Has a patient ever described a Near Death Experience to you?

Jamesdotter · Sep 24, 2004

My mother-in-law described an experience similar to that of CCU NRS' aunt, also after surgery (might have been a hysterectomy, too).

OHmom2boys · Sep 26, 2004

When my son was seven, he told me about his NDE which happened when he was five. It came about as the result of a conversation we were having about a little boy we knew who had just died. Because Adam is cognitively impaired as a result of his NDE, I was explaining to him that Paul had died and we wouldn't ever see him again. Adam kept insisting that he would so see Paul again, when he came back from Heaven. So I patiently explained that people don't come back to Heaven, and could only stare at him open-mouthed when he said, "Well, I did."
I asked him where Mommy was when he went to Heaven, and he proceeded to describe to me in some detail the day he had his strokes. He told me what I did when I couldn't wake him up, who came into the room and in what order, and what we did to him. He didn't miss a thing. I asked him how he knew all these things, and he said that he watched from the corner of the room. He told me that he'd met Jesus and was told, "That's not the way it's supposed to be, son. You must go back." And then he was back in his body. After I'd digested this for a few minutes, I asked him if, knowing what it would be like for him (meaning the months in hospital and many more months of painful rehab), would he have still come back. He looked at me very solemnly and said, "No."
I found all this somewhat bewildering, because at that time his conversational speech was almost non-existent. The words he used, the tone of voice he used, the detail he put into his descriptions, it was quite unreal. And he has never spoken at such length or in such detail since. It still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

I relate so completely to your story. People look at me, or used to look at me back when I still told this story, like I was making it up.

My Jacob was 8 1/2 when he was in a near drowning accident. He was under for at least 30 minutes...they didn't know he was in the water. They had stirred the mud rescuing his older brother who had jumped in to try to save him. Jake was on the bottom, and when they were finally told he was still in there after getting Zach, the water was so cloudy they then couldn't find him. Anyway....

He had finally come home from the hospital. At this time he had NO short term memory, absolutely no ability to make up a story, let alone remember a dream. He came to me one morning and started talking about 'symbols' and getting to the center of the earth (His perception of Heaven??) he said only good people got the symbols and could go there, no animals or bad people could get the symbols. When I asked him what he meant, he was shocked that I didn't know about the symbols. He said "Mommy, you know...the symbols..to go to Heaven." I felt like I was floating away...like in shock. I knew this was real. I knew there was absolutely NO way he had the ability to make this up. When I started to question him about the symbols, he quit talking. Just quit.

He also suffered permanent damage from anoxia. He too talked so clearly and as if nothing was wrong while talking of this. He has not talked of it since, even though I ask every now and then he says he doesn't remember.

One time though, about a year after the accident he told me out of the blue..."Mom, I know why God gave me a second life." I said "Why honey?" He said "To make all my friends believe in God." (Ummm...like why else mom??? :rolleyes: )

WOW....

Jacob has taught me alot...about strength, the will to live and mostly of the miracle of God. Honesly, even though the water was cold, he was almost too cold. He core was 78.8 upon arrival...quite awhile after re-warming. The docs even told me there is no reason that child should be here except for God...and his strong will to live. He is the strongest person I know. And just turned into the strongest willed 13 yr old TEEN I know on Sept 12. I thank God for every single birthday...every single day with this child. As I know you do also.

God bless you all....

thoughts and prayers to all,

Kim

lpndori · Oct 5, 2004

I have seen "activity" down hallways, frequently right before a person passes away. I've also seen someone sitting in a chair beside a gentleman who was about to die as I was walking down the hall, I went back a second later, and the chair was empty, as no one had been in to see him. I've also many times experienced "Cold chills" or "cold spots" in the hallway. I just chalk it up to someone from the other side there to take someone back home.A lot of people don't believe these type of things until they experience them for themselves, I did't!

merricat · Oct 5, 2004

my friend had a pt who was dying. a few hours before he passed, she came in the room and he asked her who the beautiful lady was in the corner. he had become very peaceful and relaxed. my friend did not see anyone in the corner. he spoke about the lady and a few hours later he passed. my friend thinks the beautiful lady must have been an angel.

mscsrjhm · Oct 5, 2004

Just last week, an elderly patient told of an experience she had while in resp. arrest, vented. Said she was in a dark place, and there was a chair in front of her, with a handkerchief on it. She knew that if she picked up the handkerchief, she would leave the earthly body, but if she left it alone, she would stay on earth.

