I met with a rehabilitation advisor today, and she reassured me that I’d do fine, because she could see I’m a “go getter”. Truth is, it’s running from my own mortality that motivates me to exercise and eat right again. Not so much “go get” as “get away from”. I’m trying to outrun death.

How you’ll handle your first really big health crisis is unique to each individual, of course. I’d predict in general that you’ll surprise yourself, simply because there’s nothing like staring death in the face to sharpen the senses (“nothing so focuses the mind as the knowledge that one will hang in the morning”). It’s probably true that having a health crisis hit you suddenly, or when you’re unconscious, would have to make it easier. I had three weeks warning that my bypass surgery was coming up, and after a couple of weeks I was really starting to feel anxious about it. Having a sudden emergency forcing it to happen a week early was probably a blessing, because once I was loaded into an ambulance, the die was cast (cue Vince Guaraldi’s “Cast Your Fate to the Wind”). About twelve hours later they were prepping me for surgery, and to be honest, it was a relief, and I told the surgeon “let’s get this over with”. I knew the odds favored waking up again, but also there was a chance that I wouldn’t. And I was OK with that. The time for worrying about it had passed.

You’re still shaking your fist at the heavens, ER, and that’s a reassuring sign. Don’t stop kicking and screaming.

Still, I can’t really complain. I can hear, see, swallow, breathe, piss and shit, digest and sleep comfortably, I’m not in pain and have no immediately life-threatening health issues. Compared to most people my age, I’m in great shape. What medical conditions I do have I’m being treated for, and although I don’t doubt they’ll eventually get to me, for the time being I’m active, alert and happy. You know what they say; “Can’t fuck, shit. Can’t shit, FUUUUCK!”.

As for my fears about mortality and the future, my worst one is how am I going to psychologically handle my first really big health crisis when it finally does hit? Maybe not today, but sooner or later it hits us all. We’re all waiting for the other shoe to drop, aren’t we? I just hope I’m unconscious when it does.

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a psychiatric disorder that can occur in people who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event such as a natural disaster, a serious accident, a terrorist act, war/combat, rape or other violent personal assault.
…
People with PTSD have intense, disturbing thoughts and feelings related to their experience that last long after the traumatic event has ended. They may relive the event through flashbacks or nightmares; they may feel sadness, fear or anger; and they may feel detached or estranged from other people. People with PTSD may avoid situations or people that remind them of the traumatic event, and they may have strong negative reactions to something as ordinary as a loud noise or an accidental touch.

A diagnosis of PTSD requires exposure to an upsetting traumatic event. However, exposure could be indirect rather than first hand. For example, PTSD could occur in an individual learning about the violent death of a close family. It can also occur as a result of repeated exposure to horrible details of trauma such as police officers exposed to details of child abuse cases.

(italics added)

Something that stands out for me about my own dreams is that they always take place in a familiar setting; and those are mostly just a couple of places I’ve lived in the past. There’s a sort of selection bias that gives those places undue significance, even though the story or events in the dream may have no connection to the place (but sometimes they are connected). These locations are the stages on which my mind is performing its theater.

So it may be with the dreams you describe. Your stage is the places you’ve worked, but the stories, at least as you describe them, have a contemporary feel:

…but the dreams themselves all seem to be bad. They are frustration dreams, things seem to be falling apart, going south, coming unraveled, like they did on my last job. I am under siege, in a constant state of anxiety and uncertainty.

That seems a lot like how we all feel these days, about Trump and how the world seems to be becoming “unraveled” as he deliberately shreds it. Anxiety about the future is entirely rational these days, and dreams are a way of processing such feelings.

About ten days ago I decided to test how a little alcohol would interact with the new cocktail of drugs I’ve been taking after surgery. Sure enough, after just one glass of wine, I had a vivid nightmare, one involving a killer cat and bloody cat corpses that I’d just as soon not dwell on. But it took place in a location where I lived for many years with a lot of cats; that’s one for the relevancy column.

A couple of nights ago I had the most amazing Technicolor CGI dream, again after a little alcohol. It took place at Lake Tahoe, some place I’ve visited half a dozen times in my life. But the events were purely an adventure: Walking along a path by the side of the lake, next to a steep slope, I noticed the water receding, tsunami-style. I scrambled up the slope, making it to the top just before the gigantic wave hit. Then I went up into a tall building, and looking out over the lake, I saw a gigantic sinkhole, miles across, in the center of the lake. The water was rushing in, in incredible detail, mist rising, like a circular Niagara, and Lake Tahoe was draining away. I woke up IRL to visit the bathroom, then, amazingly, the dream resumed when I went back to sleep, with some stage business about driving a pickup truck away from the lake, and having it turn into a motorcycle when I stopped for gas. (I’ve never ridden a motorcycle, so that one came from pure imagination.)

So there’s one that took place in a familiar location, but with no personal elements of anxiety or fear at all (only the adventure-driven abstract fear of a narrow escape from an implausible tsunami). More important for your questions, have you considered the possibility of some environmental influence making you dream more vividly lately? With me it was alcohol interacting with powerful prescription drugs; anything like that going on in your life lately?

It’s good to talk things out with your friends here, but I would recommend that if they persist, and persist in bothering you, that you should consider talking it out with a professional. They love talking about dreams.

Me, I’m enjoying the free entertainment. I just bought a fresh bottle of wine, and I’m looking forward to seeing whether white wine dreams are different from red wine dreams. If life is a Cabernet, old friend, what comes of the Chardonnay?