As I Neared Death, The Experience Of My Life

Just recently, I had quite the experience while having surgery on an aortic aneurysm. I was quite anxious, lying on the stretcher waiting for the Surgeon to come in and speak with me before the surgery. Standing there was a rather large man with a nice smile, which was trying to put in an arterial line. At the same time he was telling me that the Anesthesiologist was going to soon give me some, as this nice man called it, "happy juice". I was very scared to say the least, but knew I had a good Surgeon, and he would take good care of me. Then the Surgeon walked in, and let me know that I had nothing to fear, that he would take care of me. Soon the Anesthesiologist walked in, and gave me some intravenous fluid into my IV which was already hanging, and off to sleep I went.

During the surgery I overheard the doctors talking in excitable voices, and I also heard the scurrying of the nurses around. However, it didn't seem that the sound was coming from around me, but it sounded like it was coming from below me. I heard the Surgeon's voice say, her blood pressure is dropping and we need to hurry. I just thought that I must be in ICU, and waking up. However, that is not what was happening. However later, I remember trying to talk, and all I could say is "pain", and "hurt", pointing at myself. Then my cousin walked in and I said her name, but that was all I could say. I look around at myself, and my arms, hands, and legs were propped up on pillows. My neck hurt quite a bit, and my throat was soar. Both legs at my femoral arteries had been cut, and I had immense pain in them. There is a funny thing to this story which I will tell you later, but my bed seemed to me to be quite small and narrow. I couldn't move too much.

I began to tell the nurses that were caring for me the story of what happened in surgery. I told them about hearing the doctors, and nurses voices in the distance, also about the bright light I was seeing. I guess I didn't want to tell them a lot, because I didn't want them thinking I was crazy. Actually, my body felt like it was floating above me, I felt disconnected from my real body, and to the side, I saw like a bright cloud. It looked like a doorway, but not quite a doorway, it is so hard to explain. The voices sounded a bit muffled, and kind of off into the distance. I also heard the movement of the nurses as they hurried to do whatever they were doing for me. I saw the IVs being handled, maybe medication being placed in them. The Anesthesiologist was quickly doing things to my body. Even though there was so much movement, and worried people around me, I wasn't really worried, but felt a feeling of floating, and also a very comfortable feeling.

Now you may ask, what was happening, and some of you know, what I had was a Near-Death Experience . The Wikipedia has a good definition of that:

"A near-death experience (NDE) refers to a broad range of personal experiences associated with impending death, encompassing multiple possible sensations ranging from detachment from the body, feelings of levitation, extreme fear, total serenity, security, or warmth, the experience of absolute dissolution, and the presence of a light, which some people interpret as a deity or spiritual presence.[citation needed] Many cultures and individuals[specify] revere NDEs as a paranormal and spiritual glimpse into the afterlife."

Many people through the years have had NDE's, and lived on to tell about it, just as I did. Now of course, there are many interpretations of these experiences, but mostly they are somewhat similar. NDE's are not unfamiliar to what we call Out-Of-Body Experiences, or OBEs. Scientists have been interested for a long time what exactly is happening within the brain when this happens.

"An assistant professor at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. "I'm really interested in in-body experiences: how the brain keeps and updates a model of the world and the body. To have a perception of your own body is the foundation of self-consciousness."

That is, of course, why out-of-body experiences have always been, well, out-of-body. People report such experiences after returning from the "brink of death," or being under the influence of mind-altering drugs — no doubt why the sensation has long been equated with spiritual awakening (and with crackpots). But, today, with new advances in neurology, scientists are better able than ever to locate the physical roots of these bizarre perceptions of self. For example, neurologists have studied amputees who can feel sensation where their missing limbs used to be; researchers think this phantom limb phenomenon has to do with rewiring in the brain's somatosensory cortex. And, in the lab, researchers have been able to make people feel that fake rubber hands are attached to their own bodies. (This was done simply enough, by touching the participants' real hands while having them watch the rubber hands be touched in the same way and the same time.) Now, there are the current Science experiments: the first where volunteers have relocated their entire "selves" — their minds, as it were — outside of their bodies."

Even though the two different experiences are similar, what I had was a Near-Death Experience. Here is a story about one particular woman who also had an NDE.

"A moment later, Florence went into cardiac arrest. She recalls, she says, the sounds of bells and sirens, being in a lift, and someone thumping her chest. But these memories are vague compared to her recollection of a subsequent scene. She was lying in surgery, surrounded by medical staff, yet she was not in her body but up near the ceiling, watching the activity below. She noted that her body on the bed wore a green gown with a split in the middle, and that she was otherwise completely covered. "I was calling out, 'Don't cut me. I'm still awake.' " She saw an incandescent light in the shape of a cone. "Then, boom," she says: her floating self rocketed to the cone's tip and . . . nothing.

That was 20 years ago. "I found it spooky," she says now. "I don't like to talk about it. It was the whitest light you could imagine. It wasn't a dream. It's still very, very vivid."

Florence had what's known as a near-death experience. But as strange as it was, it didn't contain all the elements of a classic NDE. As well as the bright light and out-of-body experience, other people, while clinically dead, see a tunnel, deceased relatives and divine figures."

Now, I didn't see any deceased relatives, or divine figures, and not sure I was quite dead, but near my death. However, I did have some recollections like this particular woman. I did find it rather spooky though! Since what I remember is that I woke twice from surgery, not just once like many times before when I had different surgical procedures. I did try to tell the nurses my story, and they just said, well, maybe you were under lightly towards the end of surgery, and could hear them talking. Now, for one thing, doctors would not talk about you in front of you, neither would nurses, if they thought you were awake. Also, I never had such a strange experience during a surgery. Well, all I can say, is it was the "Experience of My Life."

Oh, I did tell you I would explain the small bed. I first was transferred to Cardiac ICU when I first came out of surgery, then to just the Cardiac Unit about 2 days later. When I got to the floor, the nurse manager asked me why I was in what she called a "Pedi Bed". I told her I didn't know, that is the bed they put me in. Well what they had done is put me in a Pediatrics bed when I came out of surgery, and they are not big enough for an adult, and they also move differently. Even though it doesn't have a lot to do with this particular story, I just thought it was funny that they should put an adult in a bed made for children, and for them to be there two days before anyone noticed.

Stumble It!