I had a vivid dream after I was anesthetized for back surgery. I have partial amnesia regarding that day and the next in the hospital, but that dream - unlike others that I've had - has stuck with me. I can still imagine how one of the characters looked. It was so realistic that I struggled for awhile to figure out how those events fit into my actual life, which of course they didn't.

The anesthesia seems to have affected my thought processes for about three days after the surgery. I can't remember much about that period, and I remember several things taking place that may have bee imaginary - like the other guy in my room keeping me awake by playing familiar African music all night.

When I was "coming to" after a previous surgery, I felt intense terror, like I was dying. It was worse than any actual pain I've ever endured.

I dread the prospect of ever being anesthetized again.

I rarely remember my dreams, but the ones after anesthesia are easily recalled . Like you they aren’t nightmares, well not really, freaky and vivid and bizarre scenarios where everyone I know outside of the dreams act exactly how they would, but just in truly bizarre situations. In one dream my mom (an avid diyer and weird project finder) anyways she was looking for a new car, my dad was trying to talk her into a sedan even though he knows she likes little cars and really that’s how it goes every time my parents have looked for cars over the years... but anyways she manages to find a shell of a Datsun... no seats, no dash, everything is ripped out of the car except the engine.

And she went on to say that was the car she wanted, she could make her own car seats, my husband could make her a custom wood dash... just really eloborate with her plans for essentially a car frame and engine. Meanwhile I’m trying to figure out why a junkyard Datsun is on the same lot as brand new Audis and trying to tell the salesman he really should be paying us to take it off the lot....

After I woke up, I told my mom dad and husband about the dream, and we all had a great laugh over it because my mom agreed if she could find the shell frame of a Datsun with a working engine she really would by it and even said the same ideas from the dream that I didn’t share in retelling it. My husband had the same reaction as the dream and my dad as well, though he did point out it had to be a dream if we were at the Audi dealership, my mom has a bad habit of backing expensive cars into poles. So I should have realized I was dreaming if I thought my dad would let her anywhere near an Audi dealership.