She described the total peace that she felt.

That does seem to be the common theme, doesn't it----total peace.

kristylee · Oct 5, 2004

This is not really a NDE, but similar. My best friend died about 8 years ago in a car accident when I was 6 months pregnant. She was pronounced dead at the scene; about 45 minutes later she was recessitated and brought back to life, but was in a coma and died the next morning. I think that she came back after 45 minutes because she was fighting it, she had 2 small daughters.

Anyways, about a week before she died she had a dream that all her friends and family were at her funeral which she told me the next day and then a week later she really was gone. A few months after she died I had a dream about her and she was telling me she was going to die and we were crying together. I'm not sure if it was just a dream of if she really came to me in my dream to say goodbye, but it felt very surreal.

This might sound weird, but I use to think that she was reincarnated into my daughter. Do any of you believe in that? I'm not sure it that's really possible, but at the time the thought crossed my mind.

SmilingBluEyes · Oct 5, 2004

Here is a story from a friend who had a baby last spring. It still chills me today, reminding more than ever how important it is to stay on my toes in OB:

(I told this story in our OB/Newborn thread already):

********************************************************

I have a very good friend who had her 5th baby in April this year. Uncomplicated pregnancy--- labor and delivery lasting about 5 hours. 39 weeks gestation. 7 pound baby, normal vag delivery. Not even so much as a tear.

Well there she is, is holding the baby, breastfeeding, 2 hours after delivery, when she reaches for her husband and says, "B I don't feel too good, I really feel like ****". He pulls back the blanket to grab the baby and blood is pouring like a faucet our of her, onto the chux, then spilling like wine on the floor. He freaks, screaming for a nurse.

They come in, doing all they can to stop the bleeding. Meantime my friend, J, feels she is going down a tunnel. A long dark one. The baby is in the bedside bassinet, crying and it echoes. She wants to call out to her, but can't find her voice. She feels like she is floating, painfree, hearing her doctor scream to get her to OR now, her pressure is 60/10 at this point. She can hear them calling out her vital signs and the doctors asking the nurses to take the baby to the nursery. The voices are getting further and further away....she is being pulled away from the family she loves more than life...and the baby she has yet to come to know......it's so hard, she wants to cry, yet feels no pain.

She screams silently to B "take care of my kids, raise them well and to be good people" but her voice is silent, no one can hear her. She blacks out.......knowing she is dying and can't do a thing to stop it.....

She wakes up in ICU a few hours later, vented, on monitors and unsure what happened. Her husband is at her side, infant daughter in the hospital nursery. She can't ask what happened, she can only look at him, pleading with him to tell her what happened to her. She is in horrible pain, like burning in her abdomen......

Finally, she is off the vents, and they have told her she lost her uterus. She laughs and said "dayum, too bad we paid for B****'s vasectomy!!!" At least she has her sense of humor, her husband and her five kids. She is lucky to be alive, truly pulled from the jaws of death by a tenuous thread, having lost nearly 4 liters of blood in the OR.

The diagonsis? Placenta increta, somehow missed during pregnancy and after delivery. She is convinced her angels kept her here cause her kids need her; they are all under 12. She is convinced there is a Heaven and God...she is shaken and changed by this experience. And convinced more than ever having a baby in the right setting is what saved her life. She is lucky. But then maybe not. If she is right, God was in charge in her case.

This story is exactly what she told me as she remembers it. I was breathless, hearing how well she remembered specifics like vital signs, what was said, and the amount of blood she lost. She was told she coded for a second on the table, but came back quickly....can you imagine?

