what it's like to die - at least for me

 

It's taken quite a bit of thought on my part as to how to describe my death.  A bit of my hesitancy is because this is probably one of the most difficult things to explain, but it's also because I honestly can't think of anything that has happened to me that is this intensely personal.

If you've ever read or heard someone's accounting of a near-death experience (of NDE), you'll hear some strange similarities between them.  I had those, but I also had some other things, too, and I'll do my best to describe them.

My surgery, a kidney biopsy to establish whether or not I had MCD (you can look that up if you like- I don't have it), started at 8:30am on the morning of December 13, 2023.  Pretty uneventful start, actually- just the usual stuff.  The last thing I remember well was laying on my stomach on the operating table and meeting the surgeon just as the anesthesia was starting to take hold.  No counting backwards- just lights out.

I vaguely remember waking up in the recovery room, and was still laying on my stomach.  Every time I took a breath, however, I was groaning involuntarily.  I remember quite a bit of pain, and I remember asking my wife to get the nurse because it really hurt.  My head was extremely foggy, and I really didn't quite know what was happening, but it hurt.  And it was hard to take the painful breathes, as well.  

They quickly gave me a shot of hydromorphone, and that helped a bit, but not enough.  I remember laying there, still not really able to get a decent breath and feeling like someone was pressing in on my left side.  After just a few minutes, however, the pain got markedly worse.

"Who is kicking me?" I started asking.

"No one is kicking you, Marc." my wife answered.

"Someone is kicking me!  Tell them to stop kicking me, please!", I implored.

This went on for a bit until my wife got the nurse again, and I asked for more painkiller.  They gave me more hydromorphone.  

And, that's when it got bad.  I apparently went to sleep.  Like REALLY asleep.  This is a really big problem, you see, because I have very, very bad Obstructive Sleep Apnea or OSA.  Because of the anesthesia AND the painkiller, this kicked my OSA into overdrive and I immediately started losing respiration functions.  On top of all that, during the biopsy, the surgeon had nicked an artery near the bottom of my left lung and I was unknown to everyone, I was hemorrhaging inside my chest cavity very, very badly.  Within a few seconds my breathing stopped entirely, my blood pressure dropped to 0/47 (no systolic pressure and unstable diastolic) and my body temperature plummeted to 74F.  My wife and daughter, who were both standing there in the room said that I turned pale blue and then white as a sheet and became diaphoretic and cyanotic.  

They administered NARCAN to try and counteract the painkiller, and it didn't work.

I was dead.  Just like that.   

It took 8 minutes for the Rapid Response Team to get me intubated and into surgery.  It's what happened during those 8 minutes that I am going to try to describe for you. 

The "Crowd"

It's very - well- foggy.  But it's not fog.  I don't know what it is.  And there are people standing in front of me, but I'm looking at them from the waist down.  They seem to be 2-dimensional, and they have no discernable features- like my eyes are out of focus.  They seem to be moving together in one motion, like their heads are moving, but there's no parallax - so they move more like they are "melting" into different shapes.  It's a little alarming.  It also looks like they are "contained" on a piece of cardboard or paper that is cut out into something like a pyramid.  (the picture above is the best approximation I can make) There is no noise at all.  It's very silent, which is weird for me because I have mild tinnitus, but that is completely gone.  The silence is overwhelming.

All of the sudden, I'm moving, backwards, away from the cardboard cutout of people.  It's a slow movement at first, then picks up a little speed.  Then I stop, and the cutout looks like it's about 3 or 4 meters away and I can see the crowd's entire "bodies" now.  Surrounding the cutout is.......it's not blackness.  It's not "nothing".  I honestly can't describe it other than to say it's "pretty".  I sit at that vantage point for a minute, kind of marveling at everything.  I'm not scared, and I'm not thinking anything- I'm just kind of enthralled and I'm trying to make sense of it.

I start getting this sensation of being really, really small- like I'm a drop of water.  I manage to look down, and I can't see a body or legs.  I'm just kind of floating in this ether, and I get another sensation of ascending up.  It's really slow, and my aspect of the cutout is changing.  I also notice that I am simultaneously seeing the cutout from the initial point of view.  But, as I "ascend" where I am starts to come into really sharp focus.  All of the sudden, I'm about 3 meters above the "crowd", looking down at a 45 degree angle.

