Any of you ever have a near death experience during surgery?

My 80 year old mother was on life supports and in a medical induced coma for 12 days. She told me that she had an out of body experience where she looked down at her self, and she looked like "wood." We had never told her what she looked like during that time, but she was so bruised and swollen, she did look like petrified wood. It surprised the hell out of me that she said this.

Under general anesthesia, oxygen-deprived or not, there shouldn't be any imaginings going on, whether oxygen-deprived or not. As most of us have experienced, under general anesthesia, there's nothing happening in the way of imaginings or thoughts.

I'm here Bill (Clocknut) to share my Dad's experience which is similiar to you Grandmother's.  Indeed I do believe in NDE and this wasn't in surgery!  Mom and Dad were at a restuarant and my Dad began to have heart attack symptoms.  Stubborn as he was, he drove to the hospital a few minutes away.    Mom dropped him off at the ER and he was seated while she went to park the car.  She came back to the ER lobby and the nurse told her, "Your husband died for several minutes but we were able to revive him."

The hospital got his heart stable and they began doing tests.  At this point, my brother and I had been called.  When Dad was able to talk, he told Mom about his NDE.  He was not flying over his body, but rather it was a dream like state of mind of going forward.   His heart stopped beating.   Now this was before the Internet or Dr. Oz. - 23 years ago.  As some have shared this is a very peaceful moment with brightness (not necessarily lights).  The first person he saw was his Mother.  He felt like there was something ahead (beyond her); the bright light some talk about.  Grandma (his Mother) told him it wasn't his time and he had to come back.  He had been without a heartbeat for more than 4 minutes.

The unfinished business was to see his children and Grandchidren before he was to leave earth.  He made no mention of seeing Jesus.  Yet, he felt that the experience would come one day.  I visited with Dad many hours from that Friday night to Monday night.  There were some things I did for him, and he made an apology to me.  My brother and Grandchildren got to see him.  We left the hospital on Monday night.  Two hours later they called to say he had passed on.

My Dad's experience involved no drugs or surgery.  He died in the lobby and the doctors were able to revive him in about 4 minutes.  I 100% believe believe Bill's (Clocknut's) story.  81GyGuy, you may include my story in your discussion.  It is definitely food for thought.  I'm sorry, I didn't mean to write so much, but I wanted to share everything.

Peace,

Aimzee

 

81GyGuy, I just noticed I wrote the word believe believe twice in my post.  Oh, my...

When a bunch of ladies get together, like at a wedding shower, we discuss many things.  One subject that does come up is, "Have you ever had the feeling that your loved one returned in some form - not as a ghost - but just a feeling that they are there?  Possibly to comfort you?  My daughter had two miscarriages, and finally she carried her third baby to her due date.  I was in the delivery room with my daughter and her husband.  Once my Grandson was born and cried, I just felt like my MOM was there in the room.  I said right out loud, "Mom he is a miracle isn't he?"  I just felt her spirit there.  The sadness I felt from her death 2 years earlier was gone.  Simple as that.

You wouldn't believe some of the stories these women shared.  I have asked myself, are women more opened to this experience than men, amd therefore they happen?  It also seems young children will sometimes say, "Grandma was in my room and she told me she was happy and out of pain."  This happened to three young children in our family.  However, I won't go any further for fear that you may think I'm nutty! However, ask others. 

Peace,

Aimzee

Post Edited (Aimzee) : 3/9/2013 6:36:00 PM (GMT-7)

Well, while we're talking about these things, I'll share several unusual things that have happened to me.

On November 22, 1963, I awoke in an absolute sweat.  I was in college and sat bolt upright in my upper bunk, drenched in sweat.  I had just had a dream in which I walked up behind a guy who was looking out of an upper story window.  I saw he had a rifle.  He sighted in on somebody down at the street and fired.  Blood was everywhere.  The shooting victim's head exploded.  The dream was so frightening that I was breathing hard and sweating, and my roommate asked me what was wrong, so I told him about the dream.  Early that afternoon, we heard the breaking news on the radio that President Kennedy had been shot.

