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Meta pain-dream

October 5, 2010

Pain dreams are familiar to anyone with chronic pain; you’re in physical pain, but you’re asleep and dreaming, so your dream finds some explanation for the pain.  Because of fibromyalgia I’ve had thousands of them over the years.  In one recurring dream, I’m in a building which collapses, and I’m lying there with my legs crushed under a mountain of bricks.  In another I’m held down by something heavy on my shoulders or hip.

That was before I was diagnosed and learned some management strategies that help me reduce the pain load to something, well, manageable.  Mostly I exercise a lot at a very specific pace, and it does make things better.  So those dreams are rare now but occasionally I get out-of-synch, including last night.

Last night I dreamed that I was sleeping on a hard cot, and in pain and dreaming and that the pain was invading my dream and I cried out, and I woke up… in the dream and someone was concerned.  And then some other stuff happened and then I did wake up for real.  The room was dark, Diane was snoring, Oscar stretched out a little and put his paws on my shoulder, and my hip was killing me.

Huh.  A pain dream within a pain dream. That’s a new one.

Categories: Uncategorized
  1. October 7, 2010 at 06:45 | #1

    That’s getting into serious Chuang Tzu territory, there, bud. You may just have to start growing one of those ancient Chinese philosopher beards.

    Funny what our brains do to make sense of things when most of the bits that know what’s going on are out on a coffee break.

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