5- Stories from a Pandemic Part II: Night Flight to San Francisco
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Why does the episode open with a reminder about healthcare privacy laws?
At the Nocturneist, we are careful to ensure that all stories comply with healthcare privacy laws. Details may have been changed to ensure patient confidentiality. All views expressed are those of the person speaking and not their employer.
Where would we be right now in the midst of COVID-19 without doctors and nurses, without bench scientists and public health workers? Could we even imagine a way out? Amidst the fear and uncertainty of the pandemic, medicine and science have helped us fight this invisible foe and shielded us from hopelessness and despair. At the same time, artists everywhere have lost their jobs, their audiences, and their ways of making. This isn't new, of course, but the pandemic has rendered the plight of the arts more visible than ever before. What is lost in a world where the arts are allowed to flicker and die? Does art save lives too? We hope you'll enjoy this episode. Night flight to San Francisco.
Hello, Noctonists. Uh my name is Gunther Urbach. And I wanted to share a dream. I had two, three days ago Uh In which I was in the O R. Uh preparing to do the surgery. Uh it was a very tense situation. Uh I was told the person whose brain I was to operate on. I was uh a very important person, a very powerful person. I was not told the name Ah and all I was told was to to do the surgery. And uh in the dream I am uh dripping with sweat, I am uh feeling palpitations in my heart. And then I look through the glass and I see uh somebody looking into the operating theatre Who is Clearly The wife of the men Whose brain I am to operate on. And mind you, uh I have been told Get it out. That was what somebody is telling me is get it out, get out the bed part, which is what we do in surgery.
Ба і вас клея то ми. that uh they were not telling me to get out the cancer, they were getting out the evil. that it was a moral matter, that there was something wrong with the brain beyond uh uh an any growth, it was uh an evil. uh an immoral part of this this brain that I had to remove. And I had to get it right. And I'm looking through the glass and I realize the wife Looking through the glass is Recognized to me. She is Melania Trump. And this only doubles my anxiety. Um And uh at the same time Somebody is trying to operate on me? Uh as I am Uh uh uh uh uh trembling. With my surgical instruments. There is somebody who has uh dropped my trousers and is trying to remove uh a rectal polyp. This is a problem by the way that I do have.
uh but trying to to do surgery on me as I'm trying to do surgery on this very powerful men to to get out the evil They are trying to remove my erectal polyp. And I wake up from the dream. Absolutely drenched. And uh I wake up my husband who's uh sleeping next to me. It is not even four in the morning. And I Take him into the kitchen to tell him the dream, he pours me a scotch. And then a second Scotch? And by this time after two drinks, I am Come? Or mockam, I should say.
What is Gunther Urbach’s surreal operating‑room dream and why does it matter?
А and we together try to uh Make sense of what all of this means because I am Пізичин, ба на surgeon. I'm a radiologist. uh and so The Pressure. that I felt as as my husband and I are discussing it. is the pressure of somebody unqualified to do the operation And at the same time. Why the polyp operation on me? Simultaneously Uh Do I feel he asks me that I'm an asshole? And yes. Who doesn't? Who doesn't?
The first time I heard Gunter's dream, all I could think about was that it perfectly encapsulated twenty twenty. The disorientation, the fear, the growing realization that this new reality was here to stay. We had put out the call for dreams to get beneath the typical linear stories that we'd heard over the past year. We wanted to get into the muddy waters of the healthcare workers subconscious. Gunter's Dream was the first that we received, and to say that we were thrilled would be an understatement. But then we got another message.
My name is Gunther Hess. I am a radiologist, uh, and I
had a dream that I was uh a surgeon, uh terrified in the operating theater. Uh And I am also Wait for it.
A figment of the imagination of Charlie Varon.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
Why does the episode open with a reminder about healthcare privacy laws?
0:00–4:22
2
What is Gunther Urbach’s surreal operating‑room dream and why does it matter?
4:22–9:00
3
How do the hosts interpret the dream’s symbols of the brain, the wife, and the “evil”?
9:00–17:28
4
Why do the creators reveal that the dream was actually written by theater artist Charlie Varen?
17:28–24:45
5
What does the emergency‑medicine resident say about feeling like a hero during COVID?
24:45–30:33
6
How does the geriatric nurse describe the loss of live performance during the pandemic?
30:33–36:11