Wow, this lady has 2 to 3 nightmares per night even ten years later, after an exploratory surgery? That's pretty extreme, I think most people wouldn't have had 6 to 8 thousand nightmares about this experience.
Itβs a reasonably common response to traumatic events for people to have regular nightmares for decades afterwards. ~2-3 a night for a decade would be high, but not unheard of.
a study comparing Vietnam Veterans to civilians showed that 52% of combat Veterans with PTSD had nightmares fairly often. Only 3% of the civilians in the study reported that same level of nightmares.https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand/related/nightmares.asp
My dominant (practically exclusive, actually) nightmare for over 20 years involved forgetting a class schedule or where a classroom was. Initially triggered by the (enormous) middle school I attended for the first half of 6th grade, then it morphed into a whole new set of very-similar nightmares after I started attending college. I'm sure I had thousands of those nightmares. Hell, I so rarely remember any of my dreams on waking these days (used to recall a detailed, ordered history of my dreams each morning, without even trying) that for all I know I'm still having them several times a week without realizing it.
I'd believe thousands of nightmares over the span of a decade, for a traumatic surgery experience.
