This is a very enlightening write-up by a Intensive care nurse who has
experienced her patients die and return popularly called Near Death
Experience.
As a nurse, I’m always cheered when I see
a patient who appears to be making a good recovery. That certainly
seemed the case with 60-year-old Tom Kennard, who’d been suffering from
sepsis after surgery for cancer.
After a couple weeks in the intensive care ward, he was well enough to be moved from his hospital bed to a chair. Moments later, however, he suddenly slumped into unconsciousnessThere was no doubt at all that he was out cold. He responded neither to
my urgent questions nor to the painful pressure of my Biro on his
fingernails.
Worse still, his skin became clammy, his oxygen levels dropped and his
blood pressure plummeted — clear signs that his condition had become
critical.
As I quickly gave him extra oxygen, I called out to the other nurses in
the intensive care unit. Four of them immediately flocked to Tom’s
bedside, and we gently helped return him to his bed as we called for a
doctor urgently.
He was still unresponsive when the doctor arrived, followed a few minutes later by a consultant.
Indeed, Tom didn’t regain full consciousness for another three hours.
Yet, during those three lost hours, he had apparently gone on a
life-changing journey. His first sensation, he told me afterwards, was
of ‘floating upwards to the top of the room. I looked down and I could
see my body on the bed. It was lovely, so peaceful — and no pain at all.’
In the next moment, the hospital ward had disappeared and he’d entered a
pink room, in which his father was standing next to a man with ‘long
black scruffy hair and nice eyes.’ For a time, Tom talked telepathically
with his father.
At some point, he became aware that something was touching him. Once
again, he was back on the hospital ward ceiling — looking down at me and
the doctor.
I was putting a lollipop-shaped instrument into his mouth to clean it, he recalled later.
He could also see a woman beyond the cubicle curtains, who kept twitching them to check on his condition.
Indeed, I can personally verify that everything Tom ‘saw’ while
unconscious was 100 per cent accurate — down to the swab I used to
moisten his mouth and the names of the consultant and of the
physiotherapist lurking behind the curtains.
While all this was going on, Tom heard the man with the scruffy hair
say: ‘He’s got to go back.’ This came as a blow: he remembers
desperately wanting to stay.
Shortly after that, he told me, ‘I was floating backwards and went back into my body on the bed.’
His pain was excruciating, but he could still vividly recall how
peaceful he had felt in that pink room. ‘Pen,’ he told me, ‘if that’s
death, it’s wonderful.’
This near-death experience had two significant effects on his life. First, Tom says, it completely removed any fear of dying.
Even more extraordinary is what happened to his right hand, which had been frozen since birth into a claw-like position.
(This had been noted on his hospital admission form, and his sister has since signed a statement confirming it.)
Yet, in front of me, soon after his near-death experience, Tom opened
and flexed that same hand. This should not have been physiologically
possible, as the tendons had permanently contracted. What had caused
this sudden, seemingly spontaneous healing? Even now, science has no
answers.
But when you study near-death experiences, as I have for the past couple
of decades, you grow used to phenomena that defy all rational
explanation.
Take, for instance, the case of Fred Williams, a Swansea pensioner in
his 70s who was suffering from the final stages of a terminal heart
problem.
One night in hospital, he lost consciousness and we feared he was about to die.
But he somehow managed to keep his faltering grip on life. And when he
eventually came to, I noticed at once that he looked very happy. My
colleagues also remarked on this.All the time this was happening, I felt
fine: full of joy, peaceful, gently floating towards brilliant light.
By the following morning, Fred had recovered sufficiently to see his
anxious relatives.To their astonishment, he told them that he’d been
visited — while unconscious — by his mother and grandmother, both of
whom were dead, as well as by his (living) sister. They’d just stood by
his bedside, keeping vigil. ‘I couldn’t understand why my sister was
there as well,’ he remarked.Unknown to him, his sister had actually
died the week before.
Fearing the news might jeopardise his recovery, his family had kept it
from him. Poor Fred never learned the truth, and died a week later.
But possibly the most extraordinary case I know of personally is that of
a Moroccan woman in her late 30s, who ran a clothes business.
In November 2009, Rajaa Benamour had an anaesthetic injection for minor
surgery, after which she found herself mentally scrolling through her
entire life, right back to her birth. This was followed by what she
could only describe as a rapid review of the creation of the universe. After being discharged from hospital, she started trying to find books about what she’d learned during her vision.
