New Years Eve, 1973, The First Night of the Rest of My Life
The True Story of My Near Death Experience
The Beginning
December 10, 1973 started out like any other day. Which is almost always the case when something horrible--or wonderful--is about to happen. For me, horrible. At first. It would lead me beyond wonderful, but I didn't know that either.
I was coming home late from a party, stone cold sober, driving my trusty Chevy Malibu. Stopped at a red light of a huge intersection.
There was no traffic and the area was brightly lit. Seemingly out of nowhere, a big old station wagon came barreling toward me from across the intersection, through the red light on his side, tires screeching as he tried to turn left in front of me.
To this day I can still see the driver's face, eyes huge and wild --maybe in horror, I'll never know-- as his car lost control and plowed into mine, just forward of the driver's side, and me.
They say you see everything in slow motion during an accident. I only remember that staring face ... then waking with a jerk as my tires hit the pavement.
He'd hit me so hard my car had rolled over three times.
It landed upright on the sidewalk in front of a hospital. Yeah, how's that for luck? Okay, maybe karma. Whatever. A security guard had watched the accident helplessly, unable to get the car's mud-covered plate number as it sped away.
I took stock of myself --no blood, nothing seemed broken-- and waved at the guard, thinking, wow, that was close. I had no memory of my car rolling over, I thought the other car had clipped me and split. The guard ran to me as I opened the car door, unbuckled my seatbelt to get out. No airbags back then, not even shoulder harnesses. Just a lap belt.
He took my arm to help me ... and I fell sideways against him. My legs didn't work. At all. No pain. I just couldn't make them move.
My back was broken.
I didn't know that yet. But when you can't move your legs ... well. Fear. Huge. Fear. The guard yelled, "HELP! SOMEBODY HELP! SWEET JESUS, HURRY!" Not so good for the fear. I started to shake, fingers tight and white against the steering wheel, determined to stay upright. Teeth clenched, determined to hold down the rising panic.
The rest became a blur of faces peering, hands lifting, neck collar pushing and hurting, lights blinding, voices shouting, instruments poking, needles sticking my arms, my hands, someone cutting off my clothes, nicking one thigh with the scissors, damn, it burned! I yelped. Sudden silence.
Immediately something cold and hard scraped up along the bottom of one bare foot from heel to toes. OUCH! Then the other. OWWW! I was pissed, they were rejoicing. I wasn't paralyzed. Yet.
The Middle
Five days passed. I was in and out of consciousness. I'd come up from the deep for a few minutes, see my mother's worried face, feel my sister's hand gripping mine, hear my grandmother's sobs. And then the searing, agonizing pain. God, the pain. Please, MAKE IT STOP! And down I'd go into blessed drugged limbo.
As the pain lessoned, so did the drugs, a balance emerged and I began to reemerge as me. I met my nurses, doctors, talked coherently to my family, took stock of my situation. I was encased in a body cast, mid-chest to thighs, attached to a contraption with weights hanging off the foot of my bed. Traction. Periodically they readjusted the weights. Not. Fun.
The days developed into a routine. I was in a private room. I made friends as easily then as I do now. Medical staff started hanging out in my room for breaks, eating, smoking cigarettes, passing around joints, soda, beer (ya gotta love the 70's), talking, watching TV. It made the time, and the fear, tolerable. Even a little fun.
Except for the tests. You want to hear about torture, ask me.
The worst one is called a myleogram. They strap you face down to a hard flat table. Inject burning radiation dye into your lumbar spine so they can track it with x-ray and fluoroscopy to look for damage to your spinal cord. Oh, did I mention they move the table around, tilt it, head up, head down, sideways, again and again?
I don't know about now, but back then, they gave you nothing to relax, no anesthesia, nothing for pain. I screamed until my throat was raw. Then I passed out.
They gave me some Valium for the next test. EMG. A serious contender for worst test. They stick--actually rotate--needles into your legs and back and shoot electrical current through them. This goes on for about ohhh, 30-40 minutes. "KILL ME NOW," I begged. Did I mention I was a bit wigged out from the constant pain and painkillers?
