Monday, February 22, 2016

Breast Cancer Warning Dreams: Interview With Paulette Wyssbrod Goltz



This interview with Paulette Wyssbrod Goltz is the 5th in my Breast Cancer Warning Dreams series. The women featured in this series and myself were in a study profiling women  diagnosed with breast cancer in dreams and then in real life. The study, authored by Dr. Larry Burk M.D., was published in the May/June issue of Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing.

M&E
Can you tell us about yourself?
Paulette Wyssbrod Goltz:
I live in a small town on the Texas coast. I moved here when I went on permanent disability from cancer treatment. I also went back to school at that time and finished a BS in Psychology.  Currently I am a freelance writer. I write for three online platforms. I have a pen name I use to self-publish on Amazon, and I have written two novels (fiction) that have been sent to publishers. Basically, I am a writer/author!
M&E:

Can you set the stage of your life at the time of this dream that suggested you had breast cancer?
Paulette:
I was working as a manager for a large multi-family housing company. It was a high stress job because it was a rather new concept called LIHTC and there was so much more to the job than normal management. I called it working for Corporate America. I was single. I just moved back to Houston, Texas from southern California. I was making good money. Basically it was a time in my life when everything was going my way and I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted with friends, etc.
M&E:

Were dreams about health issues common for you or did this come out of left field?

Paulette:

This dream came out of left field. I have always had message dreams but never about health. In the dream a voice said to me “your mother has cancer, she has three months to live and you have a tumor in your right breast.” I remember waking up, turning on my bedside lamp, looking around my bedroom to see if anyone was there, and then at the clock. It was just after 2: a.m. I told my sister about the dream the next day.
M&E

How did the dream unfold?
Paulette:
A couple weeks later my mother did have cancer and was given three months to live. She actually lived six months though.
M&E
Did it move you to seek screening right away or did you wait?

Paulette:

I got regular mammograms. I did the yearly thing without fail because two of my older sisters had breast cancer.

M&E

What was the outcome of your screening?

Paulette:

All of my mammograms for the next five years were supposedly OK. I found the cancer. I was getting dressed one morning and noticed a patch of skin on my right breast that looked like an orange peel. It was the size of a silver dollar. The minute I saw it I knew. I went directly to my regular doctor and she said “it’s probably nothing” she did a breast exam. Also I had just had my annual mammogram and it came back OK. I told the doctor “I need to get another mammogram, I know what this is, I don’t care what the last mammogram said. I dreamt about this five years ago.” She kept trying to push the mammogram came back clean thing and she could not feel anything during the breast exam but she finally relinquished. So, she referred me to a hospital clinic, and they did a different type of mammogram where they put sticky things around the area of the orange peel skin. I waited for the results, and when they sent me in for an ultra-sound and tissue removal I knew I had breast cancer. Three days later it was confirmed. Cancer in my right breast.

M&E:


Did you tell your physician or his/her staff about the dream? If so, how did they respond?

Paulette:

Both my regular doctor and my oncologist did not respond to the dream when I told them about it.  I saw the same oncologist my mother had and I did tell her about the dream. She was a feisty old doctor and she listened but did not say anything. But, after the surgery, it turned out that the tumor had been growing for about five years, was grade 2, stage 2, and in three lymph nodes. The dream was in the late summer of 1998 and the diagnosis was November 2003. So the dream was correct. They only listened but did not respond.

M&E:


Do you believe your dream and subsequent actions you took as a result saved your life?

Paulette:

It would have been nice had it been discovered earlier because my treatment plan would have not been so aggressive. I took the right actions by following through with mammograms yearly and doing breast exams but none of that helped in finding the cancer. I have often thought that perhaps I should have told my doctor about the dream but then I seriously wonder what her response would have been since the mammograms came back clean.
M&E:

How did you come to be included in Dr. Burk's study?

Paulette:

I saw a CTA on Dr. Northrop’s FB page about being told about breast cancer in a dream.

M&E

Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers about your experience?

Paulette:

If you have a dream that warns you about a health condition, push it until someone listens to you. Regardless of their response.

M&E:

I couldn't agree more.

Other Interviews In This Series:





Thursday, February 4, 2016

Breast Cancer Warning Dreams: Interview with Diane Long


Diane Long


M & E:

Can you set the stage of your life at the time of this dream that suggested you
had breast cancer?


Diane Long:

I have a home based floral studio where I specialized in weddings, and often, in matters of the heart. In late January 2011, a client called to send flowers to a friend who was in hospice home care, and could I design a floral arrangement with more scent,like lavender and gardenias? She started to cry and was very emotional. She said she found me online and was looking at my website and just loved all the beautiful flowers of weddings that I had designed. She saw a picture of me. She stated that I looked so much like her friend,  who was always smiling and loved life, but simply said her battle was over now. A couple days later I had a dream that I was having lunch with my cousin and telling her I had the big C. However we were laughing and giggling and telling funny stories. So, when I woke up, it was not with dread, but just a fleeting thought of my last week’s client.

