An inconvenient truth about dreams
Larry H. Bernstein, MD, FCAP, Curator
LPBI
It is natural to dream. Dreaming is a flashback recording of recent occurrences associated with cleaning out the memory of daily events. There is much written in both literature and in neuroscience as I write this. Dreaming is both natural and perhaps also adaptive, and dreams may be distressing or unintelligible in circumstances that we view as pathological. This is thought to be related to a loss of plasticity of the memory circuits. This occurs with mood disorders, sleep disorders with and without leg movement disorder, and with schizophrenia.
The term given by Martin Luther King, “I had a dream” is out of place under the cirumstances I describe. I am identical twin with a nonidentical triplet sister. Our brother died more than a decade ago, prematurely aged from living with schizophrenia. I and my sister could talk to him and understand what he said, even though it meant nothing to others. What I did not share was the total fragmentation of mental thoughts at an early age. Both I and my sister had guilt over the situation for years. I sought psychiatric assistance that went on for years. But I was not schizophrenic and I had a successful career by any standard, but was burdened trying to make up in achievement what was denied to my immigrant father and to my identical twin brother. It was by no means easy in the 1960s for my parents to deal with the situation, with a societal lack of understanding, a feeling of what have I done wrong, and a serious cost burden.
I went to medical school, which I had decided as a child, when I read Paul de Kruif’s Microbe Hunters.
I had a sister two years older who was a “wunder” kind, who I tried to follow. She had a GM scholarship and set the class curve as an undergraduate in a graduate course in numbers theory. Fortunately, my best friend, who was as brilliant as they come and a Merit Scholar college entry, cautioned not to overburden myself with the chemistry/math major that I never declared. My brother entered the hospital as I entered medical school, and the first year that would be expected to be difficult, certainly was for me.
Only in the last 5 years did I learn from extensive testing that I had a very high intelligence to match my achievement , but that I had Asperger’s. I also learned that I had an uncommon double mutation of the hydroxymethyl-folate reductase gene that is associated nonspecifically with neurological disorders. I take methyl folate for the genetic disorder to give access of folic acid to cross the blood brain barrier.
I’m retired for several years and had enormous difficulty in retiring, and was a workaholic. Work had great meaning and rewards for me.
I am now 74 and had a difficult 3 years with illness and hospitalization for me and my spouse of 45 years. We moved to be near my younger daughter, son-in-law, and grandson. This has brought great satisfaction. All the same, my asthma, sleep apnea, and general condition declined, and the move was more difficult than any I previously experienced. I have vivid dreams that requires clonipin for relief initially.
I have had increased frequency of dreams that can be resolved. However, with my awareness of the suicide of Robin Williams, I was given an awareness of his situation beyond what one would expect who has not seen such patients or has not experienced this. In my situation it was worsened by added depression. In the recent events I thought for the first time how incredible it was for my brother to have experienced this much of his schizophrenic life, even though I am not schizophrenic by any measure.
What’s in a dream?
I have had dreams before that I thought were interesting because of the people who I knew and the situations, that might have been unusual and gave me an inclination to write down. If I collected these, it could perhaps warrant a collection of stories. Those that are very recent have suggested that the one when I entertained my grandson is worthwhile. It was not so noxious, but it does fit the pieces together.
I watched some of the reporting of election returns of republican and democratic candidates. I sort of tossed around and played with the exceptional 6 year old who need not be exposed to such nonsence as we are seeing. It was early evening and to finish his limited allowable screentime, Nanny and Grandpa, and grandchild watched a children,s movie before bedtime. It was … … a takeoff on Red Ridinghood, with good cartoon figures, some recognizable voices, and an interesting storyline. Yes, LRRH does go through the woods to see her grandma, and she meets the wolf, who goes to her grandma’s house. Her grandma is tied up in the closet, and the woodsman, in the role of Paul Bunyan, gives a visit at the time of rescue. The storyline becomes a detective story to cull out the events leading up to a criminal event – who stole grandma’s recipe book, with a long family line of cooking. The grandma was an Olympic skiing champ who beets out the characters who stole her cookbooks. I’ll say no more than that the search comes upon grandma and LRRH escape with a parachute finish and the bad guys, led by a crafty rabbit, slide down on a ski-tram into a waiting police car. So that evening I have a dream that is a cockamaimie replay in which I am driving on the highway and enter a tunnel (like the rail in the movie), and the lane is cluttered with a wolf, and other creatures, making passage quite impossible.
I talked to my sister who called the next day. It was terrific when she said that if I had a pad and wrote them down immediately, they would form a pattern. Again, I have a dream, and I recall there was a pattern of feeling of failure. I am on Gabapentin for the restless leg. This time I have my brother (impossible) in it, I left my coat in a conference room and can’t get it immediately, and I have to return home with an exam the next day. In a recurring pattern, my brother is to drive. I can’t drive because of now having a diplopia from thyroid eye disease related to Grave’s disease. The exam has two questions about plasma from unclotted blood that is spun down and serum from clotted blood. This is very basic. The pattern is related to systemic notions of failure. My sister had a repeated pattern of rushing to get to the classes she teaches and not getting there on time (consistent with her rush rush).
I go back to bed and get another few hours of sleep. We had watched a number of Miss Marple movies recently. In the move I had the stressful experience of going through 40 years of save photographic equipment and photography, research literature, computer stuff, ya da, ya da, ya da. Very thorough, and tiring. The old lady in RRH and Miss Marple were merged into a character in a story related to the corroded pipes in Flint, and a criminal search for the cause of this problem (having watched the debate). Incredibly, this character was going through the material so rapidly, uncovering clues, and I was amazed.
I was struggling to keep up. Then I woke up. So my spouses assurances were correct. This is actually normal dreaming.
It is disturbing, consistent with a recent New York Times article on how the brain cleans out the garbage. I have too much garbage. My medication does have to be adjusted. It is perhaps not the same as my late brother’s experience. My sister’s observations have been helpful. My brother’s dreams were recognizable to me, but not to others, but they also had patterns, but patterns that were more distorted. If mine have been “normal”, but more frequent, this suggests a failure in the brain’s plasticity as I am aging, perhaps from from the stress in a major move. It is perhaps to be viewed as distressing at best compared with the worst case (my brother, or Robin Williams).
This is substantiated by my remembrance of driving on Woodward avenue or the expressway in Detroit, Michigan. I grew up on 2967 Sturtevant off of Dexter Ave. My elementary school no longer exists. We moved to the Northwest section and I graduated from Mumford High School in 1961. I lived in Trumbull, adjacent to Bridgeport, CT for 33 years, where my children grew up. The bizarreness of my recurring dream pattern has to do with a repeated driving and confusion between Detroit and Connecticut. I drove from Connecticut to New York for the last five years before retirement, but I failed to record these experiences. I had two car accidents related to narcolepsy in asbout 7 years related to my sleep apnea prior to getting it treated. In the last, I went to New Jersey to see an associate and driving back to Trumbull I veered off the highway and managed to veer into a tree in the snow. Fortunately I was able to control the car at the last minute. Fortunately, this could be much worse.
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