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http://iands.org/experiences/nde-accounts/960-christmas-2010.html

In 2008 I was a practicing cardiac-anesthesiologist. I was Chief of Anesthesiology at a heart hospital, and derived my identity and happiness from the work I did and my family. But in August of that year - everything was turned upside down when I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. A routine surgery to treat it, in the same month, led to complications that left me incontinent and in excruciating pain due to scar formation. Due to these complications I was forced back into surgery a further three times between Aug and Dec 2008. 

As if cancer wasn’t enough, I was now living in excruciating pain, impotent, incontinent and wearing diapers. As an anesthesiologist I was the first to advocate the prescription of traditional pain medications to manage the severity of the pain I lived with. I soon learned, however, that the body’s quick dependency on the pain medication created the condition of addiction to pain medications within me. I was now a cancer survivor living with post surgical complications, chronic pain and addiction. Within a year, I was diagnosed with depression too.

On the 14th December 2010, I was back in for surgery for placement of an artificial urinary sphincter. In the days after the surgery, I was very sick, running a fever of 104-105F. My entire pelvic area including penis and scrotum was very red and badly swollen. I could not urinate. I was placed on heavy-duty antibiotics, IV Gentamycin and IV Vancomycin. I was not getting better. This time something was very, very wrong.

Ten days later, Christmas Eve 2010, I was admitted on an emergency basis for sepsis (severe infection). The medical staff assessed that they would need to perform emergency surgery in the early morning of Christmas Day to drain the pus from the pelvic region and take the foreign body (the artificial sphincter) out. I was in a lot of pain and so was very heavily medicated. The last memory I have is of the medical staff inserting a catheter to drain my bladder. The pain was searing - so intense that my next memory is of me no longer being in my body. I was outside of it. I knew that my consciousness had separated from my body. I had disassociated my ‘awareness’ from the location of the body itself, and yet I was fully aware and present - outside of my body.

Though my physical body was asleep most of the time, I was very conscious and aware. I was in as what I can only describe as a different plane of existence. I could see myself from above, both in the hospital room and operating room. I watched my body sleeping. I was aware of the conversations going on. In the operating room I saw the surgeon cut me and then it smelled awful from pus (infectious fluid from my pelvis). To counter this smell and for surgeons to keep working, the nurses applied eucalyptus scented water to their surgical masks. I heard the anesthesiologist tell a joke. I remember it clearly to this day but I cannot write it here, as it was not a clean joke!

Later, in the recovery room, the anesthesiologist verified this episode to me. Being an anesthesiologist, I am very well aware of what goes on in the operating rooms and had asked him directly.

My awareness, a consciousness that was ME but was not limited to the location of my body, was completely intact that night, and during surgery. In fact, not only was it completely intact, but it was more acute and expanded. I remember being in the operating room, looking down at my body from 10-15 feet in the air. I was looking from the left side of where the surgeons were operating on me. I could hear, see and smell - not only everything in the operating room but also things far away. My senses had become hyper-sensitive.

With my awareness still in the operating room, I could simultaneously hear conversations happening far away: I heard a conversation - between my mother and sister, talking about what they were going to prepare for dinner that night. They were going to have rice, vegetables, yogurt and legumes. They were in India. It was pretty cold, foggy and frigid there, people were bundled up, as there was no central heating. My family was using a small electric heater. From this I understood that it made no difference if people were near of far away: my awareness was everywhere simultaneously. 

I would love to say that my awareness then moved into a very serene love filled space, to be with the presence of an all loving, forgiving entity. But to begin with, I am afraid it was not so.  My awareness moved from the physical world of the operating theater in the hospital and the kitchen conversation in India to a place where a great wild fire was raging. 

Dark entities with crooked teeth, with two horns were running about. I saw me being taken to this place screaming and fighting. There was persistent lightning in dark clouds as a perpetual fierce storm raged. There was the smell of meat burning. It did not take much of my awareness to realize that I was in Hell. It was excruciatingly painful. I could hear other souls screaming and suffering. Needles were being poked in to me and I was being badly tortured. I was made to lie on a bed made of nails. Blood was oozing from various wounds. I kept wondering what did I do, what karmas in this this, or past lives I did to deserve the punishment?

