World Dream Bank home - add a dream - newest - art gallery - sampler - dreams by title, subject, author, date, places, names

Medicine & Surgery

Drastic procedures! Weird medical interventions in dreams, mostly surgery, but with a scattering of other invasive, destructive, insane techniques. Until I built this page, I hadn't realized how many dreams like this I personally had. Looks like my dreams have a low opinion of Western medicine. Aww, I wonder why?

RELATED TOPICS: weird dream diseases - diagnostic dreams - dream prescriptions and health advice - doctors & nurses - biotechnology in dreams - robots and cyborgs - See also the full INDEX OF SUBJECTS.

What this site is - Add your dreams! - How to read blurbs - Ratings - Copyright - Downloading - The World Dream Bank has 4000 dreams plus 1000 pages on dreamwork, shamanism, surrealism, fantasy, worldbuilding, creativity and genius. Site © Chris Wayan 2001-2022.


ALL THE ANIMALS: by Sharon Lynn Pugh; c.1986, an epic, species-bent, funny, feminist dream-within-a-dream
I'm a fox-woman. A human man courts me--insultingly. I dream my brain grows till my head hurts,
till it splits open, till light gets in. I rant at the last dragon. Strange but kindly, he gives me a picnic...
ART TAKES GUTS: by Wayan; 1982/12/26, ink, 11x14", a confessional doodle.
Why this site? Because if I'm around when you see my dream art, I feel like THIS...
BAND-AIDS: by Bagheera Pardus; c.1985, a lucid re-entered nightmare turned to joy.
Giant snakes chased me. I go lucid, turn & slay one. As I woke, the snakes cried. So I re-entered...
CAUTION: SNAKES, BEHEADING, REHEADING
BAT AND UMBRELLA: by David Small; c. 1960/3/1, a nightmare exposing deadly child neglect
I'm an orphaned bat in an alley in a storm. I mistake a broken old umbrella's ribs & flaps
for... my Mom! I unfold Mom, and discover...
CAUTION: LIFE-THREATENING CHILD NEGLECT
BLOODLINES: by Jenny Badger Sultan; 2005/7/30, 9/1 and 9/3; a compound dream-painting
A man obsessed with blood and death disturbs me, but I have to admit I share his interests...
Next the blood comes home; a surgeon wants to flay my tongue...
Next, witch-children rebel against a bloody flossing ritual and fly away on broomsticks...
A CAT AND HER GIRL: by Wayan; 1979/5/15, a deep little dream.
I'm a doctor in the future, trying to heal the neurolink between a girl and her cat...
CAT-SNAKE: by Wayan; 1993/3/6, a short dream fable.
I glue cat-legs on my snaky friend, despite the scare talk
from Christians sure that snakes never change...
CRICKET GOT IN: by Wayan; 1988/8/25, a dream of troubling gods.
A cricket actress I know makes it into the Dynasty of the Gods! Or is it the TV soap "Dynasty"?...
DETACHABLE PENISES: by Wayan; 2012/8/9, a brain-mapping conundrum dream
I don't have an erection. I have two. But how can my brain register feelings from an extra organ it's not built for?
CAUTION: PHALLIC SYMBOLISM? OR SOMETHING ELSE?
DREAMING TO SURVIVE: by Christoph Gassmann, 2001/8/13 & 2003/9/2: two lifesaving dreams
A spot on my elbow triggers a dream of being in a suicide clinic, getting the injection, starting to die. Yet
for two years, I put off having that spot checked! Only after a second warning dream do I go in to find...
DRUGGED, SHRUNK AND DAUBED: by Wayan; 2008/11/1, a dream-poem (Dreamverse #38)
I'm worried an alien charity is brainwashing an ex-prostitute. When I wake, she's still there--at 2/5 scale!...
ECTOPIC: by Wayan; 1996/7/3, a tragic transsexual dream.
My stomach ache is an ectopic pregnancy. The embryo's doomed. Surgery. And I'm a man...
