Have You Experienced An Event?

[beccaslp]

You guys are scaring me

You guys are scaring me

All this talk is making me nervous. I don't want to have an event! I think because the words "near death" are being used. I still have 2 months to wait and have been pretty calm, but now I am starting to feel pretty nervous! BECCA

 

[geebee]

Becca,

Please don't be scared. Most of the experiences talked about are rare and most of them positive.

It is somewhat easy for those of us who have been through this to be a bit cavalier. I am sure it must seem strange or frightening to someone still waiting.

Sorry for any concern but you shouldn't have any worries just based on this thread.

 

[Yaps]

I had a

I had a

massive heart attack, was pretty much on meds, no bright lights, not even in the cath lab, did have c&w on the musac..(hate c & w), but they had so much morphine , demerol ,whatever pumped in me ..lol I was lost.
And with me it happened very fast..came home from work at 10 pm ..in er by 12, admitted and scheduled tests ..had 2-3 ? Not sure how many, by 10 am ambulance is taking me to another hospital, cath then ohs... I really dont remeber much, and when I do..its in parts, lol, my vcr didnt tape all of my movie weird ..outside myself feeling ..in the cath lab..then in icu..thats about it.. love the pup

 

[KathyH]

Ross I worked with a Nurse who was close to death during abdominal surgery. She described it similar to what Eowyn Rose did. She was looking down at what was happening. When she described it to her surgeon it was just what was just what had happened.
So, we can't call you crazy for that, it does happen.
Kathy H

 

[Karlynn]

All this talk is making me nervous. I don't want to have an event! I think because the words "near death" are being used. I still have 2 months to wait and have been pretty calm, but now I am starting to feel pretty nervous! BECCA

Becca,
I was afraid of the same thing. Please don't worry. Valve surgeries have a very low mortality rate, lower than some surgeries considered less serious. I relieved my fear a bit by joking about it. I remember telling my husband that I hoped to not see him eating red licorice (his favorite) in the waiting room during my surgery.

 

[Harpoon]

Lemmee preface this by saying that, depending on semantics, EVERYTHING I experienced during the first 4-5 weeks of my stay at Cleveland Clinic was very much "near death" in all kinds of respects...

Ok, got that one off my chest.


A lot of my memories from the first few weeks of recovery are either not accessible, fuzzy beyond all recognition, or blurred together by the passage of time. One of the things I've been trying to do lately is actually to try and process what I do remember through meditation (yup, puttin' that Tibetan Buddhism thing to practical use here...)

I haven't had a whole lot of success with it as of yet, but I just started out and my first step really is to be able to focus my mind and bring those memories up for "analysis" as it were.

Most of what I remember can best be described as VERY vivid dreams. Some of it was like an alternate reality.

One "cluster" in particular has me with a girlfriend, not my wife, not someone I've ever known, though she shares a few traits with my wife such as black hair, and "not thin" build. (Sorry, I can't call my wife fat, she's not, not even "chunky" but she's not a toothpick either and she is heavier that she should be by about maybe 10-15 lbs)
She's kinda mean and while I thought she cared for me, she wouldn't let me do anything that I wanted to do... She held me back on stuff, wouldn't let me do my art, wouldn't let me play 'cello. These dreams were at length, days perhaps, not just little snippets like you have when you go to bed at night and wake up in the morning.

Another series had me on some kind of deep space vessel with a simulated Earth habitat. I was some kind of instructor and I wanted to get off the ship.

Also had a series where I was on some kind of yacht with a few pretty ladies and some kind of mixed cocktail type drink. I believe the yacht was mine but I could never find the palce where I wanted to be, nor can I remember now what that place that I wanted to be was.

Yeah, those were some GOOD drugs man!

A fwe others were more personal and I'm keeping them to myself thankyouverymuch.

I had two clear hallucinations on seperate occassions and I can almost pinpoint dates on one of them. I was with my family, it was after surgery but before I was really recording memories and "experiencing" a day to day exsistance. I think I might have had some kind of setback after the event.

