When I was working on my PhD I had the honor of taking classes from a professor who was internationally recognized for his work on assessment and testing, he developed some testing that is still in common use today. His PhD was from the Sorbonne in Paris, so he was trained by leading European psychologists at the time.
One of his fields of expertise was in the projective tests such as the Rorschach (inkblots), TAT, HTP, etc. These require extensive training to administer and interpret as you can imagine. The training took about three years just in this area.
The professor also taught dream analysis as part of the projective training course. I had a knack for the projectives and I will brag that I kept getting A+'s from this professor on my dream analysis reports, which of course meant I got ribbed by my fellow students. Being an expert in dream analysis is not going to mean much in the US psychology community.
I also did my doctoral dissertation on the projective tests.
Basically in the projectives people project their unconscious thoughts, feelings, needs, wants, fears, etc onto neutral stimulus. Dreams are the same. They are fascinating and rich with information.
So basically it appears your mother and daughter are worried about you. They are concerned they may lose you due to your health issues. I think the January incident is weighing on their minds. They may not be able to verbalize this to you, but we can see it is coming out in their dreams. Dreams serve a function. A person works on conscious or unconscious issues as they dream. Our psyche tries to resolve and come to terms with an issue. Our bodies and minds are working to heal as we dream.
Your daughter depends upon you a great deal, so she feels your health issues more acutely than does your mother. Your mother's dream was more of a neutral statement of her anxiety, the muting of her feelings could be a function of her cognitive slippage. Your daughter's dream was marked by her acute feelings of anxiety and helplessness. She tried to save you, but failed.
In terms of the synchronicity, yes that is quite interesting. I could suggest perhaps there was some family trigger, something happened to the family system at the same time. The death of a cousin, or famous person perhaps. Or you had talked about a doctor visit to both of them.
Or we could go to the more Jungian explanation. Carl Jung is a very famous psychologist who believed in the collective unconscious. Freud had discovered that humans have an individual unconscious process going on. Then Carl Jung took it a step further and said that all humans share a collective unconscious. For example this would explain why humans the world over may develop certain inventions even before modern communication. Or why the notion of freedom and democracy takes a strong hold around the world at the same time.
Jung and Freud are not popular in the US which is much more cognitive-behavioral. But I had extensive training in this approach and also 40 years of clinical practice taught me that not everything cannot be explained by US standards of thinking.
So your family may have its own collective unconscious sharing their anxiety back and forth?
I would also suggest that you follow through on any medical advice and be prudent about self care and medical appointments to reassure your family and yourself.
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