EMBER IN THE BRAIN: by Wayan; 1983/3/31, a dream about old anger.
I'm the Incredible Hulk, forced to do emergency brain surgery. For the patient's burning from within...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE AND UNLICENSED MEDICINE
THE EVEREST MARATHON: by Wayan; 1986/4/12, a wild dream epic, part 3 of Unicorn Tag.
In the great race up Everest, I become an e-snake, cross 3 eco-bubbles, beg a
wary deer-taur to splice my spine, help Ariane my childhood crush, and solve
the Dream Equations. Climbing Everest takes not strength but... trust?
EXPERIMENT WITH TIME by Nancy Price; 1948, a shamanic-initiation dream declined?
I meet a girl who's 16 and 61, who tells me dreams are lives, not messages.
But then I must fly over a sinister parade...
EYEBOLT: by Wayan; 2005/10/1, a squeamish advisory dream
I’m on a train in Britain, sitting across from a respectable-looking woman with a large bolt sticking in her eye...
FLANNAN PREPARATION: by Wayan, 2023/4/12-13, twin mystical dreamlets
4/12: I get a mysterious energy node implanted in my belly. After convalescing I'll have new talents...
4/13: I'm altering my home to host two flannan, bird-girl spirits swift to hunt down the truth...
CAUTION: WITCHCRAFT, NUDE SPIRITS
FRANKENSTEIN'S ORIGIN: by Mary Shelley; 1816/6/16, the (hypnogogic?) dream inspiring a famous book
I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing
he had put together; I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out...
FREAKY DREAM, or, HEART IN MY STOMACH: by Ratiries Steelclaw; c. 2004/3/30, a dream comic
I felt like my heart was in my stomach. My friend Lyx opened me up & said "It is." She scolded me for eating it...
CAUTION: URP
THE GLOWING CLIT: by "Allison Skywalker"; 2009/6/21, a bizarre dream-surgery fragment
I'm a revolutionary hiding in the woods. I wake to find an erect penis crudely stitched onto my crotch...
GRAVITREE: by Wayan; 2008/3/21, a character-evaluation dream.
Just singing about the antigravitree lightens me. I bound around town. But then I find a diseased antigravitree is
holding me down. It's become a gravitree! Gotta clear out that deadwood, no matter how messy, if I want to fly...
THE HEAD FACTORY: by Wayan; 2014/8/24, a dream-poem on changing your mind
I toured the factory where they make the spare heads you put on and
take off to change your mind. Nothing creepy about it, nothing at all...
I AM THREE: by Wayan; 1956-58, my three earliest dreams.
My first memory is of being a wild horse and waking up to find I was suddenly a human child...
I DO, WE DO: by Victor Henderson; 1982/2/16, a dream & painting on swapping faces
A surgeon persuaded me to swap my face with another man's. But I found I felt compelled
to carry on his life, not mine--to pass for him. And when I demanded my face back...
IRONY: by Wayan; 2007/6/15. A vertical comicstrip burned into (naturally) an ironing board
I’m so sick of irony I decide to get my sense of irony surgically removed and replace it with...
CAUTION: PLAYING WITH FIRE
JAPAN, 4:34 A.M.: by Laura Atkinson, 2011/3/11, a dream warning of the Fukushima disaster
My Japanese friend Kotaro looks at me sternly and shoves his phone inside my chest. In my dreams, a phone
can mean ESP, so when I wake I check the news. A huge quake and tsunami have devastated Japan...
THE KEYRING OF ATTACHMENTS: by Wayan; 1974/5/31, a dream gone too far.
Swayed by sinister surgeons, I go all Buddhist and give up my attachments, including various organs...
CAUTION: DIVESTABLE GENITALIA
