End-of-Life Dreams
commonwealmagazine.org
End-of-Life Dreams
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Re: End-of-Life Dreams
#2[deleted]
Re: End-of-Life Dreams
#3Since I have a rich interior dialogue with myselves "inside" it comes as no surprise that close to end-of-life minds come up with comforting thoughts to Shepard the close. Thats what your friends would do.
If you are one of the smaller cohort without an interior dialogue, I suspect you will have the same outcome because even if unvoiced, I am confident you have more than one brain process at work. Not just the proprioception function, but a more integrated individualistic path-seeking process (or two or more, what do I know?) is at work inside.
If you don't dream, and don't have interior dialogue, and cannot pass the Voight-Kampff test then I think you need to speak to the coders in the Tyrell Corp about the upgrade options.
Re: End-of-Life Dreams
#4well, hallucinations are extremely common post-op things - can't speak for the author's specific case. when my mum broke her hip & had it replaced (she had already had similar on her other hip), i remember this with the nurse:
me: she's gone mad!
nurse: calm down, she will be ok.
and she mostly was, but never really the same again, until she died.
then, i fractured my ankle and had to have lots of orthopaedic banging, screwing and hammering done. following that i had some of the most vivid hallucinations i have ever experienced - i could not differentiate the hallucinations from reality. but the nurses treated it as all routine.
this was all courtesy of the NHS - please support the junior doctors (my niece is one)
Re: End-of-Life Dreams
#5[dead]
Re: End-of-Life Dreams
#6well, hallucinations are extremely common post-op things - can't speak for the author's specific case. when my mum broke her hip & had it replaced (she had already had similar on her other hip), i remember this with the nurse: me: she's gone mad! nurse: calm down, she will be ok. and she mostly was, but never really the same again, until she died. then, i fractured my ankle and had to have lots of orthopaedic banging…
I'm curious if the post-surgery cognitive decline is due to the anesthetics, or the trauma.
Re: End-of-Life Dreams
#7well, hallucinations are extremely common post-op things - can't speak for the author's specific case. when my mum broke her hip & had it replaced (she had already had similar on her other hip), i remember this with the nurse: me: she's gone mad! nurse: calm down, she will be ok. and she mostly was, but never really the same again, until she died. then, i fractured my ankle and had to have lots of orthopaedic banging…
I'm curious if the post-surgery cognitive decline is due to the anesthetics, or the trauma.
i did not have a general for my own surgery, just a spinal, so in my experience it is not the anaesthetic. i reasearched this a bit after my mum's last surgery (can't find links now) and it seems there is a theory that fats released into the bloodstream by surgical procedures can be causing the hallucinations.
obviously, this is not an area open to easy research by clinicians.
Re: End-of-Life Dreams
#8well, hallucinations are extremely common post-op things - can't speak for the author's specific case. when my mum broke her hip & had it replaced (she had already had similar on her other hip), i remember this with the nurse: me: she's gone mad! nurse: calm down, she will be ok. and she mostly was, but never really the same again, until she died. then, i fractured my ankle and had to have lots of orthopaedic banging…
You experienced something different from these cases: "These dreams are distinguished from regular dreams by being especially vivid. When asked to rate the degree of realism of such dreams, most rate them ten out of ten—the highest degree of realism. Patients often report that they are “more real than real.” They occur both during periods of sleep and periods of wakefulness, and they are easily distinguished from hallucinations or bouts of delirium."
Re: End-of-Life Dreams
#9well, hallucinations are extremely common post-op things - can't speak for the author's specific case. when my mum broke her hip & had it replaced (she had already had similar on her other hip), i remember this with the nurse: me: she's gone mad! nurse: calm down, she will be ok. and she mostly was, but never really the same again, until she died. then, i fractured my ankle and had to have lots of orthopaedic banging…
You experienced something different from these cases: "These dreams are distinguished from regular dreams by being especially vivid. When asked to rate the degree of realism of such dreams, most rate them ten out of ten—the highest degree of realism. Patients often report that they are “more real than real.” They occur both during periods of sleep and periods of wakefulness, and they are easily distinguished from hal…
> they are easily distinguished from hallucinations or bouts of delirium
how so?
Re: End-of-Life Dreams
#10When my father died, he had a waking dream of this. Saw a river with all his dead family across the water. Smiling and waving. Coming to the banks. Waiting for him to cross. His last words were “Cover me in a blanket of sunshine.” He died two hours later.
What’s a little remarkable to me is that he had these visions in this detail despite being lifelong blind.
As I was reading the article, I kept wondering which came first. Humans having visions of loved ones? Or the religions and stories that posit a posthumous reunion? I was theorizing that the visions were shaped by the individuals’ religious beliefs.
The article offered one piece of evidence that my theory was wrong. The doctor claimed that almost no one saw Jesus or any other divine entity in their near death dreams. If this is universally true, then the religious beliefs about death & heaven are shaped in part by the dreams and not vice versa.