31. Dreams and Cancer

Nighttime Battles

As well as the daily struggles to fight cancer and handle radiation side effects, I experienced nightly struggles: troubling dreams full of conflict. 

One night, in my first dream, I had taken a job in a park, perhaps Yellowstone National Park, where Mary and I had lived, worked, and volunteered. I felt lucky to have been assigned employee housing. As I walked into the bedroom, I was suddenly inside a vast aquarium, swimming along the bottom. Looking up, I saw a shark circling above me. I watched him (I knew the shark was a male) swim closer and closer and then open his big mouth to show me sharp, deadly teeth. He kept approaching until he was all I could see. As he closed in for the kill, I punched him in his long snout and yelled, “Oh, no, you don’t!”

I climbed out of the aquarium, walked into the kitchen, and discovered a mountain lion. He was eating from a house cat’s tiny food bowl. He lifted his head, stared at me, and twitched his long tail. He was big and deadly, and I knew he was preparing to attack. I ran at him, waving my arms and again yelling, “Oh, no, you don’t!”

Then Mary nudged me awake. She said my grunting and struggling had awoken her. I told her about the dream. She listened and asked, “Do you want to put your head on my chest?” I did, feeling her warmth and listening to her heartbeat. Minutes later, I was asleep and dreaming again.

In the second dream, I was hiking by myself but knew that Mary was somewhere behind me. I was picking my way along a rugged trail over lots of downfall. I entered a clearing and had a choice of routes.

Photo by Mary Strickroth

I decided to walk over to a cliff for the view. When I reached the cliff, I looked back, didn’t see Mary, and thought I should retrace my steps and find her.

When I backtracked to the trail, I found it filled with wild dogs of all shapes, sizes, and colors. I stopped and stood there, wondering if I should alter my route and avoid this encounter. But Mary was somewhere back on that trail, and I would not let these wild dogs deter me from reaching her. I started toward them. They stared at me and licked their lips in hungry anticipation. I sensed danger but ran toward them, shouting, “Oh, no, you don’t!”

Mary woke me again. “You were making more noise.” 

I told her about this dream, and she said, “There are a lot of predators after you.”

The next morning, after journaling about those dreams, I decided to look for other dreams I had recorded in my journal since my prostate cancer diagnosis two months ago. I found more dreams and recurring themes: a journey, unknowns, danger, loss, and fighting. I wondered if these dreams and themes were cancer-inspired. Was that possible? Had that been studied?

I headed online and first explored how dreams occur. Most, but not all, of our dreams occur during the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep, according to an article by a sleep medicine physician on the Sleep Foundation website. During REM sleep, our eyes move rapidly (hence the name) behind our closed eyelids, our brains are very active, our heart rate increases, and our breathing is irregular. We experience a loss of muscle tone, and that’s good: We can’t move around in our beds as much as in our dreams.

The National Library of Medicine presents a study of the sleep and dreams reported by cancer patients in focus groups. Some participants were scheduled to begin or were undergoing treatment for cancers, including prostate cancer. Others were in posttreatment follow-up. The participants had experienced a variety of treatments, including surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, hormonal therapy, molecularly targeted therapy, and multimodal treatments. The researchers transcribed and analyzed the content of the focus group discussions for significant themes.

Their analysis found that participants reported causes of sleep disturbance common in other populations. However, participants also reported causes that could be unique to cancer populations, including abnormal dreams, night sweats, and problems with sleep positioning. Worry or fear related to diagnosis, prognosis, or recurrence was another major cancer-related theme.

I didn’t find much other scientific evidence to support the idea that a dream’s content is related to a specific health issue, such as cancer. However, I found experts who stated that dreams can help us access things we’re not consciously aware of. For example, the director of the Dream & Nightmare Laboratory at the University of Montreal in Quebec told Discover Magazine that dreams and nightmares are “dipsticks” into our unconscious and can tell us something needs attention.

The dreams I was attending to revealed that I felt attacked, as Mary had noted, by predators. Having predators as the main characters made sense. I had spent time observing predators in Yellowstone taking the prey they needed to survive. Their actions were natural and necessary, not negative. In Yellowstone, everyone eats.

But in my dreams, I was the prey. I figured that prostate cancer was portrayed by the predators I faced and feared. I was fighting back but didn’t know if I’d win. If I didn’t win, I could lose my life and connection to the people and places I love. That life-ending dream content seemed consistent with days of facing a life-threatening disease.

Whatever their source, my intense dreams revealed that this fight was more ferocious than I allowed myself to admit during the day. At night, during REM sleep, my dreams took charge and painted inescapable pictures of high stakes and deep danger. Those dreams scared me but also reminded me and motivated me to keep up the fight in the days and months ahead.

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For stories of moments Mary and I have shared in wild lands and with wildlife, check out my previous books. In the Temple of Wolves is the bestseller with more than 500 five-star reviews on Amazon. Deep into Yellowstone is the sequel and won a Gold Medal in the Independent Publisher Book Awards. The Wilds of Aging, the prequel and winner of a National Indie Excellence Award, takes you on a journey with me into wild lands and aging. Click on a title above for a signed copy from me, or visit Amazon for unsigned paperback copies, ebooks, and audio CDs.

Disclaimer

I’m a writer, not a doctor. I’m very qualified to write stories about my journey. I’m not qualified to give—nor am I giving—medical advice. As these stories show, Mary and I came up with many approaches to deal with my cancer. We always ran our ideas by our medical team to see how the approaches fit medically. Everybody’s body is different. What worked for me may not work for someone else. If something in these stories generates an idea of an approach that you or someone you know might use, first consult with the medical team.