Years later, my best friend in childhood had married, and his wife was fighting breast cancer.  She was only in her mid 30's.  One night, I was having regular dreams in color, when those dreams were interrrupted by a sepia-toned dream.  My buddy's wife Sharon was standing there and spoke to me, saying "I just wanted you to know that everything is alright now."  I told my wife about that dream at breakfast.  Later that day, my old friend called to tell us that Sharon had died that night.

The night my mother died, my regular colorful dreaming was again interrupted by a sepia-toned vision of my mother.  She didn't say anything, but she looked as she did as a  young woman, and she was dancing with one arm waving gracefully above her head.  My mother had spent the last 7 years of her life in a nursing home, completely paralyzed on her left side.  She couldn't walk, and she certainly couldn't dance.  To this day, I feel that she was telling me through this dream apparition that wherever she now is, she's again whole and healthy.  That dream has given me a lot of comfort, and though I'm sure it can be explained in various ways, it's quite real to me.

Or, there was the time I woke up and told my wife I had dreamed we had an auto accident, but a minor one, and that her sister also had an accident, but much more serious.  Later than morning, we had a fender bender in the mall parking lot.  In the evening, after supper we got a call with the news that her sister had rear ended someone, totaled her car, and was in the hospital.

There have been other similar dreams, and to me they're just as real as the NDE's are to those who experience them.  As Shakespeare once wrote, " There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Bill & Ms. Worry Wart, I have had those vision happenings, so nothing you have written surprises me.  After taking care of my Mom for 4 years (complications from Diabetes) I had several seesions with a therapist to help me with my grief.  One morning, Ron tells me he had a dream about Mom.  She told him to tell me she was happy being there with my Dad and that she was no longer in pain!  She also asked him to take care of me.

I started to cry and told him, "That's not fair.  My Mom comes to you but not to me."  My therapist said my mind was shut off to communication because I hadn't accepted her death yet.  Sadly, it was 6 months before I was able to accept her passing on.  Once I did, she finally visited me in a dream.  She looked so happy and had blonde hair, not white.  There was peace of mind.  Full acceptance came once my first Grandchild was born two years later.

There may be some that doubt these experiences, but the key is to be open to them.

81GyGuy, I hope we've given you enough things to discuss with your son.  Thank you for this thread!

I had a near death during prostate surgery, but I don't remember the experience. I went into DIC, a rare bleeding disorder with a high fatality rate. The surgery ended up taking 5-1/2 hours and they pumped more blood into me than my body contains. The surgeon said it was under control the entire time, but I've wondered how bad it was.

My memory of the first 3-6 months after surgery is very hazy and it still hasn't fully recovered so I think there was a little brain damage there. It's my memory recall and concentration that's really the problem. I have a hard time remembering names of people I know.

I did have an out of body experience about 9 months after surgery playing a game of hockey. You know the feeling that you get when you're starting to wake up in the middle of a dream and realize that you're dreaming but you're still in the dream. That happened to me while I was sitting on the bench near the end of the game. I had been watching myself play there were those weird things going on and odd conversations during the game that couldn't be real. I realized I had been hallucinating but I was slow to snap out of it. It wasn't until I was driving home that I fully snapped out of it. The funny thing is that no one seemed to notice anything unusual. It concerned me but it's never happened again so I don't really know what caused it.

i know this is like 6 years old, but when I had surgery in september this happened to me, they told me it was a dream.. very painful and wild one!

Oh my, it has indeed been close to six years since this thread I started back then ran here on the forum. It was an active and vigorously attended discussion as well, as you will see, if you take a look at it.

Obviously, the topic of near death experiences (NDEs), whatever they are, is a topic of ongoing interest, and a number of people continue to have something to say about them.

And maybe not really all that much off-topic, since anything that potentially impacts one's surgery, whether it's real or not, is reasonably a subject for discussion.

Also, now that this topic has been resurrected ("zombie thread?") after six years, I suppose it is now open for further comments or discussion?

So, anyone had an NDE lately, or what they thought was one, that they would now like to discuss?

And another zombie rises!

The resuscitation (so far) of this old NDE thread reminds me of the response to a question that a scientist supposedly once gave, on another subject. But it's a response that could well apply to the question as to whether NDEs actually do represent some kind of valid, other-worldly phenomenon.

