Episode 4: Dreams and Nightmares
Synopsis
We know the pandemic has affected the waking lives of healthcare workers. But what happens after we fall asleep? Does the pandemic haunt us in the shadows too?
In this episode, we take a tour of healthcare workers’ dreams and nightmares, capturing deep truths of our subconscious during the most surreal year in recent medical history. Listen to nighttime tales about ant-like body-snatchers taking over, gargoyles sprouting out of bellies, and Celine Dion making a run for it in the streets of Toronto.
LISTEN
Contributors
This episode features the voices of: Danielle Engskow, MD; Fiona Doolan; Neda Frayha, MD; Emily Silverman, MD; Lakshmana Swamy, MD; Charlie Varon; and other healthcare workers who wish to remain anonymous.
CREDITS
Host: Emily Silverman, MD
Podcast Producer: Adelaide Papazoglou
Associate Producers: Isabel Ostrer, Molly Rose-Williams
“Pandemic Theme” composed by Yosef Munro
Series illustrations by Nazila Jamalifard
Audio Engineer: Jon Oliver
Production Assistants: Hannah Yemane, Ricky Paez, Siyou Song
Support for The Nocturnists comes from the California Medical Association, the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, the California Health Care Foundation, and people like you who have contributed through our website and Patreon page.
TRANSCRIPT
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The Nocturnists: Stories from a Pandemic: Part II
Episode 4: "Dreams and Nightmares"
Transcript
Note: The Nocturnists is created primarily as a listening experience. The audio contains emotion, emphasis, and soundscapes that are not easily transcribed. We encourage you to listen to the episode if at all possible. Our transcripts are produced using both speech recognition software and human copy editors, and may not be 100% accurate. Thank you for consulting the audio before quoting in print.
Lakshmana Swamy
I was following someone wandering through a building, trying to find like a way out or escape from something who was apparently an angel. But it was really crowded, like a subway station and we were indoors. And it was really hard to keep up with them. I knew that if I lost them that I wouldn't know if I'd end up in heaven or hell. And that's what happened. I lost them and I couldn't find them. And I was leading this group and we ended up in this gorgeous, gorgeous sort of like, rural retreat luxury hotel room that was overlooking a waterfall. It was really like picturesque and beautiful, but the nagging suspicion was there that, wait, wait, wait, this, I think, is actually hell.
Emily Silverman
You're listening to The Nocturnists: Stories from a Pandemic. I'm Emily Silverman. We know the pandemic has affected the waking lives of healthcare workers. But what happens after we fall asleep? Does the pandemic haunt us in the shadows too? Many of us have spent decades internalizing the biomedical perspective that dreams are just an incidental byproduct of the firing of neurons during REM sleep. But for others, dreams hold a deeper meaning. As a contemporary of Freud's put it, dreams are a detachment of the soul from the fetters of the matter. Where does the soul travel to at night? This episode, we explore healthcare workers' dreams in COVID times and leave the interpretation to you. Take a listen to "Dreams and Nightmares."
Neda Frayha
I've been having lots and lots of anxiety dreams throughout the past several months, but especially the past several weeks, always some variation on a theme of losing control. The other night I had a dream where I was trapped in an elevator. It was in an old hotel in New Orleans. I've never actually been to this particular elevator in real life. But I knew in my dream that that's where I was. The walls were all wood paneling, and the lighting was sort of dim and yellow. And I was with a group of strangers who were all pleasant. It was a nice group of people. And we were sort of talking and making pleasantries. And I had that moment of realization that none of us were wearing masks. I've had many dreams with this moment of realization. Sometimes I'm in a crowded bar. Sometimes I'm having dinner with a big group in a restaurant. Once I was in a crowded stairwell, exiting quickly because of a fire in the building.
Overhead Announcement
"Do not use elevators."
Neda Frayha
And in all of these dreams, there's that one sickening moment where I look around and realize that nobody is wearing a mask. So in this dream, the strangers and I are talking, little small talk. And none of us is wearing a mask. And the elevator starts to move on its own. It moves horizontally, throughout different floors. It moves vertically. Doesn't matter what buttons we press, the elevator clearly is moving of its own accord. And then the strangers ask me what I do for a living and I say that I'm a physician. And then they say, "Oh, well we know this physician and that physician who, who died of COVID. And oh, this other one died too." And so then they all begin to share their stories of the doctors they know who have died of COVID. The strangers were nice and the conversation was polite. It wasn't a true nightmare. But of course it kind of was.