We were playing a card game, my father, mother, brother, and I. My wife was around, but she was just watching. I got real tired and wanted to stop playing and I put my cards down then started to get up (something I could not do at that time) and I fell out of my chair and hit the floor.

I don't think this actually happened, but I do know something similar to it did occur. To my knowledge, I only fell out of a chair once. Twice out of bed though no one caught the second one because, while I was REALLY weak, I was strong enough to get myself up off the floor.

The other hallucination relates to an incident that moved me from a semi-private room to an observation area that was connected to the nurses station. I needed to use the bathroom and I still had all kinds of wires and IVs and such attached to me, however I was bound and determined to go use the facillities and I did. And I got caught.
On my way back to bed, with a few nurses holding me for support, I fell hard and as they stood me back up, a trickle of blood started running down my right leg.... That earned me a babysitter an eight hour bed rest restriction, and a transfusion.
During that eight hours I passed into something that could be called a trance. i don't remember much of it, but I became fixated on the ceiling above me for a while and then on a "cool" scene that sat outside my window at that time. There was a large metallic vent/pipe thing with another pipe and sime guidewires arranged on a roof outside the window of the semi-private room I was in. During the night, the artificial lights from the buildings and nearby helicopter pad cast some interesting shadows and highlights across this thing and I REALLY wished I had a camera with me to capture it. I still want to go back and shoot that photo though it would probably never happen.
At some point, while fixated on this scene outside my room, I started floating... I didn't go outside really, wasn't above my bed or flyign around the room or whatever, but I was suspended in air, hard to say mroe than that, I just was out there.

Yeah, those were some GOOD drugs....


I never saw my maker, never saw long lost relatives or friends or whatever. My life never flashed before my eyes, just the second Gulf war and watching Saddam's statue get torn down by British soldiers... No warm white lights. Nothing at the end of a long, dark tunnel.

Maybe something akin to a catatonic state for a while. I suspect some of the memories of that "bizarro world girlfriend" came from hallucinations while my wife was trying to communicate with me. I think some of the other memories I have are from tests that were performed. Most of it's conjecture based on what I know was done to me at certain times.

You can't by any stretch of the imagination explain to me why or how I found myself in some small Canadian community hockey rink trying to set up video equipment to televise the game. All I know is I like hockey, I watch a fair amount of Canadian TV, and I've broadcast hockey games on local public access before.

But nothing like those dreams....


Oh, and a quickie reminder (and possibly why I have stronger experiences/memories than others here) I was on the hospital for well over two months, half that time on life-support and a portion of THAT time in a semi-conscious and responsive state.

Most people don't spend more than a few days in a hospital, usually only a day (if that) on vent...

 

[Ross]

All this talk is making me nervous. I don't want to have an event! I think because the words "near death" are being used. I still have 2 months to wait and have been pretty calm, but now I am starting to feel pretty nervous! BECCA

Becca please don't misinterpret. Both of my surgeries were far from anything that most of you will ever experience. Harpoon, Johnny Stephens and a couple others know what I mean, we were not the normal OHS patients. I'm only trying to see if others had feelings similiar or if it is just unique to us very critically ill persons. As you can see from the poll, most have experienced nothing at all!

 

[hensylee]

Becca -We discuss a lot of subjects, and from time to time this subject comes up, tho this is the first time we have gotten into the 'what did you see' thing. Like Ross says, he was critical. Many of us were very worried about him at the time of his last hospitalization, but for nearly all our members, the result of surgery is excellent. As you can see by reading all the happy posts from us.

Generally, the pain meds can cause hallucinations, dreams, etc - and we remember them as factual. My brother was hospitalized a couple months ago and he SWEARS there were symbiotic squirrels running around a conference room where he was and the nurses were playing games and throwing 'play pretties' around. When in fact, my brother was in isolation! Probably many members could relate this sort of story, too. (well a few already have - see above)

Please, you must not be afraid. Your surgery is very important.