KOKO'S LOSSES: by Wayan; 1999/10/9, an elliptically predictive dream.
Koko the gorilla has had some terrible setbacks lately... the double amputation, especially...
MAFIA DENTIST: by Wayan, 2007/7/10; a predictive comic nightmare.
My dentist (a Haitian Mafia leader) sends a message to my dad (also a Mafia don) by dental cruelty....
MARTIAN AIRLOCK and JAGUAR MASK: by Wayan, 2015/6/22, twin shamanic near-nightmares
Jaguar Mask: a were-jaguar stuck in human form asks me to sew a new jaguar face on."But won't it hurt?...
Martian Airlock: I'm suitless on Mars. Freezing, choking, I dive into an airlock & slam the switch--but it's sabotaged...
MINOR SURGERY: by Wayan; 1999/2/25, a dream misinterpreted.
A man goes in for minor surgery and wakes up changed. I feel creepy, but for all the wrong reasons...
MOLLY'S PROSTHETIC: by Wayan, 1994/9/22, a dream predicting a mood drug will fail
My dad's new wife is a collie. Naturally, she wants a prosthetic arm. But she has no site to bind it to...
CAUTION: FURRY NUDITY, LEERING BUSINESSMAN, DOG WIFE
MY SPLEEN: by Ned, as told by Gayle Delaney, 1979 or before, a diagnostic dream-pun
DAY: I write, exploring my jealousy toward my wife, though I know she's not cheating on me.
DREAM: Doctors remove my spleen and wake it up! Now my spleen is out to do me in...
NEW BODIES: by Dreamy; around 2007/1/25, a transformation dream
My best friend and I qualify for new bodies. The new me is taller, but poor Ken may take years adjusting to his new...
NIGHT-BLIND: by Wayan, 2023/9/14, a dream incubated for another
My sister Miriel asks me to ask my dreams if it's safe for her to get cataracts removed.
I find myself in her body, biking at night--near-blind. Surgery has risks, but this is riskier!
NOT THROES; RECOVERY: by Wayan; 2013/6/1, a telepathic, diagnostic dream
In a grassy depression, a small animal is thrashing. Death-throes? No. Calisthenics!
But not under the animal's control. Someone's testing...
OTTER MEDICINE: by The-Fringe, a Crow healer, early 1850s; a shamanic dream with physical effects
I slept on an island in a scalding hot spring, praying for a dream. I got one--and woke up on the shore...
OTTER NERD FROM TITAN: by Wayan; 2012/4/15 & sequel-dream (2013/2/9), a dream-poem on social skills
A suspicious exobiologist warns me that otter from Titan may not be the amiable, nerdy celebrity it seems. But...
OVARIES: by "Ann", as told by Gayle Delaney, 1979 or before, a curative dream
Ann had inflamed ovaries and faced surgery. She asked her dreams for a second opinion. She dreamt of voices and images saying
"there's plenty of time for all this." She bathed peacefully in a river, meditated, gave easy birth to an infant, climbed a ladder to
her law degree. She woke cured. Her next doctor said "you must've been misdiagnosed; you just thought you were in pain."
CAUTION: SEXIST GASLIGHTING
PAY CUT: by Sara, 1973/6/23, a surgery nightmare with practical advice
DREAM: Surgeons cut off both my breasts--without my consent! I feel resigned, but the staff is upset...
DAY: I'm interviewing for a job offering $2,000 less than I make now. Told myself it's OK, but...
CAUTION: MALPRACTICE, MUTILATION
PIXY CONCUSSION: by Wayan; 2006/3/11, a diagnostic sex-dream comic, 9 p. (or illus. text)
Janet's obsessed with a creepy guy till her pixy friend Kay decides to "knock some sense into her cunt"--literally...
CAUTION: LANGUAGE, NASTY LOVE SPELL, PIXIE NUDITY
POKEY?: by Wayan; 1993/4/15, a dreamtale on my soul.
My lover's turned into a tiny living pull-toy, trapped ankle-deep in a wheeled platform. Can I free her?
