Thread: Increased Dream Cognizance In Illness?

2 nights ago

I go to sleep. Now, in present tense, I recall vividly a dream. It is analogous in its notion to what I encounter EVERY night before I fall ill with a sickness bug. For the sake of completeness, I'll say that it was a specifically a dream that I was in the Army, and I was begging to leave and stop fighting in the battle, because it was making me feel very nauseous.

This was clearly where I physically felt nauseous too. I know why there was the Army connection, it was because before going to bed I was playing an Army PC Game. Alike all dreams before my illness really begins to show its symptoms, it is.. 'frustrating'. The dream was 'frustrating' somehow, because I could not leave this battle. Somehow all of these pre-symptomatic dreams are 'frustrating' to me some how.

1 night ago - next day

I recall two dreams. For the sake of completeness I may as well briefly outline them:

First Dream: I find myself getting a tattoo done by my local barber/hairdresser! It then proceeds to follow to a point where my father is complaining to me, telling me I had it put on the wrong arm, it should have been put on the left(!)

Second Dream: I find myself walking around an American city, foreign to me. Just exploring, not much more.

--

None of these dreams were really lucid, but I recalled them really quite detailed and vividly. The fact that I'd even recall 3 at all in 2 nights is prodigious to me, vivid or not.

My question is: do you think that this unusual (at least for me) stint of increased recall (and its quality) could relate to myself being ill?

Transiently considering the ``external validity'' of my 'findings', I have correlated this heightened awareness of dreams to various other situations and environments I have been in, where I am about to be sick at night. Though not necessarily all cases resulted in good recall AFTER the sickness, I always had the vivid, 'frustrating'/'irritating' dreams before that sickness.

A vague, logical explanation for this could be that in being ill I cannot rest as well as I normally could when healthy, hence my consciousness remains more in sleep?

Many thanks to those who cared to read this behemothic post.