Dream flashbacks accompanied by nausea (long)

Factual Questions
1

Every couple of months, for about five years now, I have this weird ailment where I will be doing something and it will trigger a faint memory of a dream or a group of dreams that will be just beyond reach of full rememberance. When my mind naturally tries to think harder and solidly remember the dream, my body temperature goes up, I start to sweat, and become sick to my stomach, this whole unpleasant experience lasting one or two minutes. I have them peridically throughout a single day.

At first I thought it was due to not getting enough sleep, and let the matter go. Then I had two severe instances that scared me and my wife.

One night my wife was awoken to the sounds of me growling in my sleep and thrashing around. Both my legs were covered in sweat. On another night a couple monts later, I groaned, bolted out of bed, lost my balance and fell to the ground. I couldnt get up and I couldnt form any speech. The day after each of these episodes was filled again with dream flashbacks, nausea, and cramps in my arms and legs.

I went to see a doctor about this, and my blood was taken. The results indicated that I was very healthy, in fact the standard of good health. I am 33 and between 125 and 130 pounds. But the doctor had no idea what was wrong with me without further testing.

I was pretty sure it was due to lack of sleep. Although I feel best after 9-10 hours of sleep, I have made sure that since the last sleep disturbance that I get at least 7-8 hours consistently. However, I woke up this morning with pains in my legs and later had those same periodic flashbacks and stomach aches, coming and going all day.

Does anyone have any idea of what could be wrong with me? My doctor didn’t know, and suggested that I should get a CAT scan, but I don’t want to go through the expense and hassle of such a thing if what is wrong with me can be changed from getting a little more sleep.

TIA

2

IMO it’s not lack of sleep - after all, it’s happened during your sleep, from your account, and if you’re really averaging about 8 hours you can’t be that short of sleep. Nor do the symptoms sound like sleep deprivation.

It seems to me (IANAD) you have either a physical or mental health problem. Go with the CAT scan to rule out the unlikely but dramatic things, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you end up seeing a therapist or psychologist. Do you have any unusual source or amount of stress or worry recently?

3

I was going through quite a bit of stress when I had those two major sleep disturbances, and I thought too that it was the stress that was causing the trouble. But I haven’t been under any real stress in weeks, and still the symptoms came back yesterday and are still with me.

No one I have talked to has been able to shed light on the problem. I guess I’ll have to take another trip to the doctor.

4

Ask your doctor if you might have low blood sugar. I have that and used to have the same symptoms (even to having experiences that triggered almost-memories, which I never heard anyone else mention before!) and when my low blood sugar was treated, the symptoms disappeared.

5

To me that means that while the causes of the stress have gone, the stress itself remains. By all means see the doctor again, but IMO you’re having problems working through the stressful event(s), and may need some help in getting the dreaded “closure”.