Lakshmana Swamy
I was trying to evade someone who's trying to capture me and arrest me or something. Then I got caught. And then the next thing I knew I was someone else and I was going to try to free this person who was caught. I walked into this office and it was just a couple of people at desks. And here's this person who previously was me who's sitting there like eating some food with their legs kicked back. And I'm kind of like, this is really strange you don't look like a prisoner. And then I noticed his food is covered in really, really small ants. And I'm kind of about to say something when I realized there's really small ants kind of all over the floor. And so I get this vacuum cleaner, which has some kind of, like water mechanism and I started vacuuming up all these ants and killing them. But they just keep coming and they just keep coming. And, and the woman who arrested previously me, now this other person, kind of starts looking at me and saying, "Hey, I think you should stop that. I don't think it's working." And I realized that like, why are they all so comfortable with all these ants on the ground? And I, it clicked in me that oh, no, they've been taken over by the ants.
And I had this like, intense moment of like, oh, I need to stop this. And I need to escape before they realize that I know. And then it was like me slow like, there's a prolonged image of me turning off the vacuum, the ants are really starting to flow out of the walls now. And I, I like to slowly make my way out the door, and then I just bolt. And that's when I woke up.
Eleanor
So I used to have these dreams all the time when I was a kid, about my teeth falling out, or that I would reach into my mouth and pull them out. But I hadn't had them for probably a decade or two. Until last week, when I woke up to get ready for my shift as a COVID resuscitation nurse. And I realized that I had dreamt about my teeth, just felt like they needed to come out. And so I'd reached into my mouth and I pulled out every single one of them. I looked in my hand, the teeth that I'd pulled out were actually dinosaur fossil teeth. So they were, you know, enormous. I showed my husband the teeth and he said, "Oh, we better put them back in your mouth before the holes heal up." So he tried to put them back in my mouth, but he put them back in my mouth at a right angle. So they were sticking straight out. And they stayed in like that. But you know, I could hardly get my lips to close. And then I had to go to work like that. And I had to keep my mouth, I had to keep my mouth closed the entire day that I was at work. And I remember thinking like thank God, I you know, work in the COVID ICU because I get to wear this mask all day to cover up these crazy teeth that are sticking straight out. When I woke up, I could not figure out if it had actually happened or not. So I like ran to the mirror to look in my mouth and it was still so realistic that I, for the rest of the day I kept running my tongue over my teeth. I think that's the weirdest COVID time dream that I've had.
Alyssa
This dream I want to share with you is one of those weird, twisty long dreams. I'm walking near a beach, kind of approaching the beach. And there are a lot of people standing there kind of spaced out. They're not together. They're just scattered around the beach. I can see some people that I recognize kind of distant acquaintances from my childhood and high school years. People I haven't seen in 15 or 20 years. Nobody I know really well. And it's cold out and misty. Everyone's dressed normally. You know wearing light jackets the way you might on a cool day at the beach. And it looks kind of like they're all, they're all holding some kind of long string. Kind of like they were flying kites. But as I get closer, I realize that that's not what it is. They all have IVs in their hands or their arms that are connected by multiple extensions so that these long IV lines stretch out into the misty sky above the water. I can't see where they're going. But I can see that everyone's just on these long lines, just like we set up to keep the pumps in the hallway. The long lines that extend into the room where the patient is. But these lines are longer even than that. And as I walk through this group of people, I'm looking for my younger brother. And I find him but he's a toddler. And then I find him again, but he's a teenager. I can't find his normal adult self. And then the dream changes.
Martha S.
I'm in a situation where an older woman is quite ill. The people around her know that I'm a physician, and they want me to help her. There's another woman there who looks to be about my age, who's a nurse. The woman who's ill, is having respiratory symptoms. And the bystanders make a respirator available to me, to us, and want us to put her on it. But it's not like any piece of equipment that I've ever seen before. I don't know how to put this patient on this respirator. I try, but it's not working. And it looks as though it's making matters worse. The nurse and I talk to each other and admit that we don't know how to use this piece of equipment or know how it works. I realize though, and it's likely that both of us have thought all along that the woman doesn't need to be on a respirator anyway. She is having difficulty breathing, but not to the degree that she'd need mechanical ventilation. We eventually tell the people who are with her that she doesn't need this respirator. By the end of the dream, I realize and I'm beginning to say that we need a pulse oximeter to check her oxygen saturation. It feels good to have someone with me who's familiar with medicine the way I am, who's older, like I am. I'm 75. And who can confirm what I know. And help me say and do what I need to say and do.