 

[Harpoon]

All this talk is making me nervous. I don't want to have an event! I think because the words "near death" are being used. I still have 2 months to wait and have been pretty calm, but now I am starting to feel pretty nervous! BECCA

Some background: I dunno about Ross, he and his heart got issues that seem to go above and beyond all sense of reason, but then, I think that's why most people here like him so much... or maybe they just recognize he's got the power that we don't.... =)

Anyways, I was born in 1973 with a VERY screwed up heart. I was fighting an uphill battle from the beginning and while I got EXTREMELY lucky and managed to live most of my life up until the present at WELL above the bar for folks with my condition, my time was (and still is) borrowed time and it was almost inevitable that I would have problems.

I was born with something called transposition of the great vessels. The pulmonary artery (runs blood to the lungs to pick up oxygen) and aorta (runs oxygenated blood from the heart out to the body) were formed in the wrong places, basically switched, and that's 100% fatal all the time unless there's some other kind of heart defect that allows oxygen saturated and oxygen depleted blood to mix somewhere between the chambers of the heart. I had a small ventricular septal defect (a hole between the ventricles) that was kept from closing through the use of HIGH powered medications, basically half a step short of fatal doses of digoxin which is derived from a plant called digitalis which happens to be HIGHLY toxic to just about everything that eats it.

Anyways. I had surgery at less than two months old (I don't know exactly when) and the repair job was good enough to last me close to 27 years which is EXTREMELY rare for "kids" with my kind of congenital heart defect. Usually complications arise pre-teen and many kids end up with transplants or artificial valves in their late teens, early twenties or other "happy" things like pacemakers and additional palliative surgeries. I was WAY lucky and about due for a catastrophy really.


Well I got it, damn near killed me too, but alas, I refused to die.


What happened to me was VERY atypical and should not under any circumstances be considered a "normal" surgical experience.

I was in severe heart failure, I was retaining water, about 35 extra pounds of fluids in fact. I was in liver failure and kidney failure, my endocrine system was shutting down, my unrine output was next to nil. I was puking up almost everything I ate and yet I was still walking. I could barely talk, the incessant coughing due to the water in my lungs had all but destroyed my vocal chords. It hurt everywhere, I could barely walk, I would zone out all the time, I was incoherent at times... It was a VERY dark time.

Most of the people here who've had valve replacements NEVER got to that point, not even close to it.

Once I had surgery, I had a rough recovery. I had a lot of set backs because my heart and my body were already in such poor shape. However, I had the best of the best when it came to specialists in the field of congenital (pediatric) heart surgery and they never gave up, not even for a moment.


My case was/is very special. I'm almost in a league of my own unless you set me against other people who've been born with congenital heart defects, then you'll find that I'm actually fairly "normal" as my experiences go.

After I got out of the hospital I had a summer of cardiac rehab. I was the ONLY patient under 45-50 years old and I was 29 at the time. Everyone else there had had some form of coronary by-pass surgery after suffering from a heart attack. I was a freak really and for the first few weeks, the nurses who ran the rehab program were worried that I'd die on their watch because they had never seen a patient like me come through their doors.

Oh yeah, and inspite of all of that, inspite of my extreme case, my extremely poor health, I survived. It took a little longer to get back on track, but I did pull through and I'm fine now.

Sure, I take a lot of medications and I'm probably at about 90% of what I was before I got sick, but then I haven't been able to exercise as much as I'd like and the meds are neccesary to keep me alive now.

On the other side, before surgery I didn't have a family really, not a wife and a son. Before surgery I wasn't a firefighter, I wasn't certified for basic life support with AED (I was training to become an emergency medical technician but didn't quite make the cut, still certified for CPR and automated electronic defibulator use which takes some physical effort to master.)

I got married, I started writing feature stories for the newspaper I work for, I started taking kung-fu...

Yeah, surgery can be quite scary. Most of us who have been through it where scared out of our wits beforehand, but as the time draws closer, you'll find an inner peace about it. You kind of surrender to the fact that THIS is the way things need to be in order for you to continue to live a normal life. This is how it has to be if you're going to grow old, see your children have children, see retirement and in the end, this surgery, as scary as it might be, isn't THAT bad, really. You'll be unconscious for most of it anyways.