It's possible I was heard. By whom or what I don't know.
The End?
Fortunately the reviled tests revealed no spinal cord damage. Broken vertebra, broken pelvis, five ruptured disks. Not so great, at least another month in the hospital, more months of rehab after that, but no paralysis. I would walk again.
I should have said a prayer of thanks. But I was stuck in a hospital bed, hooked to tubes and monitors and weights. No privacy. No sense of autonomy. Less a person than A Thing. People coming and going, taking vitals, taking blood. After three weeks, no longer a novelty. I was soo tired of the catheter, the uncomfortable, undignified bedpan, the hospital food, the boring view from my window, the boring holiday TV shows.
And then it was New Year's Eve, December 31, 1973. I was a brave soldier, insisted my friends and family go to their parties, enjoy, not sit in my boring hospital room. It was just another night. No big deal.
But inside I was angry. Not at them. At fate. Why me? Why did that drunk driver hit me? I was frustrated. Lonely. Stir crazy. In pain. I turned on the TV, found a movie I actually liked, settled back, tried to get comfortable.
Wait. Pain? I didn't have much pain any more. The drugs took care of that. And this was a new pain. In my chest, over to the side. Each time I took a breath, the pain got stronger. I was soon panting, trying not to breathe, pain stabbing through my chest like a hot knife. I pressed the call button, held my finger down on it.
A nurse came in, I knew her, saw the shock on her face. My lips were already blue. She yelled for a doctor. A man came in, a stranger. He listened to my chest and back, ignoring the sweat pouring down my face, my tiny gasps for breath, whimpers of pain.
"We need a pulse-ox and a blood gas level, stat!" he barked. Then he smiled at me, patted my shoulder. "I have to stick a needle in your groin, take some blood," he said. "It's going to hurt like hell but I have to do it."
I nodded, a mute puppy, desperate for air, for relief. Another nurse came in, handed him a needle. She and the first nurse, my friend, leaned over, firmly pressed my arms into the bed. The doctor flipped back the sheet, pushed my gown aside, pressed my left thigh out and down, plunged the needle deep into the crease at the very top.
It should have hurt like hell. Not just the needle, but the abrupt assault on my leg, pelvis and back. I felt nothing. No pain. Not from the needle. Not from my chest. Not from anywhere. How odd, I thought. It's not real, I thought. I must be having a dream.
[My explanation for what happened to me is best described in the context of how we dream.
Either you're deeply engaged, it's so real, so live, sometimes you wake up expecting to see a person or a thing from the dream right there with you. Or, somehow you know you're dreaming, you're removed, remote, watching the dream unfold but not actively taking part in it.
What I experienced next was very similar to the remote kind of dream.]
I was floating above the room, but without a sensation of weightlessness or airflow or any movement at all. I was just up there in the corner near the ceiling. Watching myself on the bed below, people leaning over me. Someone shouted, pressed a button over the bed, shouted again. More people came rushing in. The doctor who'd taken my blood made a fist, punched my chest. Well, that's interesting, I thought.
The room seemed to be getting brighter.
A cart was rolled in, my gown ripped own, paddles pressed onto my chest. "Stand clear!" that same doctor yelled. Someone called him Bill. I watched my body buck awkwardly in the hard white cast. Again. And again.
Brighter still.
I felt nothing. Well, I mean I felt no pain. And I lost interest, lost all connection to the me on the bed. I was observing everything, hearing every word, watching every move, absorbing each sight and sound, but completely detached from the action.
Because I was drifting in a cocoon of serenity and peace that transcended anything in my experience. I'd been high on pot, I'd been high on painkillers ... this was sooo much better. I remembered looking out airplane windows at fluffy white clouds in a clear blue sky and imagining the feeling of sinking into them. This was like that. But also better. Pure, blissful euphoria.
So much brighter now.
