I posted this in my dream journal this morning. I'm interested to see if anyone can help give me some fresh perspective because I'm confused but feel like there is something more to understand here.

Background info that may be useful: I'm 23 year old Hapa female (Hapa = mixed race Asian and something else, in my case white). I'm new to the practice of lucid dreaming, got started in earnest when I joined almost two weeks ago, although over the course of my life I've had perhaps a dozen spontaneous lucid dreams. Other things, I am getting ready to move at the end of the month, from LA up to northern cali, and I'm in the middle of a stressful housing search. I am going back to school for my doctorate in psych... Um, what else, I smoked cigarettes for a year or so back in college, never all that much, at the most maybe 4 cigs a day. I quit three years ago.

Here's the dream: (This is gross, be forewarned). I am looking in the mirror and there is pus undernearth my skin where I recenly had a cyst removed. I squeeze it and it pops. I am repulsed, but also glad to have gotten it out of my body. Later on, I am looking in the mirror again and another pus-filled thing explodes without warning, this time from in my mouth. I'm so disgusted and can't believe that all this gross stuff is in my body. This time I am worried about my health.

There is an older woman in my dreams, not decrepit or ancient, but probably mid 60s. She is white and has shoulder length hair. She is a seperate character at times, but also at times she is myself - although I never am "inside" her body during the dream. It's confusing to try to understand outside of the dream. She is getting surgery for some reason. I am with the doctor who is operating by using computerized controls. (I have seen this done on television before in the real world.) He is outside in a separate room. There are also doctors in the operating room as well. They report that she is starting to come out of her anesthesia. The doctor from my room reports back in medical jargon that they should keep going, it's only a minor physical reaction and she is not conscious. Then he changes his mind and decides to ask her to do something instead to test her level of consciousness. He tells her to touch the lip of one of the doctors in the room and tell him that he looks young. From the monitor in the room we are in, it appears she is lying still, but my point of view flashes to the other room and I can see she is trying to sit up in bed and follow the instructions. She can't reach the doctor, so she tells him to come closer, and when he does, she touches his lip and tells him he looks young. She looks ghastly, kind of bluish and evil, like a horror movie character. The doctors start in with some operation, they are putting these big stitches in her lip and she keeps saying "ow!" "ow!" but they ignore her and continue. Finally, she jumps up out of the bed and strangles one with some iv tubing that was hooked up for the operation. He's struggling to breathe and everyone is shocked. The woman starts going on a furious, indignant rant about how she was asked to abstain from smoking cigarettes for eighteen hours before the surgery.
My perspective changes back to my own body in the other room. I am struggling to cut a piece of the same iv tubing. I have no scissors and am trying to rip it or do it with my teeth. It is very thin and has a whitish fluid in it. I think perhaps this will stop the woman from killing the doctor(?)

I don't remember anything until later, the head doctor (he survived) is scrutinizing me because of the pus things from earlier in the dream. He starts feeling the back of my neck and can feel there is more pus under my skin. He decides to x-ray the old woman (remember, we are kind of the same person in two different bodies at times). This appears to provide new insight into the case. I don't remember anything more about this, although I know I wandered the hospital for a bit and ran into some other DCs.

Some thoughts I had about this dream already: I think that the two bodies thing (me and the old woman) is somehow about lucid dreaming? When we watch her on the screen from the other room (the "real world"), she is calm and appears to be unconscious, but in the other room she is awake and reacting to her environment (the "dream world"). I know it seems strange that the "real" world on a screen when a screen seems to indicate some level of simulated reality, but that's the association I have nonetheless. I am bothered though that the dream world was so chaotic and violent. Not because I can't handle disturbing dreams, I actually find them interesting, but because I am worried about what that it saying about my attempts to lucid dream? Or maybe it is something else...

Any insight would be appreciated!!!