COVID Dreams
Sunday night I did not sleep well. This is not a new problem for me as I’ve struggled with insomnia since childhood. But that night was an especially bad night of restlessness. Occasionally I’ve had infectious disease or medicine-related dreams and Sunday night was one of those nights. I don’t remember many details of the dream I awakened from with pounding heart. It was set in the midst of the current pandemic. It became a nightmare when I realized that COVID-19 actually had a 100% fatality rate — even those who had initially recovered eventually perished from the disease. I remember thinking at that moment that it was likely I had had an asymptomatic or mild case of COVID and therefore I would also soon die. At some point my dream progressed into a more typical zombie-apocalypse plot with those who had perished coming back as undead to terrify the living. Interestingly, a quick google search reveals that many are having “COVID dreams” these days.
Although it is tempting, I’ve never been one to assume that there is some deeper meaning in my dreams which could be discovered with the correct analysis. I believe that there are exceptions to this general rule but most dreams, in my opinion, are the outflowing of the mind’s creativity unbridled from the confines of consciousness. Dreams are likely important in the formation of memories but are also thought to function as “drills” to prepare for potential future danger. So it is not surprising that I would dream about potential dangers of COVID-19 when it has occupied a large part of my thoughts in recent months. There are a couple of other infectious disease-related dreams that made enough of an impression to stick with me to this day. My first year out of fellowship as a new infectious disease attending I had a nightmare about a patient dying of influenza. After that nightmare I remember being tempted to give every critically ill patient therapy for influenza during flu season even if they had a negative test. The next year I had a nightmare about an extremely unusual pathogen (Pythium) escaping from the microbiology lab.
Along the lines of dreaming, an interesting phenomenon I’ve noticed among some of my COVID-19 patients are reports of vivid imagery playing in the mind when the eyes are closed. These are not hallucinations occurring with the eyes open — only dream-like or nightmarish images seen when the eyes are closed. The first time I heard this I found it interesting but I didn’t think too much of it. Subsequently I read of a high-profile media personality who had COVID-19 reporting “wicked phantasmagorical experiences that are not dreams.” I immediately thought of my patient who had reported a very similar experience. And just recently another COVID patient told me he had experienced the same thing.
The most important COVID dreams are those that have been ruined by our current nightmare. Dreams of a paycheck or financial stability, of a successful small business, dreams of the way a wedding or a funeral should have been, dreams of seeing a loved-one again or saying a proper farewell to someone who has died. The proper response to these ruined dreams is not to try to explain. No explanation will suffice. All I can strive to do is “mourn with those who mourn,” as St. Paul instructs me. When I attempt to deal with the suffering I see in the world I naturally turn to my Christian faith. But this faith does not really give me “answers” or at least not satisfying ones. It does give me hope and strength though. One of my favorite thinkers is the Eastern Orthodox theologian, David Bentley Hart. He wrote a book called “The Doors of the Sea,” a reflection on God’s goodness in light of the catastrophe of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami which killed more than 220,000 people. He writes that when we see horrendous, meaningless human suffering we are not seeing the face of God but of God’s enemy. He writes that the Christian faith is a faith not of optimism but of hope, that as a Christian I am free to believe that God “will not unite all of history’s many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable.” I believe that much of what we are experiencing now is false and damnable. But I also know that it is Jesus who sits upon the throne, he who wept at the death of Lazarus and the suffering of Martha and Mary, he who says “Behold I make all things new.” I know a God who loves every single individual more than they could hope or imagine. Knowing this divine love has always given me the freedom to dream, has sustained me through many dark and trying times, and gives me a hope that no disease or suffering will ever shake.