The room was filled with friends I'd made among the staff. Most were standing back watching the others work on me. Some were crying. I understood they were losing me. It was hurting them. And one tiny whisper of distress oh so slightly rippled through my detachment. I wanted to tell them don't be sad, I'm not sad, I'm not in pain, I'm at peace. I'm safe.
Then there was so much light. Irresistible. Mesmerizing. It filled my eyes, filled me, it was almost tactile, soft and warm, like a lambent breeze, a gentle touch. The room, the people, the me in the bed, all disappeared as the light welcomed me, encompassed me, closed around me...........
The New Beginning
Here's something I know that few others know. Not only do you come into this world screaming, you come back into it screaming too.
I had a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in my left lung that blocked all blood flow, all oxygen. My heart stopped beating, I stopped breathing.
I was legally dead for 4 minutes, 42 seconds. There was no formal CPR in 1973. The doctor used the protocol of the day. Intubated me and pumped oxygen down into my lungs. Pounded on my chest to restart my heart. Nothing. Shocked my heart over and over to get it beating again. Nothing.
If your heart's not beating, if you're not breathing ... You. Die.
So how am I here to tell this story? You might say Fate. Karma. Faith. A Miracle. Maybe those too, but I say Dr. Bill. He used an old method, one last ditch try to bring me back -- injected adrenaline directly into my heart.
They told me later if the adrenaline restarts the heart, it's the pain of it that shoots to the brain and brings someone back. If they're going to, able to, willing to return.
Which I did, screaming, furious, fighting my way back to life. I've always been a fighter. A lover too. Somehow I think both were necessary to bring me back from the siren song of that light, that ephemeral high, that very brink of death.
Did I learn anything from that unique experience? Two very important things: I'm not afraid of death. And I'm totally not afraid of life.
Note: Near Death Experiences (NDE's) were extremely rare 35 years ago. You didn't hear much about "going into the light" or any of the other phenomena now widely reported. I knew nothing about that or what, if anything, others had experienced. And I wasn't at all religious at the time.
In fact I'd always believed, hoped that when you die you get to see your loved ones already gone, wherever that may be. So my one serious disappointment was I didn't get to see my beloved PopPop.
Eerily, I could tell the doctors and nurses everything that happened in that room, all they'd done and said, even who did and said what -- while I was supposedly dead.
I have to believe that the light, the peace, the whole experience meant something. As did my ability to see and hear what was happening. I don't know what. Maybe some failsafe in the brain to comfort and protect us until we're ready to return. Maybe something more spiritual.
What do you think?
This vid isn't about me, but it's a fascinating report on the study of NDE's and matches mine pretty closely.
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Max Rivlin-Nadler
drlaura2
Kristina Lakes
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L in the Southeast
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Salon.com
Comments
Can I say how pleased I am you shared this? What an amazing saga.
Rated
Here's the bottom line for me... the NDE was so much a part of the fabric of my whole accident/hospitalization/long term recovery experience, I learned from it more through osmosis than conscious thought... by soldiering on, fighting to leave the wheelchair, to walk, to become independent, an athlete and career woman again, to resume my normal life. (Think about this small detail: for almost 4 months after I left the hospital in a wheelchair, then onto a walker, I had to inject myself with blood thinners in the stomach every 4 hours, including through the night). That grows you up, believe me.
Roanerges1, nice to meet you, thank you for reading and rating.
Lisa, I was the same person, maybe a little wilder, now that I think about it. I was already so mature and responsible, and had to fight so hard to reclaim myself, I jumped back into life maybe a little harder than necessary. Or, maybe that was part of the plan. To loosen up. :::sigh::: but I'm still a control freak.
The wise man in the storm prays God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wow. Talk about timing.
Dr. Bill was a smart guy - obviously, he was supposed to be in that place at that time.
Thumbed.
The more I learn about you, young lady, the more I admire you.
Yea!
It also prompted a memory for me---myleogram---that's a word I made myself forget over the years. Because I also had one of those when I was being tested in the hospital at age 13---and let me echo your comment that it was the single most blindingly intense pain imaginable. OF course what happened next for you toook this journey on to a whole new level.
