Dreaming is good, BUT... (Kinda OT)

[kteague]

I never stopped dreaming. Whether they were brief snatches or involved stories, I can't really say. But I would say I'm a prolific dreamer, as I dream even when just "nodding off". But what always intrigues me is how having Periodic Limb Movement Disorder seems to be reflected in my dream life.

In PLMD there is a neurological glitch that causes stereotyped rythmic movements during sleep. Sometimes that glitch gets in my dreams with one exact phrase or sentence repeating endlessly like a stuck record until I can wake myself up. Last night the dream was pretty mundane, me and others trying to solve a mystery (crime?) and the clues we were trying to correlate were 2 shades of blue and tomatoes (????). I said, "If we can find the connection between the 2 shades of blue and the tomatoes, we can solve this." Then I said, "If we can find the connection between the 2 shades of blue and the tomatoes, we can solve this." Then I said, "If we can find the connection between the 2 shades of blue and the tomatoes, we can solve this." Then I said... well, you get the picture. After umpteen repetitions I became aware of being torturously "stuck" and kept telling myself to wake up. Was I ever glad when I did!

The brain is a fascinating thing. I was just wondering if there's any other PLMD sufferers who have experienced this? Or, does anybody who has not been diagnosed with PLMD but knows they "kick" a lot in their sleep have these kinds of dreams? Surely I'm not the only one. I guess my bigger question is does anyone with no movement issues do this?

Kathy

[jnk]

A few times I have awoke with the feeling that I have been caught in a loop for a while, but never that vivid or specific. I occasionally have nights with repetitive, evenly timed leg movements, but it only happens a few nights at a time maybe once or twice a month, according to my wife.

Just so you know, though, I am going to hold you personally responsible if I dream about shades of blue or tomatoes tonight!

[Julie]

Ha haha! What a crazy thing to be stuck on! I don't have PLMD, but do get into trouble sometimes when a dream becomes very tedious, e.g. when doing something or other in it does seem to get stuck, or at least become like tredding through molasses, and it feels hard and tiring, and repetitive in the sense that I have to keep trying to get through the stuck place. I wonder if it is really a PLMD thing (in your case) or just a flag that we're in trouble for whatever reason.

[timbalionguy]

Don't have the PLMD thing, but I do tend to get 'stuck', or have everything 'slow down' as Julie reports. I have a funny feeling that this may be the same kind of mechanism that is causing your 'repeats'.

I did have a dream, or maybe a nightmare a few days ago where my bathroom counter had become covered with cat litter and hunks of rotting meat the cats had buried in it. Someone had relocated the control for my shower on the wall above the sink, and the shower was running. No matter how many times i pushed on it (very mny times, maybe a dozen), the water would not shut off. I then realized the valve was jammed on. I pushed really hard on it, and the valve sprung a leak so bad it blew out the wall behind it. Thankfully, the dream ended at that point.

As far as blue and tomatoes go, sometime back in the '60's, when color TV cameras were a pain to set up for a show, some production person decided to play a mean trick on the video engineer (the person responsible for setting up the cameras, and is a 'hat' I often wear today). There was a bowl of fruit on a table on the set, and the engineer was matching the cameras to each other using the colorful fruit. This guy slipped a blue banana in the fruit bowl. There was a long pause from engineering. Finally, the video engineer came up the three floors from the control room, took a long look at the fruit bowl and said, 'That banana is blue'. He shook his head in disbelief and went back to the control room. (No one has done that to me....yet!)

[SuperGeeky]

I'll take moving around to sleep paralysis. Nothing worse than waking up absolutely frozen with a night terror. You know, like a 'rat on your shoulder' type thing. Or worse yet, screaming but you can't scream. Nightmare on Elm street.

I was thinking of a Infomercial venture. You know, show it in the middle of the night. The 'Restless Leg' weight loss Program. Lose weight while you sleep. Definite 'whiz bang' idea that will make millions.. You gotta make lemonade out of lemons

[kteague]

Often I can find bits and pieces of real life in my dreams, they're just so altered they're barely recognizable. For instance, I've been thinking about something artsy to do for my newly painted bedroom and have been considering if there's a shade of blue I could incorporate. And I've been lamenting the end of tomato season, almost mourning. So I'm not surprised either of these things showed up in my dream.

jnk - "caught in a loop" is an interesting description. Next time you remember it happening, ask your wife if you've been kicking. Oh, a dream about a really good tomato tops almost any other dream I could have, as long as before the dream ends I get to taste the tomato - and I wouldn't complain about that repeating! I am a tomato addict.