Eventually, she realised that she had somehow acquired an in-depth
understanding of quantum physics — despite never having previously known
anything about the subject.
This motivated her to study the subject at university level.
The professor in charge of her studies was astounded. The knowledge
she’d already acquired, he said, could not have come either from
studying student textbooks or taking a quick course.
Stranger still, he was puzzled by some of her scientific theories — yet
they’ve since been confirmed by papers published in physics journals.
Marie-Claire Hubert, a nurse who had an NDE when she was hospitalised
with meningitis, went through a tunnel and emerged to find dead family
members, former patients and even long-dead pets.
Now, she says: ‘I know for certain we do meet our loved ones eventually.
It’s made me a better person and I try to do at least five kind things a
day for other people.’
For some, their experience of what has been described as ‘unconditional
love’ makes them re-evaluate what they do with their lives.
Quite a few have actually retrained to become nurses or doctors or started doing voluntary work in a hospice.
Pam Williams from Swansea had an NDE when she haemorrhaged after
childbirth. While unconscious, she ‘saw’ a doctor bang on her chest,
breathe into her mouth and insert a needle into her heart.
‘All the time this was happening, I felt fine: full of joy, peaceful, gently floating towards brilliant light.
‘Suddenly, in the distance, I heard my eldest daughter shout, “Mam”. I remember thinking, ‘Oh dear, Jacquie needs me,’ and I came back with a jolt.
‘I’m not a religious person but I [now] believe there’s a warm, peaceful, beautiful place after death.’
At the time of her NDE, Pam was an uneducated miner’s wife with four
children. Afterwards, she says, she felt ‘a need to help and support
others’ — so she trained as a nurseand, ten years later, became a sister
on the
on the coronary-care unit of a hospital in Sheffield.
I began my eight-year study as a cynic. But by the time it ended, I
was convinced that near-death experiences are a genuine phenomenon.
So what exactly is a near-death experience? At its simplest, it’s a
clear and memorable vision that occurs when people are close to death —
though only a small percentage of us will have one.
Researchers now agree that each vision will contain at least one of
several recognised components, such as travelling down a tunnel towards a
bright light, meeting dead relatives, or having an out-of-body
experience.
As the person ‘leaves’ his body, he may hear a buzzing, whistling,
whirring or humming sound, or a click. Another common component of NDEs
is a beautiful garden with lush green grass and vividly coloured
flowers. There may be a stream or river in the background. Some people
enter the garden, while others reach a gate or barrier — and know that
they’ll die if they go through it.
Throughout an NDE, hearing and sight become more acute, and awareness is
heightened. Often, the experience has been described to me as ‘realer
than real’.
Yet NDEs are not a new phenomenon at all; they’ve been reported throughout history.
They also feature in some of the greatest books in history — including
the Bible; The Republic, by the ancient Greek philosopher, Plato; and
the Tibetan Book of the Dead, an ancient religious text about the
interval between life and rebirth. It’s only in the past few decades,
however, that scientists have tried to discover what causes NDEs.
The most common theory is that they’re a quirk of the brain when it’s starved of oxygen. But this now seems extremely unlikely.
As oxygen levels reduce in the blood, the brain becomes increasingly
disorientated, confused and disorganised. I’ve witnessed this happening
many times. And I can assure you that when most patients regain
consciousness, they’re usually dazed and bewildered.
This is in complete contrast to those who’ve had an NDE.
With great clarity, they report structured experiences that, in many
cases, remain vivid in their minds for decades. In other words, not at
all what one would expect from a disorganised brain with greatly reduced
blood flow.
In any case, if near-death experiences are due to lack of oxygen, then all patients who had a cardiac arrest would have one.
Are NDEs merely hallucinations caused by drugs? Clearly not — as 20 per
cent of the patients in my sample, including Tom Kennard, had received
no drugs at all.
Indeed, when I analysed my research, I found that pain-killing and
sedative drugs, particularly at high levels, seem to make it less
likely that a patient will have an NDE.
In other words, well-meaning doctors who over-sedate dying patients may be denying them a natural and comforting final vision.
Furthermore, I also interviewed 12 patients who’d had drug-induced
hallucinations. These were random and often frightening — such as being
chased and stabbed with needles by drug dealers — but they bore
absolutely no relation to NDEs.
Can all these people — and the many more that I’ve interviewed — be delusional?
Or could there be far more to approaching death than scientists have ever acknowledged?
Extracted from The Wisdom Of Near-Death Experiences by Dr Penny Sartori, to be published by Watkins Publishing on February 6