But I shiver now just looking at the word---some 40 years later. . .
Lea, I knew you would get it. To me, the most important part of the whole thing.
Roger, "gripping" coming from you is special. And that test, something else we share. How odd and yet comforting.
Amy, thank you for rating. Obviously you weren't practicing then, but I'd be interested to hear if/how old fashioned any of it sounds to you. Please comment, no one will bite, promise. Least of all me.
One of the most fascinating accounts of NDE's I've read is the one where Carl Jung tells what it was like to leave his body, and the return, along with the issues that developed in the following weeks. You may want to find it and read it.
It's comforting to know firsthand from somebody I trust that a phenomenon like this can occur concurrent with the moment of death. Seems a fair payoff for ceasing to be, whether it's a natural or supernatural occurence.
This comment is not NEARLY as eloquent or thankful as the previous two. Grrr.
But thanks.
The coolest and least-explainable part is the floating near the ceiling, watching everything. It seems inexplicable. But just within the last year, scientists have been able to reproduce the "seeing myself from a distance". I think they filmed people from behind while scratching their back with a stick, while at the same time the person was watching (I think) someone else, with their back to them, having their back scratched by a stick. This caused the first person to sort of "mentally project" himself forward to the second person's body, but still "seeing" the second person (himself) from his first body. Something weird like that. It's hard to describe. But if scientists can reproduce it (albeit using all this equipment), then I certainly think the mind can do it without all the equipment.
A fascinating story, and I'm glad you made it through (back to this side).
I thought meeting Ozzy was rough!
(rated for staying with us)
Suzanne, thank you too. I hope you were a mouse in the upper corner with me or my cat would have had you by now...
Bill, so sorry to hear, I had a feeling but wanted to ask just in case I was wrong. I love this part of your comment and want it to apply to me too... way in the future of course. "I still remember her as she probably wanted to be remembered, laughing and full of life." (I bet she'd love it too).
Tim, thank you, I'm always honored by compliments from writers I admire. Thanks for the tip, I've read Jung's account and didn't share the same issues, but he was much older than I at the time of our NDE's. I also have to say I've never thought of it as "leaving my body" -- it's odd since I did feel 'up there in the corner' and detached, but somehow not completely severed I guess.
singpretty, thank you, the experience was visceral as well as spiritual, so it had to come out that way. I hope I'm right too. Please, take it from one who knows, don't waste a minute of your life worrying about your death. As Auntie Mame would say, "Live! Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!"
Denise, I'm so sorry about your comments, for you and me... I really wanted your thoughts. My blog's been acting up.... THOMAS!!! But thank you so much for growling, it made my day. :)
marcelleqb, thank you, I must get to know You better now.
Chris, I agree about NDE's and as you might imagine, I've done some research on the subject. You said it much more comprehensively than I, but that's partly what I meant when I said that the brain must have some sort of failsafe. Plus, based on the experiments, we have the ability to "see" outside ourselves. Floating is another story. I think my dream explanation in the beginning of the post comes closest to a plausible reason.
PL, I love going under anesthesia for the very reason that it takes me back just a little to what I've described to friends as "the greatest high I've ever had."
I didn't have a near death experience but I had an extremely vivid calm and peace come over me when my pulse and BP were extremely low on the side of the road. I never stopped breathing or lost pulse and I'm thankful. I know, for me driving has never, nor ever will be the same no matter how much I do it. I still have my moments when it hits me. Fear, panic, anxiety. It's much more controlled now, but still...I suffer from PTSD and severe anxiety disorder since the wreck. Some from the mental trauma and some from the sheer magnitude of the impact and the fact the man died that hit me. (Survivors guilt even when it's not your fault.) It does exist.