SAW HER IN HALF?: by Wayan; 2008/8/28, a warning dream-poem, Dreamverse #15
A sorceror's apprentice describes a medical procedure her teacher plans.
Yow! I sure wouldn't trust anyone to try that on ME...
CAUTION: TALK OF BLOOD AND SEX
SELF-MADE COW: by Wayan; 2013/4/10, a surreal psychic dream.
I'm in Santa Cruz with my friend, a shocking-pink stuffed toy cow
with sewed-on accessories: big red lips, a floral wig, and a third eye. I wake,
draw the dreamcow--and my sister calls from Santa Cruz to sing me a song about...
SNAKE PACKAGE: by Jenny Badger Sultan; 2007/5/27
I am given a dehydrated package of dried snake to insert in my vagina. Inside it will unfold and come to life...
CAUTION: KIDS, DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!
SUSHI CIRCUS: by Wayan; 1982/2/17, an illustrated psychic dream.
To avoid being stabbed, I flee the Psychodrama Circus. Wisely--the place explodes!
But it's the filling of the sushi roll that really upsets me...
CAUTION: CANNIBAL MAKI
TERRIBLE DREAM, TACTILE DREAM (EVENING ESPRONCEDA): by S. Ramón y Cajal, c.1930; a nightmare
Doctors remove my upper skull and sew my scalp over my brain.
I can get around, if I stay upright, but I'm terribly vulnerable...
CAUTION: NIGHTMARE REFLECTS REALITY
THYROID: by Marc Ian Barasch, c. 1985; a set of life-saving diagnostic nightmares
In 1985 I was flooded with nightmares about heads and necks. They had an unparalleled intensity...
TWO-HEADED BEAST: by Wayan; 1997/7/31, a 5-page Gothic dream-comic (or as illus. text)
In Castle Frankenstein, will Mary Shelley wed Elmer Fudd? His two-headed monster has marital advice...
TWO WITCHES: by Melissa McClanahan, 2013/9/8, a short painted dream-comic
Two witches, maiden and crone, ride a flying monster made of two magically fused trolls.
But I know somehow that the two are really just aspects of a single powerful sorceress...
UNCONTROLLED TIME TRAVEL: by Jo; 2007/7/13, a time-slipping dream.
I’m a drug-addicted amateur dramatist. A fat balding businessman and I bring humanity back from extinction, but...
CAUTION: TORTURE (brief), ADVOCACY OF WAR, HUMAN EXTINCTION (offstage)
UNICORN SURGERY: by Wayan; 1996/5/2, a warning dream.
After over-editing a weird poem to Silky, my night mare, I dream that
well-meaning surgeons think a unicorn's a defective horse, and try to dehorn her...
VOLCANIC OATH: by Wayan; 1972/5/20; poem of a teenage Tolkien nightmare.
DAY: our ex-cat comes back, needing surgery. Dad doesn't want to pay. Big quarrel.
DREAM: Cats, birds, elf-girls; in their asteroid library, a tale of oath-breaking...
Now I'm the one who stole a tooth of jade from the volcano hall. Greed... erupts!
CAUTION: NUDE BIRD-ELF, DEATH BY LAVA
WEAVING MATS: by Jenny Badger Sultan; 2009/3/15; a predictive dream from the Box of Dreams
In a camp, women wove mats. I was tempted to try. But it was
months before I learned what they'd really been weaving..
WHAT'S IN THE BASKET?: by Ceridwens_Descent; 2007/8/4, a dream of embarrassing head loss
I cut off my own head! But I grew a new one. Only what to do with the old one? It's starting to rot...
CAUTION: SELF-DISMEMBERMENT
THE WHITE SUBMARINE: by Wayan; 1974/7/6, a dream of love and flood.
My girlfriend and I ride out the Great Flood in the White Submarine,
but there are romantic complications. Some things never change...


This topical list is one of many. See the full LIST OF TOPICS currently indexed.

World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sk - Sl-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites