My dreams are telling me not to do something, really uneasy feeling.

[smallkin]

I might sound batshit and it's something I don't want to say to people out loud for fear of sounding as such, my husband has made me out to be totally insane when I try and talk about it with him so here I am, hoping for some clarity.

In short, I have a wisdom tooth that has been playing up for years and repeatedly causes awfully painful infections where I can barely eat for weeks and need antibiotics to clear, I finally got referred for surgery a few months ago and it's booked in just before Christmas. It's a bottom wisdom tooth and is awkwardly grown through so I require general anaesthetic in a hospital setting for the surgery as opposed to in the dentist.

I have had, probably 7 or 8 dreams in the last fortnight. The majority have been of my brother, who passed away years ago, saying don't do it sis, I'd love to see you again but not now, you aren't going to wake up, I promise you, I need you to listen, you really need to listen. That sort of thing, It was quite emotional because he was very, very adamant about me listening and not disregarding the fact that I'm dreaming this. The other couple of dreams have been of a little girl, who I don't recognise the face of at all but calls me mummy and I had a stillbirth a couple of years ago. And they are saying things like mummy it's not long until I get to see you everyday, I've missed you mummy, I love you mummy and lots of laughing and asking me to catch them and running away.

Totally weird, and I completely get that it's a dream, the logical part of my brain knows this. I've just never had dreams like this before, I've never had a dream that real feeling, I've never had my brother talk to me in a dream at all and it seemed so real. I'd feel less freaked out if I was anxious about the surgery, but I'm not. I've had general anaesthetic four times and I'm not scared of it. If anything I've been excited to get the sodding thing out.

Am I mental?! I feel such unease about it. Please be gentle, I'm not usually the woo type..

I’d postpone the operation. I do believe in messages from another place but whether this is just your own anxiety playing into the dream is uncertain

I have a wisdom tooth that has been playing up for years and repeatedly causes awfully painful infections where I can barely eat for weeks and need antibiotics to clear

OP you say this has been a problem for years and it sounds like you have avoided treatment due to your anxiety about it. After trying to avoid facing the problem for years, the time has now come where the procedure is imminent. You are now trying to find ways to further put it off.

If you don't want the treatment due to your fears then you can cancel and live your life in pain. Or you could go ahead with the treatment and get it sorted once and for all.

The dreams are just that - dreams, not reality, not your brother visiting you, just your brain trying to deal with your anxiety.

So on one hand, I believe this is your anxiety about the operation playing through. Earlier in the year I had a terribly dramatic dream that I was in a plane crash, I could see the water rushing towards me, and I knew which city we were heading to. But we went there anyway, and, yay, there was no crash.

OTOH, I once dreamed that my gran told me the lottery numbers to win £10. I woke up, wrote them down and DID win £10. I have zero explanation for this and my parents looked at me like this 😵🙀😲 when we watched the numbers come through and I’d said that she had told me which ones to write.

So in conclusion I have no idea what I would do. Hope that helps.

Logically I would think it was just my anxieties coming out in my dream, but anxieties reflected in dreams are not usually this straightforward - they normally are a bit weird and with strange things happening. This is too specific so I would not go ahead if I were you. Is there an alternative course of treatment - could you get a root canal instead?

I would postpone. I wouldn't do it. Listen to your gut.

Don't know about the dreams but I had my wisdom tooth out at a dental hospital recently and it took a good 2-3 weeks to get back to a reasonable level of comfort with eating etc, I never had to be under GA either, just local was offered. Is that an option for you? If I have to get others out in future I will not be doing it so close to Christmas, I love food too much!

Sorry for your losses 💐

I think you are anxious and looking for a way to procrastinate dental treatment again. Your mind knows that the level of anxiety you feel is disproportionate to the true level of risk, and is fabricating scenarios that would justify your fear and make it reasonable to postpone doing what you know you need to do.

You will feel so much better if you just push through the fear and get it sorted.

I kept putting off having my impacted tooth extracted. In the end my salivary gland became infected and the whole side of my face swolled up so I looked like the Elephant Man. It was hugely painful and distressing and I was very glad to just get the bloody thing out eventually.
However, it was extracted without general anaesthetic -in the end. So ask if that would be possible.
But if you keep postponing, you are putting yourself at risk of further infections

Pity she didn't give you the numbers for the £1million jackpot! 😂

This.

I dreamt about Jimmy Saville last night. Not sure what that says about me.😕

I agree with the pp above who suggests your anxiety about this straightforward procedure is triggering your grief over your brother and baby.

The Don’t do it responses are really daft in my view.
Someone with anxiety dreams should never be urged to “trust their gut”. We’ve moved on from the dark ages.

You need the tooth removed or risk serious infection, sepsis, decay of healthy surrounding teeth, bone erosion, infection of jaw and surrounding tissues.. to name a few likely consequences of Not Doing It.

