Observations placeholder
Deliberate surgical hypothermia
Identifier
001082
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
The following lady was very ill with a giant basilar artery aneurysm and was being operated on. She was anaesthetised and the surgeon was using a very risky procedure in order to save her life. It involved chilling her body, and emptying her brain of oxygen so that he could get at the aneurysm. The surgeon had already opened her skull and they had succeeded in lowering her body temperature by 25 degrees [fahrenheit]. At this point the heart was stopped. At the heart arrest, her brain waves also flattened completely into 'electrocerebral silence'. Twenty minutes later her core body temperature had fallen another 13 degrees fahrenheit to 'a tomblike 60 degrees fahrenheit', then the blood was drained from her head, sometime during this period this is what Pam experienced
A description of the experience
Light and Death – Dr Michael Sabom
There was a sensation like being pulled, but not against your will. I was going on my own accord because I wanted to go. I have different metaphors to try to explain this. It was like the Wizard of Oz – being taken up in a tornado vortex, only you're not spinning around like you've got vertigo. You're very focused and you have a place to go. The feeling was like going up in an elevator real fast. And there was a sensation, but it wasn't a bodily physical sensation. It was like a tunnel but it wasn't a tunnel.
At some point very early in the tunnel vortex I became aware of my grandmother calling me. But I didn't hear her calling me with my ears.. It was a clearer hearing than with my ears. I trust that sense more than I trust my own ears. The feeling was that she wanted me to come to her, so I continued with no fear down the shaft. It's a dark shaft that I went through, and at the very end there was this very tiny pinpoint of light that kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
The light was incredibly bright, like sitting in the middle of a light bulb. It was so bright that I put my hands in front of my face fully expecting to see them and I could not. But I knew they were there. Not from a sense of touch. Again, it's terribly hard to explain, but I knew they were there.
I noticed that as I began to discern different figures in the light – and they were all covered with light, they were light, and had light permeating all around them – they began to form shapes I could recognise and understand. I could see that one of them was my grandmother,. I don't know if it was reality or projection, but I would know my grandmother, the sound of her, anytime, anywhere
Everyone I saw, looking back on it, fit perfectly into my understanding of what the person looked like at their best during their lives.
I recognised a lot of people. My Uncle Gene was there. So was my great great Aunt Maggie, who was really a cousin. On papa's side of the family, my grandfather was there... they were specifically taking care of me , looking after me.
They would not permit me to go further... it was communicated to me – that's the best way I know how to say it, because they didn't speak like I'm speaking – that if I went all the way into the light something would happen to me physically. They would be unable to put this me back into the body me, like I had gone too far and they couldn't reconnect. So they wouldn't let me go anywhere or do anything.
I wanted to go into the light, but I also wanted to come back. I had children to be reared.......