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.
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| 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.
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