Anyone suffering from nightmares?

Hi SoniBee and a very warm welcome to the online community which I hope you'll find is both an informative and supportive place to be.

I’m Anne, one of the Community Champions here on the Online Community and, although I'm not a member of this group nor had nightmares since treatment stopped, I noticed that your post hadn't had any replies yet. Responding to you will 'bump' it back to the top of the discussion list again.

Hi SoniBee Are you still on any painkillers? I wondered if it might be anything to do with that? Alternatively it might be a form of PTSD or the realisation of what you’ve actually been through now you’ve stopped to think about it? 
The support desk can help you with some free counselling through BUPA if you think that might be helpful?

Take care

Karen x

Thanks Kareno62 - I think PTSD could be a possibility as I have suffered from this in the past. I think counselling is a good idea. Thank you for the contact details!

Sorry sweetie, I’ve only just seen this.

Could it have anything to do with morphine? I know it had a truly awful effect on me, including making me have a very fleeting moment of darkness where I genuinely wished I was dead. After that I was absolutely adamant that I never wanted to touch it ever again. 

I’m sure, as Karen said, our brains work hard to make sense of baffling and complicated experiences we have. I don’t really know what dreams are, but I always think they are our minds processing little snippets of things it stored away. Nightmares seem to be expression of fear and dealing with all the absolutely terrifying thoughts that we, as cancer patients ,have probably been repressing around personal mortality, disease and lack of control (immobility).

I also think that having a very busy and intellectually stimulating profession makes us push our “spirit?”  or our real “self” completely aside, whilst we become our professional personas. We’re either Dr This or Mrs That or Mum or Wife  rather than being just little me. Being stripped of our health, our dignity, being vulnerable, being entirely dependent on others is very very alien to us for the first time in absolute years I imagine, that’s bound to have an effect. 

I’m just rattling on anyway. I don’t know the answer and I hope it doesn’t become debilitating for you. Counselling sounds like a very useful and effective way to look at things right now, to help put things into perspective.

Look after yourself sweetie,

Nic

Hi, I think try counselling? I can imagine post op things really catch up with you, physically and mentally.  Massive ordeal for your body, and mentally, well, we know about that! I am hopefully due an operation end of the month and can totally imagine things catching up with me. For me, it's almost like this is happening to someone else, plus am still in the world of scans and agonising waits,which keeps you in a certain mental space. 

Be extremely kind to yourself,  rest, take advantage of counselling,  maybe journal? It can be helpful getting difficult feelings out on paper. Xx