"When you blame others, you give up your power for growth and change."
-- Dr. Robert Anthony
Life is Hard. You're Not Alone.
"No mud, no lotus"
ELDV
Kerr has also tracked the content of the dreams, their frequency, their relationship to time of death, and the subjective significance that patients and their families placed in them. Here, too, the results were striking. Because Kerr began studying end-of-life dreams when patients first entered hospice and were not all imminently dying, he could monitor the dreams over many months. He found a predictable pattern. As patients approached death, their dreams increased in frequency and their content changed. Earlier in their time in hospice, patients reported dreams about living friends and relatives; as the patients approached death, the dreams were mostly filled with deceased family and friends. It was also clear that the dreams involving family members who had already died provided the most comfort. On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest level of comfort, dreams with dead relatives and friends scored 4.08. Dreams with living friends and family provided much less comfort, scoring only 2.86.
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Consider just some of the findings from the small mountain of data on end-of-life experiences Kerr’s research team has accumulated. In his studies, Kerr found that close to 90 percent of patients report having at least one dream or vision that could be classified as an end-of-life experience. These dreams are distinguished from regular dreams by being especially vivid. When asked to rate the degree of realism of such dreams, most rate them ten out of ten—the highest degree of realism. Patients often report that they are “more real than real.” They occur both during periods of sleep and periods of wakefulness, and they are easily distinguished from hallucinations or bouts of delirium.
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Earlier in their time at hospice, patients reported dreams about living friends and relatives; as the patients approached death, the dreams were mostly filled with deceased family and friends.
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“Medically,” Dr. D said, “Lisa is much better. Her vital signs are strong, and she is not experiencing any nausea. This is the good news. The bad news,” he continued, “is that your wife called the nurses in the middle of the night to say that she saw her parents on a boat outside the window beckoning her to come. I know this may not make sense,” he went on, “but we see this repeatedly in our patients. When patients report a vision like this, they almost always die within a day or two. I’m so sorry.” My wife died a little more than twenty-four hours later.
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39% of ELDVs involved a theme of going away or preparing to go somewhere. Overwhelmingly, patients reported that they had gained a sense of ‘personal meaningfulness’ as a direct result of their ELDVs and, when the time came, these patients almost always experienced calm and peaceful deaths.
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some ELDVs are written off by others as delirium or hallucinations; ELDVs, however, have several features in stark contrast to delirium. For example, ELDVs are often experienced in patients with heightened acuity and clear consciousness; they are also recalled with extreme ease. In fact, many dreams are so clear and intense that the dream crosses from the sleep state and into waking reality. In contrast to delirium, ELDVs also result in a sense of inner peace and acceptance.
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American Journal of Hospice & Palliative Care, include the following facts:
- 45.3% of ELDVs occur during sleep
- 15.7% of ELDVs occur while awake
- 39.1%of ELDVs occur while awake and asleep (sometimes starting as an intense dream and continuing as a vision into waking hours.)
- 28% of ELDVs were of past meaningful experiences
- Nearly 99% of patients said the ELDV felt very real; not foggy or imaginary
- There was a notable absence of dreams featuring religious figures
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