Julie - I've not had the bogged down sensation - sounds miserable. I'd really hope to wake up from that. I know dreams are thought to sometimes be revelatory of something we're going thru, I've just not had much luck spotting the correlations when there's nothing physical involved, like the sleep apnea ones where someone or something is always choking or smothering - those were rather obvious. Those totally stopped with effective cpap treatment. I've been having the "broken record' thing for well over 10 years, and it seems when the RLS/PLMD meds are working they go away, and return when the limb movements are acting up. The sentence or phrase being repeated is never the same from dream to dream - has even been a line from a song, or an instruction to an employee. Go figure. I doubt the mysteries of the dream world will ever be fully unraveled with any degree of certainty, but I for one am fascinated by the subject. Boggles my mind's need for logic.

timbalionguy - Funny "tricks-of-the trade" story. Hey, the night you had your dream, did you wake to have to run to the potty? I mean, cat litter, leaky water pipe erupting... take your pick.

SuperGeeky - I am so glad to not have sleep paralysis!!!!!!!!! I'll keep my own issues any day over that. Scary stuff. My son-in-law has that. About the infomercial - I'd need to hire a model for the infomercial for it to be believable as a weight loss solution. But hey, I could sell a video of me sleeping and kicking, under the guise of being an exercise video, or the latest dance craze. Will I owe you commission for the original idea?

[Sleepy Boy]

Hi Karen: I take Mirapex for my legs and the movement, it helps. I also dream a lot. Funny thing is-I dream about being at work, and I retired in 1997. I worked in a factory in Lansing Mi.-Oldsmobile-when it was still there, it's gone now. But I dream about being there at work. I see people I worked with, the machines, etc. and it's so real sometimes I wake up tired... It's kinda weird, it's been almost 13 years, but it's just like it was when I worked there...
Sleepy Boy (Larry)

[-SWS]

I said, "If we can find the connection between the 2 shades of blue and the tomatoes, we can solve this."

Kathy, I hope this somehow helps!


I don't have daytime RLS or PLMD during sleep that I am aware of. But the only repetitive dream I can recall was a "situational scene"---with me on a bicycle as a child. That situational comedy seemed so funny I kept replaying it in my dream state again and again. Then I woke up from laughing so hard after several replays. Now, years later, I can't even remember what was so funny about that dream... Go figure.

[kteague]

Sleepy Boy - Interesting that after dreaming of working you awoke tired. Guess those dreams can be convincing. I have woke up feeling the emotions of a dream like scared or upset.

SWS - The 2 shades of blue and the tomatoes are one and the same - I crown you The Mystery Meister! If I had the picture on the left in a good enough quality to enlarge, it would be my artwork for my wall. I love quirky art, and that picture is so me!

[SuperGeeky]

About the infomercial - I'd need to hire a model for the infomercial for it to be believable as a weight loss solution. But hey, I could sell a video of me sleeping and kicking, under the guise of being an exercise video, or the latest dance craze. Will I owe you commission for the original idea?

Kathy, the commission is all yours... But, you'll have to go before Infomercial King, Kevin Harrington (Cinti Native) of the Shark Tank.

Kevin was a classmate of my brother. They went to School together from Kindergarten to College. He last saw Kevin on Campus of University of Cincinnati. Kevin told him, "I'm not learning anything here". Kevin quit College and made $100 million.

Interestingly, Kevin is not atypical of my brother's classmates. I've learned never to underestimate Cincinnati and it's people.

Your living in a great city!!

Take care,

SG

[tattooyu]

Sometimes I get stuck in a loop, but I do not have any limb movement; believe me, my wife would notice!

Unfortunately, I was a sufferer of sleep paralysis. It hasn't happened in a long time, and since starting xPAP therapy, it may have only happened 2-3 times. Certainly much less than before, usually during a "bad" night which are few and far between (thank you Jeebus!). Such a frightening experience to wake during REM, but still have your body be paralyzed. Utterly terrifying. I rarely get that any more, and I haven't had a suffocating dream in a long time since starting therapy.

Last week, I had the most horrific nightmare I've had in a long time. In my dream, I was completely and utterly paranoid and enraged. Not sure why. Everything was exaggerated and overly bright in color. Absolutely horrible. The strange thing about dreams is that you can have two perspectives at once: 1) Experiencing the paranoia first-person, and 2) Knowing that I really am not paranoid and that it was not in my conscious nature. In part of my dream a bunch of Roger Rabbit/Tim Burton-esque cars were chasing me on a

Then, I had a follow-up dream. A young boy (perhaps my departed baby son, Andrew?) and I were standing outside a recycling facility. The boy said he needed to collect 500,000 pounds (or tons?) of garbage to recycle for a "good cause". Some of the junk in the pile were the cars that were chasing me. Same shape, but now they had drab colors. He then proceeded to show me the new tricks and secret of the new Windows 7. Yeah, that definitely was my son. LOL.

[Violet]

Sometimes, if I've had a particularly long hard day working on statistical figures, I find that I can have repetitive dreams about them. That is so exhausting.