If you ever need someone to talk to about it, you know where to find me. :-) It's been 35 years for you and15 years since mine, but I'm willing to bet we could talk for hours about our ordeals. I'm so glad you're with us... :-)
HAPPY NEW YEAR in your Happy New Life,
Love
Greg
I have a friend who claims to have been pronounced dead 4 times, and she has some very strange stories to tell, too. Whatever NDE are, I think it's safe to say no one knows what lies beyond this life. I hope you do get to meet your PopPop -- but not anytime soon.
http://open.salon.com/user_blog.php?page=2&uid=12050
The End, I don't discount anything. If by black death you mean "nothingness," I've always thought that would be the way it is, even though I hoped differently. If I knew why NDE's happen to some and not others, believe me, I'd write a book about it. I'm sure it has something to do with degree of "near death" and think it also might be connected in some way to openness and imagination. But I could be totally wrong.
Tom, I'd love to hear her stories. You're right, no one has ever really been *totally* dead (say for days) and come back to report. And thank you for wishing me my heart's desire, afterlife-wise.
Olga!! You can't just leave us hanging, tell your story!! Please.
Connie, thank you. I hope you've actually read some others. ;)
cartouche, wow, I am so proud when writers like you give my own writing kudos. Thank you.
UK, people who work on Near Death stories must have nightmares... or maybe really good dreams, I hope the latter. The physical effects of the accident came back to haunt me a time or three, but other than the prosaic "bad back" problems from time to time, all is well. Thanks for asking, you sweetie, you.
voicegal, I'm heading over to read about your father's experience shortly. Thanks for the heads up.
Olga, how dumb do I have to be not to get your GREAT and greatly ironic joke?? Allow me to introduce myself: Sally NOT SO Swift.
(Unless, that is, you did have a real NDE? Oy.)
Rated
Michael, you are so worthy, don't you DARE delete your 1973 post! It's priceless. The perfect teenage NYE story. It's a yin to my yang. Didn't you see my comment on it? And thank you for your kind words, coming from you, it means I've hit the mark.
grif, thank you, I always appreciate people appreciating me... well, who doesn't? Now I'll soon be by to get to know you.
thanks for sharing, for surviving
Sandra, thank you and jeez, you read this whole thing while busy being a newlywed? I'm honored. But you're a good multi-tasker, so I shouldn't be surprised. And yeah, the lesson at the end is what makes me me.
Roy, thank you for reading and commenting.
Rated & Cheers!
(that's how lame I feel in trying to compose a comment after reading your absolutely brilliant and sublime post.)
I am at a loss for words.
Except for saying thank you for living to write for us........
Wonderful that you chose to come back, who knows how long before you get to come again. Very well told, thank you.
We are here because we are meant to be.
To spread love and joy and compassion.
You are one of them.
Never ever question.
I love you Sally Swift.
I think you have given me an excellent start on a new year. Reading this is awe-inspiring, life- affirming and just very cool. Love you, Sally.
Your out of body experience fascinated me! I'm glad that you're back with us. Back in 1973 my husband was a medical student learning all the "old ways." Medical science has come a long way! My best to you. May you have many more Happy New Years! You are an inspiration to me. Thank God we're both walking! I wasn't supposed to walk again. To this day I cringe when I see a wheel chair!
l'Heure, glad you found something in my experience. It certainly was meaningful to me.
Linda, I love your response and I love you too. Kindred spirits.
mginmn, thanks for making me feel welcome and happy to be alive.
Joan, I adore you and am so glad this jump-started your new year. We must get together!
Sheila, what an amazing thing to say, that I'd be needed on 9/11. I like to think I'd be needed to create my wonderful son and to help Karen too.
Nikki, that kind of praise from you makes me feel so proud I'm now speechless.
Fusun, oh yes, Dr Bill (I don't think I ever knew his last name) still holds a special place in my heart.
ninjalady, I too am glad we both survived and walked into life.
Deb, I commented to Sheila before I saw your comment. I am indeed glad to have been here for her and more important, to know the absolute and total serenity with which she passed. It comforts me even as I mourn. I hope it can bring comfort to others who've lost precious loved ones.
I'm not afraid of death. And I'm totally not afraid of life.
I need to work on the second one. Hope it doesn't take a NDE to figure it out.
Took me a while to find you but I'll be reading more. Thanks.