We worry because we don't know and what we don't know, we try to make up in our heads. We concoct elaborate schemes of what this is going to be like, what that's going to be like. We basically psych ourselves out on so many levels it's rediculous.

Try to take time to be with yourself, find a quiet, private place where you can sit and just be. Visualize happier places, a favorite beach or a pleasant vacation memory. At one point while I was in the hospital, I found myself recollecting one of the first "dinner dates" I had with my wife. It was in the early fall which is one of my favorite times of the year. Leaves were changing but the air was warm, the breeze was scented with concord grapes (we live in wine country) and everything was fresh and golden. We took a drive out to a local fruit stand and bought some raspberry herbal tea, some veggies, and a bottle of sparkling grape juice then went to a store to pick up some salmon before going to her apartment. Then we cooked up one of her "classic" salmon recipes. It had a dill sauce in it and I love dill. The memory still sticks out well in my mind and it was such a wonderful time.

That was calming for me, helpful and a great distraction to the unpleasantness of being in a hospital.

Find memories like that for yourself and keep them on hand for when you need to be "somewhere else." Practice now if you can.

We all do as much as we can to be prepared, sometimes too much really, but we often forget that once we're there, once the surgery is happening and then you're in recovery, VERY little really matters. You need to breath, you need to see, to speak maybe, to eat. You need to get up and out of bed, to walk, as soon as the doctors and nurses will let you. You need to keep walking, keep moving. Nothign else matters really, everyhting else in your life is on hold for at least a day or two until you get home and then, only certain things will be taken care of. The rest is just on hold, it's not important.

Eventually you get better, recovery takes time, most people seem to say they feel much better after a week or two. Most people don't get back to work until maybe week five or six, and then it's usually "light duty" stuff, maybe working half days for a while. Most people aren't behind the wheel of their care for clsoer to eight weeks. You can't lift more than 20-30 lbs until that point.

There was a discussion about sexual activity a while ago. If you're "that way" you can usually do it, as you feel comfortable, after the first or second week of recovery. The "benchmark" is being able to climb a flight of stairs without difficulty.


Yeah, that stuff is important too for many of us.

You'll work through it, no matter how scared you might feel right now. It just comes if you let it come.


And by the way, I would go through all of it again if I had to, without a second thought. As bad as I was, I know how much better I got once it was over and the pain and discomfort was temporary. It wasn't pretty, it was extremely hairy for a while, but I got through it and I could do it again.


Given my situation, I may have to go through it again, though the next time around could mean heart transplant, not just replacing parts with artificial ones....

 

[Lorraine]

I remember after surgery, and I was in CICU just waking up. I had my own little glass enclosed room. I had this strangest sensation. I saw a flashing light. Then I drifted off and when I woke again and the same thing happened. I figured it was either the great drugs or the good Lord was trying to decide whether to let me stay or not. I drifted off again and when I awoke I didn't see it again at that time. I then put it out of my mind and thanked the good Lord I was alive! I also had an out of body experience at that time. The male nurses taking care of me were in on the other side of next room talking and I was in spirit if not in body right there listening to them. I heard everything they were saying about what they were going to do next to me when I woke up. When they came in the room I told them exactly what they were going to do. They looked at me in amazement because they said they were whispering when they had their discussion and were not right outside my door. I have no expanation for how I would know what they were talking about. Was I teetering on staying or leaving, I don't know. All I know is what I heard. The nurses were truly amazed! I don't care if anyone thinks I'm nuts or not Ross. I just know what I experienced and it sure wasn't the norm.

 

[Wise]

Confession

Confession

Alright, I confess. I first voted "I don't believe in this nonsense." I misunderstood the thread initially, my fault entirely. As I've read the responses I realized that my vote should have been simply "haven't experienced any events." I know I can't change it, but just letting you all know I really don't think you're strange. I wish I could ask my deceased brother if he had any of the "events" you've described, but of course I can't. But, someday I'll meet up with him and get an ear full I'm sure.

