This waking dream, I was performing heart surgery on someone with a redundant brachial artery. I used foreceps to clamp parallel to the aorta, and began dissecting from the patient’s left side. Two stitches, then reposition the foreceps to expose the middle third, repeat. The last third, I clamped the edge of the aorta already stitched to keep it flat.

Once done, the aorta was perfectly round, and had just a small axial incicision, with 6 stitches. In the dream, I researched making a stepped incision, but I didn’t like the pressure dynamics of how that could rupture.

In waking, a mesh or felt patch seems like it would be appropriate. I don’t know where the redundant artery went, and whether we were going to dissect it distally for removal, or just leave it and let it slowly resorb over time, or what…

I don’t think I’ve ever had a dream of performing medical procedures before, and I’ve not been watching related things on TV either.