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bad dreams

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thought i would share this with you and see what you think about it. last night i had an awful dream. i was dreaming that i was having a really bad asthma attack and i couldnt move, couldnt get to the phone or to my help alarm. i eventually managed to move an arm and tried to ring an ambulance but couldnt make myself understood so they hung up! i eventually got through after 3 attempts but no one came. when i woke up i was having a panic attack and was sweating. my chest was killing, really tight and i had an asthma attack. anyone else woken like this?

edit - should also add that i was constantly doing my breathing exercises and trying to calm myself down by telling myself that it was a panic attack and i wouldnt die then it was mixed with thoughts of yep but its also an asthma attack i could....it was horrible and hope it doesnt happen again x

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YES!!! And I thought I was due for sectioning! lol.

Whenever I have an asthma attack in my sleep I wake myself up through a dream where I am either drowning, being suffocated, strangled, in a fire or just struggling - anything to do with note beong able to breathe.

I know this doesn't help you as it is horrible, especially if it is the first dream wakening thing you have had but I look at it like a survival strategy.

Yes!

I have always been terrified of suffocating/drowning and often have dreams where I wake up screaming because I dream myself into a situation where I can't breathe and have to force out some sort of sound to get help. Last weekend we went away and the first night the room was incredibly stuffy (can't open windows due to hayfever). I woke up from a dream about blue inhalers growing on trees because I couldn't breathe and had to hang out of the window taking my ventolin for a while.

Not had one as bad as those (they sound horrible!), but it does get into my dreams - can't work out if it's because I'm having symptoms or because I'm preoccupied with not being able to breathe properly, dream about it and cause them!

Last night it kept pursuing me. Had dream someone was listening to my chest while pressing very hard with their hand on the front of my chest, then told me I was wheezing (ha, like that would ever happen, given I never wheeze when anyone's listening) then I had to go to A&E (where I've never been) but walked in!

Then I was in a chemistry lesson for some reason and bizarrely the teacher was blowing a fan at my back but it made me really breathless, so asked him to stop but he didn't.

Somehow none of this woke me up - I'm very good at sleeping through anything though. Including a small earthquake once.

Annista profile image
Annista

When my asthma was first out of control I used to have dreams where I was locked into a cupboard with no air and couldn't breathe (probably more like memory because my sister actually tried to smother me when I was about 2, and later did lock me in a cupboard and stand outside telling me I was dying) and I always woke up with panic and big asthma problems. Fingers crossed, that seems to have passed but when my breathing is bad I always have nightmares to wake me up. Yuk!

Edit - Philomena I did the same thing when there was a small earthquake, which is absolutely typical - the earth finally moves and I sleep through it!

Annista, your sister sounds charming! Big sister I take it? My brother was relatively nice to me, though he did use to put a beanbag on top of me then sit on it - usually managed to get him off though, as even though he's 3 years older he wasn't that much bigger than me back then. Glad he doesn't try it now though!

With the earthquake, I thought everyone was winding me up when I went into school and they were talking about it! My family says I could sleep through the apocalypse, which is handy though also I think makes things sound less bad than they are with the breathing.

Annista profile image
Annista

Philomena, you're right - big sister, very jealous of new baby and made several attempts to get rid of same (I still have the scars), although she would sometimes protect me from others on the grounds that if anybody was going to bully me it was going to be her lol. I always thought that a big brother would be better fun (I was a shocking tomboy) so I hope that yours was!

Even worse than sleeping through the earthquake, I woke up one morning thinking that it was too early for my upstairs neighbour to be shifting furniture about, then went back to sleep. I woke again a couple of hours later to a very foggy day, and it wasn't until I got a call from the home my Mum lives in to ask if I could take her in for a couple of days that I found out that the 'fog' was smoke and the furniture moving was explosions at the Buncefiled depot. Doh!

hehe, not sure even I could manage to sleep through that Annista, though I was nowhere near Buncefield at the time, so you never know... I once slept through my flatmate dismantling and storing in the loft next to my bedroom a table and 4 chairs with metal legs. She was quite impressed I think.