It's stories like this that scare me the most and keep me on my toes. Ob is not a place for complacency, that much I know. And Each time I step onto the elevator for work, I say a quick silent prayer that all my patients on my watch are safe. I really do.

SmilingBluEyes · Oct 5, 2004

In the above story I failed to say, J felt "safe" when she "left her body". She describes warmth, light, lack of any concern/troubles and wellbeing. That is all she can remember....but it was enough for me!

FranEMTnurse, CNA, LPN, EMT-I · Oct 6, 2004

Here is a story from a friend who had a baby last spring. It still chills me today, reminding more than ever how important it is to stay on my toes in OB:
(I told this story in our OB/Newborn thread already):
********************************************************
I have a very good friend who had her 5th baby in April this year. Uncomplicated pregnancy--- labor and delivery lasting about 5 hours. 39 weeks gestation. 7 pound baby, normal vag delivery. Not even so much as a tear.
Well there she is, is holding the baby, breastfeeding, 2 hours after delivery, when she reaches for her husband and says, "B I don't feel too good, I really feel like ****". He pulls back the blanket to grab the baby and blood is pouring like a faucet our of her, onto the chux, then spilling like wine on the floor. He freaks, screaming for a nurse.
They come in, doing all they can to stop the bleeding. Meantime my friend, J, feels she is going down a tunnel. A long dark one. The baby is in the bedside bassinet, crying and it echoes. She wants to call out to her, but can't find her voice. She feels like she is floating, painfree, hearing her doctor scream to get her to OR now, her pressure is 60/10 at this point. She can hear them calling out her vital signs and the doctors asking the nurses to take the baby to the nursery. The voices are getting further and further away....she is being pulled away from the family she loves more than life...and the baby she has yet to come to know......it's so hard, she wants to cry, yet feels no pain.
She screams silently to B "take care of my kids, raise them well and to be good people" but her voice is silent, no one can hear her. She blacks out.......knowing she is dying and can't do a thing to stop it.....
She wakes up in ICU a few hours later, vented, on monitors and unsure what happened. Her husband is at her side, infant daughter in the hospital nursery. She can't ask what happened, she can only look at him, pleading with him to tell her what happened to her. She is in horrible pain, like burning in her abdomen......
Finally, she is off the vents, and they have told her she lost her uterus. She laughs and said "dayum, too bad we paid for B****'s vasectomy!!!" At least she has her sense of humor, her husband and her five kids. She is lucky to be alive, truly pulled from the jaws of death by a tenuous thread, having lost nearly 4 liters of blood in the OR.
The diagonsis? Placenta increta, somehow missed during pregnancy and after delivery. She is convinced her angels kept her here cause her kids need her; they are all under 12. She is convinced there is a Heaven and God...she is shaken and changed by this experience. And convinced more than ever having a baby in the right setting is what saved her life. She is lucky. But then maybe not. If she is right, God was in charge in her case.
This story is exactly what she told me as she remembers it. I was breathless, hearing how well she remembered specifics like vital signs, what was said, and the amount of blood she lost. She was told she coded for a second on the table, but came back quickly....can you imagine?
It's stories like this that scare me the most and keep me on my toes. Ob is not a place for complacency, that much I know. And Each time I step onto the elevator for work, I say a quick silent prayer that all my patients on my watch are safe. I really do.

An incident similar to this one happened to my oldest daughter last January. The birth procedure went well, and all seemed good until someone noticed a sudden drop in her BP. When the covers were lifted, they saw she was laying in a pool if blood. So they quickly infused fluids, and placed her in the trendelenburg position. She hated that position, but she needed to be in it. I know all you nurses who work in L & D know that. Well, after they saw her BP stabilized, they placed her in the supine position once again. But what amazed the entire medical staff, was that she never lost consciousness. AMAZING!

Then she went right back into the hemorrhaging, so the Gynochologist went in lady partslly and pulled out a bunch of clots. She came fearfully close to going into DIC, and she did have to be infused with 2 units of RBC's before she was discharged, but she continued bleeding slightly for 3+ weeks. She went back for an ultrasound, and they found she wasn't completely cleaned out, so she had a D & C.