Dreams can be unsettling but they are not premonitions.

You’ll be fine, youre not insane: you’re struggling with some unprocessed grief and trepidation about an operation that’s all x

This.

The people who think that the OP has somehow had precognition of her own death or a communication from her dead sibling should be ashamed of themselves for pushing their own underthinking, superstition and mumbo-jumbo onto a vulnerable and apprehensive OP.

OP, talk to someone about exactly what is frightening you so much about the surgery, but don’t postpone. Can’t see if you said this was your first GA? I had three last year — I get that GAs are frightening, but the risks are tiny, and your wisdom tooth is having a seriously detrimental effect on your health and happiness. Your brother and your stillborn baby are not speaking to you from beyond the grave. You’re so frightened of surgery that your mind is creating an ‘alibi’ to give you a reason not to have it.

Don't do it - there will be an alternative.

I knew someone young who went in for a knee op and didn't wake up.

Something is warning you OP. If I were you I wouldn't do it right now. However you will still have the problem tooth, so there's that to consider.

I know! I even gave the £10 to charity (and this was about 1995 and I was a teenager so that would have kept me in Hooch for a weekend!) in the hope that she’d see fit to send even a few thousand my way. But since that night, nothing! Way to raise my hopes gran.

I am not at all expert in this, but from what I understand from the dream analysis that I have encountered is that dreaming of dead relatives can likely indicate themes of emotional projection. If the relative in your dream expresses feelings of sadness or anger, you may actually be feeling these emotions toward how you feel about yourself.

So in this case, the people in your dream are not the actual people that you can see, they are an extension of your own emotions (in Jungian dream analysis, most of the characters in a dream are just representations of your). And therefore they are not necessarily prophetic, just a reflection of your own emotions. This would make sense because you are admittedly anxious about the op.

I can't believe someone has suggested a shamanic journey instead of just facing your fears, perhaps writing them down (so do three versions of writing, this is taken from narrative therapy- write out all your fears long hand, just as much as you can in 20 min, just all the awfulness, unsayable things, then do the same the next day, on the final day write out a new version of your story in which you have a successful operation and wake up without this pain and infection) and then getting on with it.

It might be better to do the OP in the New Year, with waiting lists and delays, I would go now.

If you really believe your brother lives an alternative life watching you every second of the day, then I suppose not doing it makes sense, but it doesn't make sense to me, I think it's your anxiety and grief all mixing together to make a plausible scenario in your brain.

That said, you aren't obliged to have the OP. I would, as I wouldn't want the infection over Christmas with the NHS the way it is currently, I'd get a solution to this asap.

Just because some people have a different opinion on subjects to you it does not make them under thinkers. At the end of the day the op asked for opinions and that is what she has got. Unless you personally have professionally assessed the op you and others do not know these are just anxiety dreams. Yes, they may well be but just because you’re close minded does not mean people who aren’t are stupid either. No one should be ashamed of their own opinion on this and you don’t get to dismiss other people’s personal experiences

I'd go with local anaesthetic just in case! My mum had her entire top row of teeth pulled out awake.... if it's numb enough, you won't feel the cut. She had then removed for implants. They did it all awake.

I'm not woo either but that I wouldn't ignore. Don't know just sounds so detailed.

I had an upper wisdom tooth taken out at the dentist with just local anaesthetic, I wish I had deeper sedation or something cause it was horrible. I'm sure you'll be fine, like you say you've had GA before.

I had one out under general anaesthetic which was absolutely fine, and one under local which was horrendous took ages and the woman that did it cut the inside of my mouth trying to hit the tooth and missing, I was black and blue and looked like a hamster for days.

The dreams would be a bit alarming, but the anaesthetic will be comparatively light and you are in the best place in hospital, so that in the unlikely event anything goes wrong there is all the necessary equipment to hand.

But dreams are often symbolic aren't they??
thinking laterally for a moment here...you are about to have your WISDOM tooth removed, does that have any other meaning to you? Dreaming about teeth falling/ coming out is often understood to be about a loss of control - so is there anything going on for you in your everyday life where you're feeling this? or making unwise choices..?

the obvious, non-symbolic meaning of this dream is that you are in danger and will die if you go ahead but there could be a more abstract way of interpreting it.

of course sometimes a cigar is just a cigar etc, but there may be another way of thinking about it.
How long would you have to wait if you backed out now?

It’s strange your gran wanted to prove her existence to you like this but only gave you the numbers to win £10

Like, I’m sure it wasn’t a “message from beyond the grave” - I’m a very non woo, sensible person, but how could I have known to literally write down the numbers I dreamed? I’m sure it’s just a coincidence but it’s so odd. Literally in my whole 45 years, the oddest thing that has ever happened.

Which ‘personal experiences’ make your opinion that the OP should heed supernatural warnings about her tooth surgery from dead relatives anything more than irresponsible scaremongering at the expense of someone vulnerable?