Fiona Doolan
I dreamt I was driving home from a night shift in an inky black countryside. My hands were pale at the wheel, a pair of headlights surged towards me, and the bottom seemed to drop from the world. And at that moment of impact, I was no longer driving the car. I became an observer in the perfect center of the frame. Someone whose silhouette I didn't recognize stood next to me with a palette and some paints. The paint seemed to occupy a loose space, tendrils of color leaping at odd intervals into the air. They were using the paints to make a sort of gouache of the scene. I worked with them to frame that transfer of energy, the compression of the front and rear bumpers, the heat, the compromise of the physical structure, their demise. I studied the scene. And even though it was dark, I could make out splinters of plastic and glass emerging from the shattered wrecks. Frozen in the air. The shift in the COVID ICU was 18 hours. But the moment of impact lasted forever.
Dream Voice
"Wake up."
Marie S.
I wasn't having any dreams. I always have vivid, huge vivid dreams and everything and I have not had any. But my mother did come to me the past couple of weeks. Past week, she came to me twice. I think that was cause my sister was sick. She messes with the lights. I swear, if this light goes on, I'm gonna die. But yeah, she messes with the light, she turns the lights on and off. But that was the only dream that came. She came to me in a dream. And it was like I woke up my light was on all of a sudden, big sense of humor from her even though I was with my sister. Oh, my mother, my sainted widowed mother.
Stephanie
I have not had any dreams. I mean, I'm sure I have. I have no idea once I shut my eyes, what happens. Nothing. Which is unusual for me to not remember anything. I guess I would rather not be dreaming, than having nightmares. Been a, kind of a weird experience, if I'm being honest, the dream part. Like I can't stop sleeping, like all I want to do is sleep. So when I'm off, and then I'm going to bed really early, and I'm waking up really late. And then it will flip to the opposite. I mean, I am getting enough sleep. But I will have anxiety about patients and about my own family and what's going on in the world. And I will get that sleep where I don't remember my dreams. It feels like I'm not dreaming at all. And I'm not waking up in the middle of the night. I'm sleeping through the night. But when you wake up regardless of how much you've slept - a full eight hours, nine hours, even. It's unrestful, it's I don't know how to explain it. I know I've slept a full eight hours, and I wake up and it feels like I was working. It doesn't feel quick. I know the feeling of you go to sleep, you sleep a full night and you wake up and it feels like you just fell asleep. It's not that. I feel like I have been working. My brain is tired when I wake up like I have been trying to solve something or my mind has been going but I have no recollection of what that may be.
Danielle Engskow
I can't say I've ever considered myself someone who's good at sleeping. But I do think I'm above average dreamer. As a child, this wasn't necessarily a good skill to have, because it also meant lots, lots of nightmares. But over the years and patterns, there's the clearly bizarre dream like fighting an axe murderer with Celine Dion through the streets of Toronto. The nightmares like watching a patient bleed out in front of me over and over again. It's sort of fun dreams like riding on the back of the good luck dragon from The Neverending Story flying through the air and eventually going underwater. But I'd say one dream that's been fairly consistent is a dream about needing to go to the bathroom. It usually starts out fairly similar. When I was younger, I'd be at school. As it got older or maybe it was university or a large conference center. Sometimes it's now a hospital. But I'm, I have a clear mission, I have to go to the bathroom. Seems simple enough. I know where to find it. For whatever reason, my vision's may be not as good as it usually is, but I eventually find it. When I open up the door it is not a normal bathroom. It's an entire room filled with tile and toilets. Some behind stalls, many of them not. But mostly they're all either occupied or overflowing with bodily contents. And so I spend the next part of my dream just looking for a normal toilet. I start bargaining, you know, I no longer need one behind a stall. I no longer need one that's beautiful or pristine. I just need one that's, that will work. And that will do the job. Eventually, I do find one. But I never actually get to use the bathroom cause I wake up.
Emily Silverman
I just woke up and I had the craziest dream. I dreamt that I was in a hotel with my friends. We're having a good time. We got back to this hotel room that we were all sharing. We went into the hotel room. There's me and like, I don't know five or six other girls including my friend, Rebecca. And we were sitting around the hotel room hanging out when Rebecca looked over at this pillow on the bed. She said, "Guys look at that pillow." And I looked at it and there was nothing wrong with it. And she was like, "No look." And then she walked over to the pillow, and she kind of smoothed it with her hand. And as she was doing that, you could see that there was this like, face under it, it was almost like a human face, where if you smooth a fabric, you could sort of see the contours of like, eyes and a nose and a mouth. And I was like, "That's weird." And then she kept smoothing the pillow and like, pressing on the fabric, and this face just started getting more and more prominent, until finally, it was like a very obvious like human face that looked like under the fabric. And then eventually, the face grew into a larger than human face, it was maybe like the size of a round, like the size of a large round dinner plate. And the features of the face started to look less human and started to look more like gargoyle-like. And Rebecca said, "You guys, this is really weird. Why is there a face in this pillow?" And I said to her, "It's fine. Don't worry about it. It's probably just some weird, decorative pillow that someone put in this hotel room, like just ignore it." And she was like, "No, this is wrong." And I was like, "No, it's fine."
