Multiple sclerosis is not very conducive to a good night’s sleep. Spacticity was my biggest problem until the baclofen pump relaxed my spasms, rigid muscles, and hyper-reflexivity. I was essentially a limp dishrag immediately after the pump implant, but the relief from spacticity and actually being able to sleep through the night was so amazing that even if I’d never improved after, (I did), it still would be worth it.
I don’t mean to imply that spacticity was the only obstacle, just the biggest. I still have an MS bladder that defies even the best planning and occasionally, whatever the opposite of fatigue is, wakes me up at odd hours and keeps me awake.If MS could just be a little more considerate and schedule fatigue during evening hours only, that would be great. It is, however, anything but considerate and accommodating.
There are a lot of perks of being able to sleep soundly again but the one I want to talk about today is dreaming. I dreamed when spacticity was at its worst, but very inconsistently and I rarely had a complete, undisturbed dream, or could remember my dreams in any sort of detail. Usually, when I dream now, (or pre-MS), I’m aware that I’m dreaming, but I can’t direct the action or otherwise control it………..so lucid? Not lucid? Lucid…ish? Meh, it doesn’t really matter. What does matter (to me, anyway) is that I sometimes dream about myself with MS. Do you?
Most of my dreams are of the…..normal(?) variety. Being late for school (even though I haven’t been to school in decades), being unprepared for a test, or a recurring dream of having an apartment in another city with important things in it that I’ve forgotten to pay the rent on, etc, etc. Like I said, most of the time I’m aware I’m dreaming but it’s like I’m watching it as a member of the audience, shouting out advice, or insisting that the main character would never do that, or let that happen.
My multiple sclerosis dreams seem to come in three flavors. Sometimes I’m surprised by my disability, (what I was once). I’ll be behaving normally in the dream, walking, running, that sort of pre-MS stuff, when I’m somehow reminded that I shouldn’t be able to do that (maybe I hear myself shouting from the audience) and like Cinderella at the ball, I struggle back to my wheelchair before the clock strikes midnight. It’s a little odd that my wheelchair is even there in a walking dream, but such is the nature of my, “Surprise!!, you’re crippled.” dreams.
Sometimes I dream about myself having MS and being aware that I have it, (what I am now). I dream about myself in a wheelchair, being fatigued, or dealing with uncooperative limbs. I even dreamed recently about being in a small fishing boat in my wheelchair and yelling from the audience, “What a load of crap. How did you even get the chair on that boat? Is it even strapped down? Just wake up! This is completely unrealistic!”.
Occasionally, I dream of getting better, (what I want to happen). One dream that sticks in my mind is of me walking on a trail in the woods using two trekking poles. In the dream, I’m aware that I have MS, but am recovering somehow, (the dream is a little vague about the “how” part). I stumble on the trail and run a few steps to keep from falling and then keep running slowly and awkwardly, laughing almost hysterically at the return of an ability that had once been taken for granted.
I know they’re just dreams and I treat them as such. Walking, much less running, may never be in the cards for me. As long as they keep it reasonably realistic most of the time, I’m ok with my dreams hoping for the future too. I mean, it’s my unspoken, subconscious hope after all, right?