As I experienced this horror, I began to have the strong awareness that the life I lived could be described as very materialistic: it was always about me; when I met someone, I was always asking myself ‘what can I get from this person’. 

The truth dawned on me in Hell that the life I was living on earth was without love. I was not practicing compassion or forgiveness towards myself or others and had an unpalatable tendency to be especially harsh towards people that I perceived to be lower than me in social or professional status or hierarchies.

I remember feeling deeply sorry for the lack of kindness in my behavior, and wishing I could do things differently. Immediately, as these realizations became crystal clear to me, this place - Hell - began to fade away. My father appeared, with his father at his side.

My father took my hand and guided me toward a tunnel - at the end of the tunnel was glowing white light. As I moved through the tunnel, it was as if time and space disappeared. Strangely, as if I had simultaneously been in a parallel abode, my awareness was instantaneously in a different place. It was as if I was there concurrently, at the same time, where I experienced complete and cosmic peace: a state of pure harmony, without any disturbance or excitement. Total, utter, undisturbed bliss which unified all things and beings in the entire universe.

That space, which I understood to be Heaven - was very serene. Words are actually inadequate to describe it. I was in the presence of a very calming loving formless bluish Light - an entity, which I somehow knew or felt was supreme love: knowledge and intelligence personified. 

.............After my father helped me get across the tunnel, I came out of into a place of profound calmness, light and joy. I was greeted by two Beings who were like young men, radiating energy and light, full of vigor, enthusiasm and love - and who told me they were ....my guardian angels. .....The Angels now guided me through various aspect and levels of this beautiful place. I was in a meadow. There were fields with many different colored roses, mountains and a fresh crystal water stream was flowing. Cool, very soothing air was moving gently. The air had a soft and sweet fragrance. I could hear a soft chant, as if in the distance and yet also completely audible: again simultaneously far away and yet very clear to me. 

....They taught me that there, at the Highest level of Consciousness, there was no form as such - but an all pervading force, a powerful entity of energy of PURE LOVE, and that this pure, unbound consciousness was actually the base reality - the underlying fabric- of absolutely everything in the Universe. It was the source of all creation: The highest level of consciousness is actually the energy of PURE LOVE and this is the creative force of the entire world, the entire universe.

I was ...told that it was not my time to leave yet, and that everything would be all right but my path now was going to be as a healer. I was told that I would have to leave anesthesiology and materialism behind. It told me: ‘Now it is time to be healer of the soul, especially of the diseases of soul, of the energy body, addiction, depression, chronic pain and cancer.’ 

I was told that this was the reason I had had to experience the diseases that had befallen me personally - so I could have empathy for others, so that I would know how it felt to be in their shoes. 

....The awareness that I was being given life back ...with the specific intent to help others suffering from chronic pain, addiction and depression poured through me, coursing through every fiber of my being. 

After this awareness, my next memory is of waking up in the recovery room. The nurse was there, but not my family. Within 30 minutes the medical staff called my family to see me. In the days ahead, the rate of my healing was nothing short of miraculous.

Much to the wonder of the medical staff my sepsis and infection was all but healed within 72 hours and I was discharged. The inflammation and pain in my pelvic region decreased astonishingly within days, and in the months ahead it would be gone altogether.... within three weeks of being discharged from hospital, I resigned my position - and never returned to the hospital environment again. 

Eight months after being given another chance to live, I was able to have my incontinence corrected - making me pain free and finally free of the need to wear adult diapers for the first time since Aug 2008.

These insights from the other dimension propelled me to start writing and giving seminars on spiritual wellness. As both a pain management specialist who prescribed pain medication as a healing solution and as a patient who has seen the havoc they wreak on the mind/body complex, I urge people to look first for healing through non-pharmaceutical, non-invasive therapies. .........The future is still being formed, but in all these changes, I have felt no fear. I know I am not alone, and whilst I may not yet have full sight of what my future will look like, I do know that there is a plan - and that the plan is a good plan. In my old life, I used to put people to sleep. Now I wake them up. And I have woken up too.