There are 11 people in the room, and they are standing against a wall.  The room is very bright.  In the middle of these people is a tall, blonde woman.  Her arms are folded against her chest, and she is very angry.  She is yelling at all the other people in the room- barking is more like it.  And is she LOUD.  Next to her is my wife and my daughter.  They are both crying, and my daughter looks completely inconsolable.  My wife is leaning over something, and her right arm seems to be going back and forth very quickly, but I can't see what she is doing.  I'm starting to hear other sounds now, too.

"Will you please just look at me?" I hear my wife say.  I have no idea who she is talking to.  My wife is the only person talking that I can understand, but the rest of the people are talking- no, they are yelling, but it all just sounds like gibberish.  I'm still not scared, but I am confused as to what it is I am looking at.  The tall blonde woman motions to another woman, who touches my wife's arm and says something to her like "you are going to have to leave now", and takes my wife and my daughter out the door at the end of the room.

I notice that there is a little guy laying in a bed just below me.  I'm looking at him and I suddenly realize that it's me.  I don't look right.  My face is all contorted, my head is off to one side, my mouth is wide open and my eyes are rolled back in my head.  My color is really weird- it actually kind of looks like a mannequin of me, and it's not real. 

It dawns on me- very suddenly - I know what's happening.  

"Oh, wow!  This is really happening to me!! I cannot believe it!"  I think.  A teeny bit of panic hits me, but for some reason, I can handle the panic.  It's scary, but it's also kind of fun in a really weird way- kind of like being on a roller-coaster for the first time.  I watch the nurses grab my body, and start to turn it on my side, and I get this weird feeling like I'm being bent in half- I don't quite know how to explain it, but as they moved my body, I could feel stuff.

Oh, boy, does it hurt.  The pain is.........I can't describe.  I've told some people that the only way I can really explain it is that is was "perfect".  It was EVERYWHERE, ALL AT ONCE- it was life itself and all consuming- but, here's the weird part- as much as it hurt, it didn't phase my thinking.  I just marveled at it.

All this time, I'm still seeing all this happen within that "cutout" that I described earlier, and all of the sudden there is a REALLY loud noise like a million people all decided to march forward in one step, and the cutout flew at me.  It's such a jarring motion and sound that I backup along the ceiling and notice the metal bezel plate that holds the light fixture screen- like I almost crash into it.  Then another "WHUMP" sound, and the cutout is suddenly a mile away from me, and it's at a different angle.  WHUMP again, and I'm looking at a corner of the cutout.

The "whumps" and sudden movements and aspect changes happens about 8-9 times and it's starting to really scare me- I really don't like this.  The yelling in the room has gotten an awful lot louder and more frantic.  Things start spinning then go completely black.

I'm standing in the ether.  I still don't see my body.  I'm also moving, very, very fast but I'm actually not doing the running or walking.  I'm just standing still and things are rushing by me.  It's dark, but I see what look like low hills on either side of me, and it looks like I'm travelling over a big grass field.  There are people in the field, just walking around, and I fly by them at ridiculous speed.  I really can't see who they are, but I get the feeling I know some of them, and I want to stop to talk to them but I have to get somewhere.  The field seems to be on the side of a small hill, and there's some lights at the bottom of the hill that look like a small town, but it's hard to make out in the darkness.  I'm picking up speed, too, and it's really exhilarating to feel the cool grass going under my feet (even though I can't see them) and the wind in my face.  I'm getting the feeling like wherever it is I'm heading is some place I really want to get to in a hurry.  I can smell what I think are pancakes, too!  And BBQ.  The people that I pass by start waving at me- I get it.  I know where I'm going!!!!!!  The town is Heaven!!!  I can't wait to get there, and...........

Everything goes completely black.  No sensation.  No movement.  There's something in my mouth and I don't like.  All of the sudden, it's really hard to breathe.  I can't see.  I want to yell, but I can't make any sound at all.  I can't open my eyes. Ok, I can barely open them.  

I'm in a big, dimly lit room.  There's  a small platform on the other side of the room, and sitting on it, staring at me is- Elmer Fudd?  What the fuck is that?  He's just sitting there, his right arm wrapped around his shotgun, staring at me.  It isn't alarming or scary, and I immediately know that this is a hallucination, and it makes me laugh.  Some people get Jesus in their hospital rooms- it figures that I would get Elmer.  Elmer disappears and the blackness comes back.

Someone is holding my hand.  It's my wife.

"Can you squeeze my hand?" I hear her say.

I squeeze her hand as hard as I can.

"YEAH!!!!" I hear her exclaim.  "Do it again!"  I do it again.