She also gets PID, and has to be on insulin throughout her pregnancies. She's 36 years old, and she wants 3 kids, but I hope she changes her mind and settles with the two she has. She is too high of a risk for anotherr pregnancy IMHO.

obeyacts2 · Oct 6, 2004

I had a NDE myself at age 18. I broke my leg and d/t anaesthesia complications (aspirative pneumonia) I developed ARDS and all the fun stuff that goes with it (PE, multiorgan failure, etc etc) Anyway I remember the sensation of leaving my body and walking around my ICU room. I turned around and stood face to face with an angel. The angel spoke to me and said that I would not die, that God had a work for me on the Earth. Anyway, after that I got better. ( I didnt know at the time, but I found out later that my Mom had signed the papers to take me off the vent and machines if I coded again. I coded several times during all this) The funny thing is, I come from a family that isnt even nominally religious! Fast forward, after I was released from the hospital I met the lady who won me to the Lord and discipled me into the church. The night I received the Holy Ghost baptism (with the initial evidence of speaking in tongues) The same angel appeared at me again. (I dont feel comfortable sharing the rest.0

A local hospice tells the families on its handout about end of life symptoms that talking to the loved ones that are passed, seeing angels, visions of heaven, etc are just the lack of O2 to the brain and in the bloodstream. I dont care what anyone says........BALONEY!!! If they were a symptom of hypoxia....what about the second time I saw the angel? No hypoxia there :rotfl:

Laura

cjmiller29 · Oct 6, 2004

My patient did not code, but had one about a week before he died. It was an older man with end-stage COPD who was supposed to have died home on hospice, but his family couldn't watch him die so they called the ambulance. When he woke up intubated on my unit, he demanded they extubate him. The first night I met him he was on BiPAP and slowing circling the drain, so to speak.

While I was in my other patient's room late that night, he got very agitated and was trying to climb out of bed. He kept asking me, "Why did you leave me?" and I kept telling him I never left. He eventually calmed down after I talked to him a while.

The next day when I came in, one of my co-workers told me what he had told his family. He had a near-death experience and visited with his son who had been dead for 11 years. He was quite descriptive about his experience and told his wife when he was going to die. His whole demeanor to me changed also. I had just lost my sister a month prior, and although he never said anything to me, everytime I came in, he would just get very excited. I would swear my sister visited him also. He passed away later that week on the very day and almost to the minute he said he would. I just happened to be there doing some paperwork when this happened.

He is one of those patients who will always stay with me no matter how long I am a nurse.

CHATSDALE · Oct 6, 2004

I had a NDE myself at age 18. I broke my leg and d/t anaesthesia complications (aspirative pneumonia) I developed ARDS and all the fun stuff that goes with it (PE, multiorgan failure, etc etc) Anyway I remember the sensation of leaving my body and walking around my ICU room. I turned around and stood face to face with an angel. The angel spoke to me and said that I would not die, that God had a work for me on the Earth. Anyway, after that I got better. ( I didnt know at the time, but I found out later that my Mom had signed the papers to take me off the vent and machines if I coded again. I coded several times during all this) The funny thing is, I come from a family that isnt even nominally religious! Fast forward, after I was released from the hospital I met the lady who won me to the Lord and discipled me into the church. The night I received the Holy Ghost baptism (with the initial evidence of speaking in tongues) The same angel appeared at me again. (I dont feel comfortable sharing the rest.0
A local hospice tells the families on its handout about end of life symptoms that talking to the loved ones that are passed, seeing angels, visions of heaven, etc are just the lack of O2 to the brain and in the bloodstream. I dont care what anyone says........BALONEY!!! If they were a symptom of hypoxia....what about the second time I saw the angel? No hypoxia there :rotfl:
Laura

i guess people really have to have something to believe in even if it is no belief i know this guy who says that science has or will have an answer for everything...but he puts down people who have faith in God and God has been around longer than science....i think it is an ego thing...you know that your belief is real and that your life is better for you having that belief...you are to be envied....God bless