Some people have recurrent, often unsettling, dreams about being back in school: they missed attending a class for an entire semester, they forgot about a final, etc. Some people dream about losing their teeth or falling through indefinite space. The stressful dreams I remember most often are work-related. Sometimes, they’re so ridiculous that, in hindsight, they’re just funny. Sometimes, they could really happen. This past week, I had two work dreams. I don’t know why I had them or what they mean, if anything. Both were mostly of the ridiculous variety, but elements of reality in them.
Work has not been “bad” for me recently. I had that spurt where I ended up essentially working every other week for a month and half or so. (I won’t lie: it was glorious, and I do kind of wish that I could’ve kept that going forever.) I finally had a surgery day again last month, which makes me happy. I haven’t recently had any overtly terrible client interactions or any cases that didn’t sit well with me at the end of the day. I did get to be a bit mildly stressed about money for a second there because July was quite expensive (school taxes were due, I had a $1200 car repair, a trip to urgent care and a pricier bill than usual at work because I bought 6 months of preventives for two > 50 lb dogs on top of my usual student loan payments and regular life things). In the end though, I can’t complain about anything.
For whatever reason, I just wasn’t feeling work last week. I didn’t want to go. At all. Maybe it’s because Justin was stressing about overloading himself at work (as usual for him) all last weekend. Tuesday morning, I had a work dream that started off with frustrations about doctor schedules and ended with an appointment for an older, homeless woman (that’s right- a human, not her dog or her cat) who fell and might have broken her hip. My practice manager casually said that I could see her, and there was a bottle of methadone I could use for her. Obviously, I lost it because I cannot treat a person, and I certainly cannot give methadone to a person for their own use. In the dream, I interrupted a meeting between my practice manager and lead doctor to very vocally express my displeasure and confusion over this appointment. Our lead doctor then announced that he knew this woman, as he had gone to high school with her years ago, and he left to go speak with her. That’s where the dream ended.
The scheduling part of the dream could very easily be a real-life scenario (and may well become one at some point), but I know I would never have an actual person on my appointment schedule as a patient, even I occasionally have clients joke about it. Later in the week, I had another work dream where my bedroom was also our first exam room. I either woke up late one morning, or my first appointment may have been really early. In my pajamas still, I ended up in my bedroom/exam room with a VERY decrepit old cat, his owner and her parents. I had recently euthanized her grandmother’s cat, and she wanted my opinion on whether her cat would survive the next year that she would be living abroad and her parents would be caring for him. Honestly, this cat didn’t look like he was going to survive the next week. The parents ended up arguing with one another after I shared my thoughts on the cat’s current state while the daughter sat off by herself just crying. At the same time, a large group of people was crowded outside the open exam room door, impatiently tapping their feet. I popped my head out to see what was going on with them, and they informed that they were there for an appointment, but it was a drop-off, and they really needed to be going. I asked why they hadn’t stopped at the front desk, as someone there could help them. I guess they must’ve gone back to front desk because that was our only interaction. Meanwhile, back in the exam room, we agreed to send out blood work on the probably dying cat, and the parents started giving me a hard time about filling a laundry list of medications for him. I wanted to see the blood work first, as I wasn’t sure what exactly he was going to need. We also were 25 minutes past the end of their scheduled appointment, and there was just no way I could get multiple medications filled for them right that moment. I don’t know if they left or what happened to the cat because that’s where the dream ended. I do remember feeling stressed when I looked at the clock on the wall in the dream and saw how far behind I had fallen.
I don’t recall ever having the exact same work dream twice, but I do frequently have dreams about two hospitals I have previously worked in. The one hospital I worked at was long before vet school, and I was mostly a kennel kid. Periodically, I have dreams that I picked up a shift in the kennel, although in these dreams, I am typically my current age and am a licensed veterinarian. I may or may not end up working in treatment with my old boss +/- some of the other vets I worked with so many years ago, and a I may or may not end up needing to see appointments or do a surgery for them. It’s always a little bit disorienting when I wake up from those dreams. I also often dream that I ended up going back to work at the second vet hospital where I worked after graduating vet school. Usually, much of the old staff, including my veterinarian colleague, have also gone back, and it’s always just as horrible of a place to work as it was in real life. I always wake up feeling confused about how we all ended up there again because pretty much all of us, associate doctors and technicians, left within the same 4-5 month timespan in 2015. On occasion, a group of us will get together to catch up and appreciate our escape from that practice. We have a strange bond from shared trauma there.
I’m not currently dreading this upcoming work week. Hopefully, it’s uneventful, and I don’t have any wild dreams about work in the coming days. Even when work is “going well” these days, I find myself just waiting for the end of the work week to enjoy my 2.5-3 days of weekend. I don’t even do anything particularly fun or exciting with weekends recently because the air feels like soup outside; I’m just glad to not be at work. In years past, I never thought I’d feel this way about being a veterinarian. I always imagined that I was going to absolutely love my job for my entire career, not mind if I got stuck at work or didn’t take a lunch because I was making a difference for a patient and that I would just keep doing this job until I physically couldn’t handle it anymore. Although there is nothing else I want to do as my job, veterinary medicine has truly become just a job to me. It’s not my life. I can’t let it be my life.
“Strange, I thought, how you can be living your dreams and your nightmares at the very same time.” ~ Ransom Riggs, Hollow City