"Can you take a big breath for me?", she asks.  I take as big a breath as I can.  There is cheering in the room.  I'm alive, and I'm intubated (which sucks) but this is where I will leave the story for now for the next installment.

well, that was different

I was going to write a new entry today to try and clarify my last post a bit, but since I had written that last post, a rather significant event happened that I really must write about.  It's one of those rare, once-in-a-lifetime events, too, and it really can't be ignored.  What happened, you ask?

I died.

Last Wednesday, December 13, 2023 at 8AM I went into the hospital for a pretty routine procedure- a kidney biopsy.  Supposed to be in and out in 3 hours.  Supposed to be 3 hours......

Instead, what happened was that the surgeon made a mistake, and unknowingly severed an artery near my left lung, and for 5 hours after the procedure, I quietly bled out internally in the recovery room while my wife and daughter watched.  During this episode, my blood pressure went down to 0/47 and my body temperature went down to 74 degrees.  I was without respiration for 8 minutes.  That's dead, folks.  The hospital called a full Code Blue on me, the Rapid Response Team took over my care, ushered my family out and resuscitated me thru 2 different CT scans, 2 surgeries, a chest tube to remove 2+ liters of blood in my chest, re-inflation of a deflated lung, 3 separate blood transfusions and intubation.  I was placed on a ventilator and in the ICU for recovery.   

When sedation medication was lifted and I began to wake up, I thought it was still Wednesday, but it was in fact Thursday evening.  I had no idea what had transpired.  Oh, wait.....yes I did.  It started coming back to me.........oh, boy.  Did it ever.

I will be writing much, much more about this- I promise.  I'm still collecting my thoughts, but suffice it to say that yes, I did leave my body.  And yes, I did see things.  And, yes I will describe them.  There is much to tell here, but for now, I am still healing and still pretty weak from all of it.  I am also home now, and it's Christmas Day as I write this, and that is a very, very good thing.  For now, this is really all I have to say, as this experience is a little bigger than a breadbox and I want to take the time to describe all that happened as accurately as I can and that is going to take time for me to do properly.

In meantime, I covet anyone and everyone's prayers and good thoughts as I try to heal, so if you are in the mood, please feel to send those my way.  I can really use them.

More to come.

let's get on with it

 I must have started this blog entry a dozen times so far.  I think this is the one.

It’s been a minute since I’ve blogged anything, and in that minute, MUCH has happened on the health front.  Right before Thanksgiving, 2023, I started having a lot of swelling on my legs and feet and that old, “congested” feeling was coming back- yeah.  Great.  The heart stents from 2020 have failed, and it’s gonna be time for the big cutdown triple bypass operation.  And, on top of that, I had been laid off from my job of the last 5 years (a company I dearly loved), and we just bought a new house, and work is scarce, and……..well, shit.

Except that it wasn’t my heart.  It was fine.  The problem was that I was what is known as “diabetic ketoacidosis” or DKA, which is weird.  Shouldn’t be happening at all.  My diabetes was pretty well controlled- but guess what?  It wasn’t. I had a blood sugar of over 430, an A1C of 13.7 and a creatnine level of 7.8 (anything over a 2 is very bad) and my protein level was immeasurably low- super anemic.  Bottom line: I was dying.  For real.  My kidneys had gone the way of the dodo, and I was staring down the barrel of being forced onto peritoneal dialysis. 

Oh, it’s fun to be me………..

After 2 weeks of being in and out of the hospital, with at 15-20 needle sticks/injections/infusions per day (I could make whistling noises if I walked fast enough- if I could walk, that is) I was sent home, where I am now.  Things are on the mend now, and numbers are looking a little better each day, but I have a LONG road ahead of me, and those that know me will understand the gravity of this statement- this is, by far, the single hardest health issue I’ve ever experienced.  Full stop.  But none of that has anything to do with why I’m writing this blog entry.

Because of this and a few other happenings in my life, I’ve gone into what I can only describe as a “soul searching walkabout”, where I am re-evaluating many, many things in my life.  And being the critical thinker that I try to be, I decided that no matter where the evidence and trail leads, I will follow without preconceived notions or hangups.   Everything is up for grabs, and I do mean EVERYTHING.  In doing this, I decided to try and start small- my diet.  That’s controllable.  I’ve removed an awful lot of things out of my diet – kind of scorched earth like, too- no carbs, really low fat, NOTHING fried, no potatoes or pasta, etc.  The result?  My A1C this morning was 8.8.  It’s working.  Next was rest and trying to unplug.  That seems to be helping my blood pressure- I’m onto something.  Let’s keep going and see where this takes us……….

