WARNING: This dream is considered grosser than the tomato dream by most (though not me)

I'd had surgery on my right leg below the knee, and I was at a hospital recovering afterward.

There was an adventure going on -- the sort you'd find in a kids' sitcom-length cartoon -- so I was distracted most of the time. But the surgery had been semi-elective: That is, I'd have needed it eventually, as it was some kind of degenerative problem (like my muscles were twisted with each other or something), and it wasn't just cosmetic, but I'd elected to have it sooner rather than later, when I figured the complications would only get worse.

But my leg post-surgery, though it functioned about as well as my other leg, was putty-like, and the skin had clearly been pasted back on. It had the feeling of rubber to the touch, but I couldn't feel anything from the leg -- that is, I could feel the contact in my hand, but not my leg.

The doctors had also clearly done reconstructive work on it, in addition to (obvious to me now) replacing my skin with another kind of membrane. Most noticeable was the reinsertion of hairs into each hair follicle, which was a cosmetic measure. The hairs would never grow again; it was just to make the leg look more natural.

Unfortunately, the doctors weren't plastic surgeons (or weren't good ones) and so hadn't done a careful job of reinserting the hairs. Some follicles contained 50 or more hairs in a clump, sticking out willy-nilly and looking absurdly unnatural.

It didn't matter to me, since like most women, I'm annoyed by having to shave my legs, was glad I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore, and I'd decided to remove the hairs, anyway.

I pulled the individual hairs out individually. I didn't feel any pain, and I wasn't grossed out by the process or the look of my leg as I would have been in real life.

When I went to pull out the clumps of hairs, though, they each revealed a snarled ball of hair underneath -- not only had the doctors failed to do a careful job of recreating a natural looking leg, they'd apparently allowed whole hairballs in there that came out as I pulled, stretching the follicles to unreasonable widths and ruined the look of the leg entirely. I did this for several clumps before I stopped and decided to consult my surgical team. There were a few holes in my leg that stretched out to meet each other, creating larger ones. I could see through those holes into the leg.

As they were pulled out, the clumps of hair passed through a clear membrane that acted as my skin, separating in a very thin layer the internal workings of my leg from the outside world. Instead of blood and muscle, though, inside my leg was an aquatic environment, including tiny sea-creature-like floaty things, and pale blues, pinks and aquamarines. After pulling out each hairball, my rubbery inner skin drifted back together again, but in some cases, it didn't close tightly enough -- it had been too stretched out -- and I worried that the wounds would not heal, and that the inside of my leg would be exposed to the outside world by even the smallest actual breach of the thin, clear membrane skin.

I found my doctors, and asked them what to do about the leg. The team fell silent for a moment and the surgeons looked at each other guiltily.

They told me the operation had had complications, that they'd hoped I'd never find out, but that they'd hit a nerve and also that they'd been afraid I would die for several days afterward. My leg would never be the same, they said. I would always limp, and it would be more likely to break than a normal leg -- but not just break: Break off.

Somehow, before they told me this, my leg had seemed fine and normal. Removing the clumsily inserted hairs had been the cue for my leg to reassert its injury, though the doctors didn't blame me for it or claim that the hairs had been helpful in any way. In fact, they didn't say anything about this or explain why they hadn't told me I was in such a dire situation when I'd started walking around on my ultra-breakable leg, and they didn't indicate how they thought they would have gotten away with their negligence in not telling me, or the negligence they'd clearly shown in post-surgical hair placement.

They looked at the injuries created by my pulling clumps of misplaced hair out of my leg, and it seemed as though they were going to advise stitches -- but I woke up before they could start.