 

[Ghosthunter]

Hi there intereseting subject, and hence my name I did a lot of research on this subject as well.


I have a very close friend of mine who had a serious accident and when went into surgery had a NDE, she told me it changed her life.

I myself have never had one.

 

[Ross]

Alright, I confess. I first voted "I don't believe in this nonsense." I misunderstood the thread initially, my fault entirely. As I've read the responses I realized that my vote should have been simply "haven't experienced any events." I know I can't change it, but just letting you all know I really don't think you're strange. I wish I could ask my deceased brother if he had any of the "events" you've described, but of course I can't. But, someday I'll meet up with him and get an ear full I'm sure.

The poll vote has been changed to reflect your actual choice!
Thank You.

 

[Wise]

The poll vote has been changed to reflect your actual choice!
Thank You.

Muchas gracias. Merci beaucoup. dunke...donuts? Thanks!!!!

 

[tobagotwo]

I had an event once, but the dry cleaner's was able to get it out...

I didn't have any NDEs or similar during or around surgery that I remember. I've had other unexplainable things happen. When I was about fourteen, the phone rang. I was standing right next to the phone, but I wouldn't answer it. My older brother came steaming up to the phone asking why. "It's grandma," I said. "Grampa died. We have to let Mom answer it."

My mother picked it up while my brother was still glaring at me in confusion. It was my grandmother, calling to say that my grandfather had had a heart attack while working in the basement and had passed away. As he wasn't sick at the time, it was an unexpected sadness.

I have no idea how I knew. At the time, it felt like someone had actually told me the words. It's not the type of thing that just tumbles out of your mouth.

Best wishes,

 

[Jean]

During surgery in 2000, I had no NDE and I was kind of disappointed. I just went to sleep and woke up and thought "Oh, I'm alive!"

But (for those of you who were here then, several months later I did have those odd sensations of doors to other levels opening up. I first experienced it on a rainy night in the mtns. of NC driving my truck (sounds like a country song.) It just seemed like through the rain, I would catch a glimpse of somewhere else, but not too different. It would happen several times during the summer...especially on the bike going around interstate ramps...I like to push it sometimes. It would really freak me out...messes up your rhythm and feel of the road because you are concentrating so hard. Never had it again...luckily.

 

[Peggy in Alaska]

Ross:

I voted no event - I've only had anesthesia 2 times - once for toncils at 5 yrs. old and just this year for a bladder biopsy. All I can say about the most recent time was that the 2 and 1/2 hours of procedure seemed like 10 minutes! I was waking up and there was my husband and my best friend! Couldn't believe I had been out for that long.

I love general anesthesia! Wonder if I can get that at home once in awhile???!!!

 

[JimL]

"I love general anesthesia! Wonder if I can get that at home once in awhile???!!!"
I see that I'm once again the only unbeliever... But if I could get some of that anesthesia, perhaps it would make a believer out of me.

 

[Wise]

"I love general anesthesia! Wonder if I can get that at home once in awhile???!!!"
I see that I'm once again the only unbeliever... But if I could get some of that anesthesia, perhaps it would make a believer out of me.

When I had my cardiac ablation about a year ago they gave me percocet for pain. I am generally a quiet guy. I turned into motor mouth and was getting on the nerves of the man next to me, his wife, and my wife. Soon I realized no one was talking to me anymore; I wonder why. I laid awake all night, worn out, but very alert. All I had to do was watch my heart rate on the monitor. So, you may be an unbeliever (funny for a minister to be an unbeliever, huh?), but at least we agree about the wonder of legal drugs.

 

[Peggy in Alaska]

Jim: If you can't get anesthesia, try some vicadin [probably not spelled right]. Boy, did that stuff put me out after the biopsy - it was for pain which I really didn't have much of, but I wanted so desperately to just go to sleep after I got home and I think the anesthesia had me wired, because I could not at all fall asleep. The vicadin sure did the trick and woke up once or twice during that evening feeling like I was floating in the clouds. Only 2 one pill, but boy, after just one pill, I can see how someone could get hooked on painkillers. Am saving the rest of the prescription for some other time!