And it was inevitable- I found myself really and truly re-examining relationships in my life and my faith.  I knew I’d hit this at some point, but I honestly didn’t think it would happen that soon, but boy it did and HARD.

What I realized was that my relationships weren’t surrounded by my faith as much as they were rooted in my faith, which is completely different.  I had this recalcitrant idea in my head that, as long as someone believed in something like I did (not necessarily WHAT I believed in) that I could have a relationship with them.  What I didn’t realize is that when one of my best friends came to me and told me that he was renouncing his Christianity earlier this year, I instantly had a very difficult time relating to this person.  They didn’t change, and I didn’t change- we just “lost” a commonality that had a lot of meaning, but I still love this person very, very much and I know they love me, but something was different and I couldn’t figure it out.  Until I got very, very sick.  Then it was all too clear, and even though I pledged to follow this trail no matter where it leads, I really, really hated what I was seeing.

My faith has been a lie.  The whole time.  And I never, ever saw it that way, and I didn’t see it coming.

Now, mind you, and I want to be crystal clear here: I am still a Christian.  Very, very much.  But I am not the Christian I was 60 days ago.  Not even close.  I am an ardent fan of Jesus, and I can honestly say that since I’ve been thinking about this, I feel even closer to Him now in many, many ways.  I have figured out what has been missing all this time in my life now – and it’s not what you think (hell, it wasn’t what I thought it would be!) – and it’s simply this:

People need to be Jesus to others.  People DO NOT NEED to be told to do things to MAKE them like Jesus.  In other words, what people need from you is support, help, assistance, empathy, compassion, caring and love.  They DO NOT NEED you telling them that they need to be that way.  You should do this without the need for reciprocity or an expected return.  Don’t castigate them if they don’t do as you do.  Don’t yell at them.  Don’t tell them that they are going to hell, because you don’t get to make that call.  (I don’t either, but there are those I like to encourage...)  Live and let live.  Love EVERYBODY all the time and stop this absolute bullshit practice of saying that “love doesn’t constitute acceptance” – because it DOES.  An example of this-

Remember the woman at the Jacob’s well in Samaria?  He tells her what she did wrong in her life – but he doesn’t condemn her for it- and he tells her to go and sin no more- guess what?  I’ll bet you a shiny new nickel that that woman DID sin again, because even though she was forgiven – by Jesus directly – she was still a flawed and frail human being.  Was she still forgiven?  You bet she was.   Was that first forgiveness null and void because she absolutely committed a sin later in life?  Not at all.    Was Jesus, who knew everything about this woman and who more than likely knew that she would sin again wrong for even doing this in the first place?  Nope.  Did Jesus want her to sin again?  No.  Then for Him to do this, he had to both LOVE her and ACCEPT that this was going to happen.  You just cannot get around this, folks.  Jesus didn’t spend one pico-second telling her that if she didn’t listen to Him that she was going to go to Hell, nor did He give a 45 minute sermon on the wages of Sin and Death- He showed up, was present, exhibited love and acceptance and launched His ministry.

Sidenote: All of you miscreants who think that women have a lesser place in ministry or are somehow not imbued with the “correct spiritual acumen” need to collectively remove your craniums from your gluteus maximums: in every, single reveal of Jesus’s ministry and miracles, it was to a woman FIRST.  Every.  Single.  Time. 

Now, here’s where it gets a little more pointed, and I’ll say right now that I am not sorry if I offend folks with this last part.  As of this writing, this has become a 100% non-negotiable for me, and that’s not gonna change.  What I mean is that if you’re first reaction to this is to try and correct me or sell me on some kind of “theology” that says that I am “backsliding” or bending to fit societal norms or something, I will consider that hostile and toxic, and you can go straight to…….somewhere else (because I don’t believe in Hell) and we are done.  I ain’t kidding.  This is sure to cause some rancor in some of my relationships, and I can honestly say that I don’t care.  You don’t even have to say goodbye- in fact, I ask that you don’t.  Just unsubscribe and unfriend and un-Insta-G or whatever you want to do.  I’ll not wish you a good life (I won’t begrudge you one, either) but nothing is getting in the way of me seeing this through.  NOTHING.  There are relationships within my own family (one in particular that is really toxic) that are about to get a Biblical send-off from me, and that’s just how it has to be. 

So, let’s get on with it.

More to come.