans (and mammals) to serve as some kind of survival mechanism, either as a stress releaser, or perhaps as a subconscious training ground for experiencing, and thus identifying coping mechanisms for, the real-life stressors that one would encounter the next day in the jungle. Perhaps so. It is noteworthy that in sleep deprivation studies involving lab rats, when they are forced to go without sleep their obvious stress levels go through the roof. And humans in such experiments show extreme negative physical reactions and even personality changes and hallucinations.
And as for stress relief, for those of you who report dreams of being young, strong, and sexual again, what better way to relieve the stresses of one's waking life?

I find it curious that some of us, like Purgatory, have a vivid, energetic dream experience, and we can remember them, while others of us do not. Perhaps there is some kind of chemical in the brain that regulates the nature of brain experience and its memory, and perhaps the level of this chemical varies from brain to brain. Maybe those of us who have an extra dose of this chemical in our brains get to have the vivid, easily remembered dreams.

Personally, I'm like Purgatory, and I have vivid, colorful and easily remembered dreams. Also like him, I seem to be able to be having a dream, then wake up and get a drink of water or make a bathroom run, then get in bed again, go back to sleep, and then actually pick up in a dream where I left off. For me it seems perfectly simple to do that. Maybe it's having a good dose of that brain chemical.

Well, it's a fascinating subject, to be sure. And if any of the rest of you wish to add to the conversation, please feel free.

However, in closing this post, it somehow seems to me only appropriate to provide a link to that great 50s rockabilly hit by the Everly Brothers:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbU3zdAgiX8‎

I pop in from time to time and did so a couple of weeks ago. I read some very sad news about many of our brothers here at HW. I was very upset and saddened, because there was so much loss to read about at 1 time, and then that got me thinking of Bud.

Within a day or two I had a HORRIBLE dream about my husband and prostate cancer. The dream was vivid and very similar in nature to 81gyguy. We attended a visit with hubbies uro, but for some reason I wasn't in the examination room. I stood outside the door, and peeked through a sliver of glass to observe. I could see the doctor's white coat, but not his face. My hubby sat down on a round stool with rollers, and looked up as the doctor give him some news. His face dropped. It was horrific.

I woke up and gave him a huge hug and have put that dang dream behind me. The dream was very sad and vivid and I am SO happy not our reality.

So, some good news.  Hubby continues to heal and do well with PSA tests coming back as they should.  I'd say he is back to normal physically and working his tail off. :)  We are survivors.

Just thought I would share. Have a great day!

Post Edited (walkbyfaith) : 9/25/2013 1:57:33 PM (GMT-6)

When first diagnosed I would have nightmares about things unrelated to PC, but discovered that my real life was scarier than the nightmares.

I never dream about PC, actually have very interesting dreams these days.