My brother was pretty nice to me all things considered, mostly didn't mind me joining in with him in the garden etc (I was a tomboy too, used to steal his clothes). We were also both massively into Lego, and he did steal the centre of the pirate ship I'd been given to make his own ship bigger. It pales in comparison with the stuff my friends did to their siblings though (one hit her baby brother over the head with a roll of wrapping paper when she was 3, just to see what would happen, and another accidentally - or so she says - kicked her brother in the face when she was doing ballet practice.)

I dont seem to have many nightmares.

Yes, i do sleep sometimes honest!!

I often dream im at work, the dreams are very very vivid

Im at work but like i was about 25 yrs old & dreams are so detailed as well.

Then i wake up, thinking im going to be late & really confused cos im not 25, im in a different house & to make things worse, i then realise im 51, fat & cant work anymore.

I prefer the dreams.

Something really confusing is i dont know if i dream in black & white or colour. Now that really hacks me off.

howie - not sure if it was meant to do this but i laughed out loud at that lol. my dreams have always been vivid and its a bit like the tv prog life on mars- v colourful and realistic. one of the awful ones is when i wake up knackered after doing loads of housework!

Rarely dream in black and white. Mostly in colour. Most strangely when there is lots of bad things going on in real life. For a while there, I dreamt of the same town. So often, I could tell you what is in the windows of each shop. :)

Asthma-girl profile image
Asthma-girl

This is a strange dream I had once.

I was dreaming that I was on a deep sleep then something white moved very close to my face then I felt a blast of cold air and I woke up gasping for breath

No problem, its better laughing, even the word looks happy :)

I cant believe it. Everyone can afford dreams in colour but im making do with black n white (i think)

Its not fair, my brain must be too hard up to put colours in my dreams :(

Actually, perhaps i really am 25 and at work.

That way, cos everythings in colour now, this could be a dream.

So i could just be dreaming im 51 & fat.

Thanks everyone, i feel better now :)

Most of my dreams are surreal and always have me in frustrating situations. When I get to the point when there appears to be no way out I wake up usually in a sweat and struggling to breathe and feel more tired than before I went to sleep.

Dreamt last night, my hands were shaking so much from seretide plus serevent that making up diluting juice was so finicky, that I just served it straight from the bottle to my mum and aunt, who were a bit surprised.

PS My mum died in 1993 and the aunt in 2007. Why did I dream about them?

1. Probably because the aunt's mum always poured her diluting orange straight from the bottle as could hardly distinguish the taste of anything by the time she was in her 90s. due to chronic diabetes Type II.

2. I have been told I'm borderline for diabetes Type II.

3. The memory of trying to take soup with a spoon, in a crowded restaurant when on seretide and serevent will live with me forever. LOL

Edit - correcting spacing.

I do weird not sure if I am awake or asleep dreams, I dream I am getting up and getting ready and then I don't know if I am awake or aslrrp. In my dream I force myself to look in the morror and I then try and see what I am wearing - if I am not wearing the right pyjamas I know that I am asleep - I hate it when that happens I get panicky and have to try to wake up. Is very bizzare. I get the when I have high temp or when i come home from the hospital. Apparently could be stress related. Never knew sleeping could be so stressful.

I also often dream taht I am having a baby...so weird and so realistic.

Asthma-girl profile image
Asthma-girl

I had a really strange dream recently, I was having a really bad asthma attack I heard what sounded like voices but they were seemed very far away somewhere in the distances, next thing I knew Paramedics were with me and I heard them say very clearly lets bag her or we'll loose her.

When I woke up I was having an asthma attack I was wheezing and breathless

Was dreamin tonight (great as 1st time ive been to sleep since mon) for the hour and three quaters i managed to dream i was in an indoor play area and all the ball pit balls were over grown and were starting to suffocate me...woke up o2 had fallen of, sats were back down to 83%, very wheezy and short of breath...

....Moral of the story...

Well theres one of three, you choose

1. Dont sleep

2. Never go to an indoor soft play area agan

3. Dont let yor o2 fall off, dont go to soft play again

xx

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