M&E:

Did the dream move you to seek screening or did you wait?

Diane Long:

A couple days later I came down with twenty-four flu like symptoms and fever, really sore muscles, which I thought that I had played too much tennis the day before. The following day I had a deep pain in my left breast with a red dot. Two days later the dot was now as big as a half-dollar.

I made an appointment with my medical group HMO doctor. The doctor on duty did a clinical breast exam felt no lumps, acknowledged it seemed like a mastitis infection and prescribed some antibiotics. She said do a follow up in two or three weeks if it does not clear up. I asked her about mastitis; because I thought that only comes from breast feeding and these girls have been dried for 14 years! I mention something about breast cancer. She looked startled, dismissed me, and said, "Cancer does not appear over night. “.


That evening as a result, I came home and started to research information on the internet (Google doctor:o), input all my symptoms and up pops an article that was posted just that same day from a research professor at University of Michigan about inflammatory breast cancer, how it's not that rare.  His article stated it’s just that the primary care doctors are misdiagnosing it as Mastitis.

M&E:

Did you tell your physician about the breast cancer warning dream? What was his response?

Diane Long: 

The next day I actually called a research physician at the hospital. We chatted for a few minutes and I told him about my symptoms. He got very quiet and simply said,  “Dreams are very creditable. Do everything you can. Your life depends on it!”.

M&E: Did you get in pretty fast?

Diane Long:  So the next day I made another appointment with a different doctor.  He agreed with the other primary medical group doctor and stated, “Cancer and tumors take years to developed and if you were my mother or sister I would tell you the same thing. Just take the antibiotics."


This time I believe I went mad dog, used some profanities and told him: “No, you have to research this! It could be breast cancer!". Then I just blurted out,

“Look I have dreams that have always guided me in trouble times, ever since I was a little girl. Please, I’m trying to save my life. I was told I need to have a punch biopsy and ultrasound, because sometimes you don’t see it in a mammogram, which I had just nine months ago.".
I left his office no better off than before I came; just a burning, seeping anger. Then I just thought - OK, I will just call every damn doctor in my Medical group.


M&E:

Like a number of women in the study, it took a lot of time to convince your physician to perform the tests your body was screaming that you needed. What was the outcome of your screening?

Diane Long:

The night before my needle core biopsy, I dreamed I fell into a killer whale tank and was yelling for someone to please help me! The massive black and white beasts were slowly circling around me. At that moment a tall handsome Asian man wearing a wetsuit jumped in and hugged me to him, then one of the smaller whales pushed us onto the landing. I woke up that morning in a very positive mood  I danced around the kitchen floor and told my husband and daughter about the dream, thinking yes I'm going to live, and I really held onto that dream.

A week later I was diagnose with ducal carcinoma in situ, multi centric,  grade 3. The good news it was not the aggressive invasive cancer that I had all the clinical symptoms of, but early stage 0 breast cancer. The survival rate for women with DCIS is very good, but the treatment plan was still a uni-lateral mastectomy.


M&E:

How did you come to be in Dr. Burk's breast cancer warning dreams study?


Diane Long:


The universe I think had a plan in this. A month before his research was ending, I Googled breast cancer dreams and women who ha​d dreams of b/c before they were diagnosed .The article, I I think, was about Kathleen's book and then Dr. Larry's research on the dream blog.I have always had pretty strong dreams that have guided me in hard times.

M & E:

My sleeping brain occasionally delivered precognitive information in the past, but the percentage was small. My breast cancer precognitive dream was startling and I haven't been the same since. The frequency of such information has increased, especially what is called waking dreams.. 

Dr. Burk talks about symbolic meaning in illness.. Do you see any in your case? What did you learn from your experience?

Diane Long:


My second dream, the one with the Orca whales, was really powerful. My emotional state during that period: huge and gigantic.
I think maybe the little whale was the stage O cancer ( which I didn't know yet) - big in terms of the word cancer but a small threat.
After that strong dream, it really center me, I did feel like I had a plan.

I started to seek out acupuncture therapy and drinking green teas. Incorporating  more yoga. meditating and writing in my journal daily.
As far as the learning experience, everyday always. long slow breath. Be so grateful that I m breathing. Seek out new experience, live life and be with people who make you laugh.

M&E:

 What is your life like now?

Diane Long:  I came out a resilient and strong. I completed in 2013 a 200 hour yoga alliance teacher training. Yoga and mediation saved me. I want to work with cancer survivors in the future because  haha I'm a force of nature, or so I've been told!



Diane Long was born and raised in Southern California. She recently celebrated her 30 year wedding anniversary. The couple has a twenty-seven year old son who has recently married and a nineteen year old daughter in college. Diane can be contacted at www.englishrosefloral.com.

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Breast Cancer Warning Dreams Study Participants Interview Series:









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