Dreams....

I’ve been having a recurring dream lately.  Last night was the second night I dreamt about it.  It was exciting in that my medical knowledge is now starting to even translate into my dreams, but aside from that it was a little eerie considering this was the second time I had it. 

I dreamt I was having a cardiac tamponade.  I knew exactly how it happened, and what had to be done to save me from death.  Somehow a miniscule sized hole had been blown through my left ventricular wall (how, I do not know), and blood was pooling into my pericardial sac.  The scary part in my dream was that no one would listen to me (my fellow students were trying to argue my differential diagnosis), and the paramedics called to the scene refused to treat me.  I knew that I didn’t have much time left to live, and I knew the procedure that had to be done to resuscitate me.  Oddly enough, I had found a faceless inexperienced med student to aspirate the fluid out of my pericardial sac.  When I was guiding this person through the procedure (don’t ask how I knew what to do as I've never seen the procedure in real life), I felt as though I was both people – myself with the cardiac tamponade, and the student with the needle penetrating my chest wall.  Eventually the blood was withdrawn, and only then did the paramedics finally believe me, and took over from there.  I remember feeling just really scared and frustrated in the dream because no one would listen to me or help me…… but it was still cool to have the medical stuff in it.