A reporter once asked an astronomer to state, "in fifty words or less," whether or not life existed on other planets.

The astronomer's response:

"We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know."

81GyGuy said...
The resuscitation (so far) of this old NDE thread reminds me of the response to a question that a scientist supposedly once gave, on another subject. But it's a response that could well apply to the question as to whether NDEs actually do represent some kind of valid, other-worldly phenomenon.

A reporter once asked an astronomer to state, "in fifty words or less," whether or not life existed on other planets.

The astronomer's response:

"We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know."

😊

clocknut said...
Yeah, but John T, my grandmother was under general anesthetic. And she experienced these things in spite of that.
Under general anesthesia, oxygen-deprived or not, there shouldn't be any imaginings going on, whether oxygen-deprived or not. As most of us have experienced, under general anesthesia, there's nothing happening in the way of imaginings or thoughts.

I could buy the oxygen-deprivation, brain defense mechanism argument in many circumstances, but it doesn't make any sense when a person is under general anesthesia.

During the 36 years from graduation from Anesthesia School in 1979, until retirement just a few years ago. I gave thousands of general anesthetics, plus thousands of epidurals, spinals and deep or light sedation. Then I often was assigned to interview the patients a day or 2 post op, to make sure none had any complaints or apparent anesthesia complications. During all those years, no one ever told me about any such thing related to anesthesia. Which is not to say nothing happened(some folks won't mention really strange things). Nor is it to say I don't know of really surprising experiences with friends or relatives, though not related to anesthesia.

And I guess a bottom line on all of this is not so much what we THINK we saw(vivid dreams can certainly occur especially with drugs such as Ketamine), but if we report details which we had no way of knowing.

However, there was this one experience reported to all of us by a trusted colleague after he came back from post op rounds. This was general anesthesia for oral surgery, full mouth restoration. IOW, pull all the teeth and replace with implants, maybe some additional work as needed. Not sedation, but the full Monty: put down initially with Pentothal, paralyze with succinylcholine for placement of the naso-tracheal tube(through the nose, into the wind pipe), then heavy duty gas (probably Ethrane way back then, early 80s) through the breathing tube until time to wake up. Unlike modern day IV drugs like propofol, this stuff was absorbed by body fat, which releases it back into the blood stream for a while after you turn off the gas. So, it always takes a while to wake up enough to know what is going on.

The oral surgeon owned a farm, and the anesthesia guy had been raised on one. So middle of the surgery, while the gas is turned way up, a tube is in the wind pipe, and teeth are being pulled with no local, since none is needed, while BP and pulse was nice and low under maximum surgical stress(a sign that anesthesia is more than adequate), a discussion ensues about slaughtering hogs.

So he sees the patient post op. Asks the usual "Did you have any complaints or problems which you thing are from your anesthesia?". Then nearly falls out when the guy says "No, I was very comfortable and the surgery didn't hurt at all, and was in very much pain after wards. But I do remember thinking that I wished you guys would shut the hell up about slaughtering those hogs and finish your work and get me out of that operating room". Plus he threw in a few more details about the discussions hel during this hour or so long surgery.

So, that one was kind of hard for us to explain. Obviously the anesthesia was adequate that the patient would not move( the paralyzing drug only lasts about 5 minutes) or produce tears(we watch for those things) or raise heart rate or BP despite that tube and the dental surgery. But he knew about the hog discussion that took place in the middle of the surgery. Every one knew when that discussion took place: in the middle of deep general naso-tracheal anesthesia for dental surgery. FWIW. He was not floating above the be observing(or didn't mention it) but he heard exactly what the were saying.

Now I could throw in a few eye opening things about what relatives have said before they died, or a hysterical reaction my aunt had, crying and screaming about her baby brother "he just died" at what turned out to be the exact time of his death from cancer several hundred miles away(no cell phones back then), as they were leaving the house in GA to go be by his side in FL. I could write about several things like that in my life.

But those things are not anesthesia. This one(my story) was.

Post Edited (BillyBob@388) : 11/9/2018 3:38:03 PM (GMT-7)