I'd trained myself to realize that it's pretty rare for real life to be as bad.

That reminds me of one of those "You gotta see this!" type of shows where a motorcycle racer crashed at about 110mph and did a few flips in the air before coming down. In the interview, he said "I just remember thinking 'I hate these kind of dreams'".

I had a personal experience that was very scary during which I was questioning whether it was really happening or if I was just dreaming.

I kept on doing what needed to be done (and never really believed it wasn't happening), and the guy on (err.. off, I guess) the motorcycle didn't really have a chance to do anything, but it seems worth mentioning that you need to be pretty darn sure that you're dreaming before you decide to do something else.