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:

Wanda Burch

Dr. Larry Burk, M.D.

Sunni Ingalls

Diane Long

My Story