And then a few minutes later, I can't remember if it was Rebecca, or one of the other friends like somebody went near the pillow. And then slowly, the face started to grow out of their chest. And it started like under their clothing and you could just see it under the clothing. But then it would like break out of the clothing. And it would be this like brownish rust color, like dinner plate size like gargoyle face sticking out of their chests. And then as soon as I saw that, I knew that something was really wrong. And I ran out of the hotel room. And I walked, and I ran down the hallway to this conference room where a bunch of doctors were gathered. And I started asking around, and I was like, "Does anybody know about this face thing? Like, what is it? How do you get rid of it?" And a lot of people were like, "What are you talking about? I've never heard of this." But there were a couple people in the conference room that were like, "Oh, yeah, that face thing. Like I've heard of that. It's really bad. It's really contagious. And like, as soon as the face grows out of your chest, like you're pretty much dead." And I was like fuck. And they didn't really tell me how to cure it. They just like knew about it.
So I ran back to the hotel room to see how my friends were doing. And I opened the hotel room door. And I looked inside, and all my friends were in the hotel room lying on the floor dead with faces sticking out of their chests. And it was so scary. And so then the next part of the dream was kind of scattered where this like face disease thing was spreading throughout the hotel. And I knew that if you stood close to somebody who had a face coming out of their chest that you would get it so it was kind of like a six feet apart thing. And so I was just trying to like not get near anybody who had it. And then one day I was sitting in some kind of a theater, like a movie theater or a play or something. And I looked over to my right, and the person sitting a few seats away from me had a face coming out of their chest. And I was like, "Ah," and then I got up and started to run away. But it was too late. And then I looked down at my chest and this like gargoyle face started growing out of it. And I was like "No, I refuse to accept this, like this is not happening." And then I woke up.
Charlie Varon
My name is Victor Huston. I am Professor Emeritus of Obstetrics and Gynecology. I am on the committee overseeing the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine at our medical center and having some responsibility for that distribution has been intermittently stress inducing. In my dream I was waiting for the shipment of the vaccine to arrive. And indeed it arrived in a big 18-wheel semi-truck came pulled up right to the hospital. And again, this is in the dream. The driver gets out of the truck and I realize the driver is none other than Dr. Anthony Fauci. So that's the first surprise. Here's Dr. Fauci dressed up like a truck driver. And he walks to the back of the semi-truck and he opens the two big doors and wheels out a syringe that is, I would say 30 feet long, and maybe eight feet high, something like that. And that I understand is the entire vaccine quantity that is going to be the supply for our institution. The next thing I remember is greeting Dr. Fauci and he is treating me like, like a long lost friend or something like that. And I say, "Well, what's the rollout gonna be like?" And Dr. Fauci says, "You go first." And I'm, frankly terrified, because the the needle of this enormous syringe is too big to go into anybody's flesh. And he said, "Oh, no, don't worry about that." And he snaps his fingers and I find myself inside the syringe. And I'm swimming in the, the fluid of the, the vaccine that's in the, in the chamber on the syringe. The next thing I know, an opening emerges, and I'm coming out into what seems to be an extremely bright, well-lit room, and I'm being held by an enormous woman who clutches me and cries out, "It's a boy!" That was unlike any dream I remember having any time in my 77 years.
Emily Silverman
That's our show. The Nocturnists is produced by Director of Story Development Adelaide Papazoglou, Associate Producers Molly Rose-Williams and Isabel Ostrer, and me. Our Student Production Assistants are Hannah Yemane, Ricky Paez and Siyou Song. Original theme was composed by Yosef Munro. Our Audio Engineer is Jon Oliver and our illustrations are by Nazila Jamalifard. Our Executive Producer is Ali Block, our Chief Operating Officer is Rebecca Groves, our Admin Assistant is Suparna Jasuja and our Social Media Intern is Yuki Schwab. The Nocturnists is made possible by the California Medical Association, a physician led organization that works tirelessly to make sure that the doctor patient relationship remains at the center of medicine. To learn more about the CMA, visit cmadocs.org. Support for The Nocturnists also comes from the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, the California Health Care Foundation and people like you who have contributed through our website and Patreon page. Thank you for supporting our work in storytelling. If one of those dreams sounded too good to be true, you would be correct. It turns out that health care workers aren't the only ones finding themselves lost in this present moment. Find out more when you join us next week, and we uncover who sent us a false dream and what it all means. I'm your host, Emily Silverman. See you next time.