People who say they died and were brought back to life

mandana · Mar 8, 2006

If it were me, I'd probably go ahead and take the liberty to declare myself "brought back". I had a close call once (peritonitis) and I was really, really sick. I never had failure in any of the three mentioned systems, but I was teetering on the edge for a while there. I often tell people that I "almost died" which is really just as relative as being "brought back". So, I think we can give some folks some leeway in our personal lives, although a more specific distinction may be necessary in our professional lives.

From a scientific standpoint, I agree with you, however.

Amanda

Marie_LPN, RN, LPN, RN · Mar 8, 2006

Do you consider a cardiac or respiratory arrest being dead? Being resuscitated as being "brought back to life?"

Grandma always declared herself as "brought back" and i agree with her.

ERNurse752, RN · Mar 8, 2006

I would probably consider it being brought back from death...but in the sense of being snatched from the jaws of death.

Kind of like after we have an arrest, if we get pulses back, we'll say about the pt, "We got 'em back."

SmilingBluEyes · Mar 8, 2006

I have a friend in NC who had an NDE after losing her uterus in childbirth......she saw herself being worked on and everything.Want details, just ask. It really is an eyepopping story.

lady_jezebel · Mar 8, 2006

I have a friend in NC who had an NDE after losing her uterus in childbirth......she saw herself being worked on and everything.Want details, just ask. It really is an eyepopping story.

oooh, I wanna hear the story! I read http://www.nderf.org all the time, and am just fascinated.

MissJoRN, RN · Mar 8, 2006

Do you consider a cardiac or respiratory arrest being dead? Being resuscitated as being "brought back to life?"
I don't. Unless you are not breathing/heart not beating/brain dead-you are alive. you may suffer a cardiac arrest-but i don't consider that as dying.
What about you?

I'm sorry, I'm confused by how you feel... to me cardiac arrest is "heart not beating" that's just the normal way it progresses within seconds. By AHA definition, the next sequela is suddden death. Interesting that I was just involed in a conversation about that. I do think the person is physically dead, thankfully not legally dead so they have a chance, and certainly not brain dead (most frequently)

Spiritually dead? I wonder if that depends on whose spirit we're talking about. Some do seem much more stubborn than others!! I had a young (teenage) pt who claimed to have a near death spiritual experience at the time. The experiences he claimed did not co-incide with the religious beliefs he was brought up with, or the ones he was interested in/ studying prior to the arrest, which made it a little more believable to me. Later, I had a very strange, (I hate to use the word telepathic, because that's too odd even for me) experience with him. It's hard to describe and would be even harder to convince anyone happened (esp. by typing) but regardless, afterwards i will never believe that pts are necessarily unaware during a code or that defibrillation/resuscitation can't be "painful" (and not in the literal way you may think I mean.

student4ever · Mar 8, 2006

I do not take offence to people saying they were dead and then brought back to life. No, they were not medically pronounced dead, and they weren't brain dead at that point. But to me, an asystole on the monitor is dead... and hopefully it's given the proper life-saving procedures to restart the heart's activity and bring the patient back to life (if that is their wish). I see it as several levels of "deadness." You have almost dead (VT or VFib and resp. arrest), mostly dead (Resp. arrest w/ asystole) and then you have dead dead (asystole or VT of VFib that cannot be reversed despite numerous attempts at cardioversion and/or CPR). Medically, I don't see my patients as being "dead" until they are pronounced dead, with no breathing, and no cardiac activity. However, in my own life, if my heart stopped beating, I would say that I was dead, and if my heart was restarted by medical treatment, or spontaneously restarted (as has happened to some individuals), then I would consider myself brought back from death. However if my patient had such an experience, I would say "we almost lost ya there for a second." I guess I think about life and death differently when I'm at work vs. at home.

tencat · Mar 8, 2006

Deb, you've got to share that story! It sounds fascinating.

My husband's grandmother went into cardiac arrest and they got her back. She was really ticked off because she was ready to die and go to heaven. She said that Jesus told her to go back because it wasn't her time. She was mad about that for a long time.

SmilingBluEyes · Mar 8, 2006

Ok here goes:

My friend, J, in NC was having her 5th baby. Uneventful pregnancy and hx. She had had 4 babies lady partslly previously w/o major incident or problem.

The 5th pregnancy was uneventful, although the dr did say, somewhere in the 20th week, there was a "spot" on her uterus. When J asked what that meant, he said not to worry, looked like nothing. The importance of this spot was not evident til after delivery.....

Anyhow so on Birth Day, the baby comes after a routine pitocin induction of about 5 hours duration, no problems. Baby and mom seem fine, Suddenly J grabs her husband, B and says, " I feel like I am dying here----I am going to pass out, grab the baby".... She can't breathe and can't move her arms and legs at all......she feels numb.....

As B put baby in crib, he hears dripping sounds behind him---- blood is pouring from J's bed to the floor. He screams for help; nurses and doctors fill the room. J is rushed back to OR for a D/C that turns out to be a hysterectomy to save her life....but not before she had an experience that stands my hair on end today....

She said as she lie bleeding on her bed, she saw 3 people in the corner of her room. They were very filmy and , and people she did not know or recognize. Clearly they were not hospital staff, although dressed very oddly---they were people "from another time" is all she can to describe them---two females and a male. They are ageless; she can't tell if they are old or young.

She could "hear" them beckoning her to follow, (their mouths were not moving)----the male among them, holding out a hand. She could also hear her babies cries and the yelling of the staff as she is dying. She feels nothing at all. She is not above or next to her body, but somehow can "see" them working on her. She sees them working to save her life. She is unsure which way to go....the babys' cries that she had heard beckon her one way....but the 3 people beckon her the other. She is tempted to let go and follow them "home"---she instinctively knows this to be "home" and calls it such---not Heaven, not the Other Side, but "home"......she reaches out ...

, "no if I die, my husband will never love this baby girl the same way. He will blame her and I can't allow that to happen". So the next thing that happens....

She wakes up in excrutiating pain in the ICU. Looks around, blood and many IVs hanging around her. Lot of light and noise and EVERYTHING HURTS SO DAMN MUCH...."why am I in so much pain"?????????

They tell her she had "coded" on the OR table---she does not know what they mean, but she knows she did die for a few minutes and it felt so peaceful and right. She is torn; one side of her wanted to go, the other to stay to raise her kids who needed her. She did the "right" thing in her mind by coming back. The 3 people were never to be seen again....

Now the reason for all this? A severe placenta incretta, where the placenta is implanted too deeply in the muscle of the uterus....it was not completely delivered and she bled, literally to death. She was never a spiritual or religious person---matter of fact she used to laugh at me when I said I believed in NDE and Life on the Other Side. She no longer laughs at me. But her husband does not know what to make of her story. He can't believe it, so he does not.

Dream or real experience? I guess we are left to decide. I DO know this is a life-altering experience for what was a very jaded and bitter (at times) person. I believe cause I know this person and she is no liar or drama person. Matter of fact, she refuses to repeat it for fear of people laughing at her.

But she knows, I am not laughing.

snowfreeze, BSN, RN · Mar 8, 2006

Near-death encounters are very mind opening for anyone who experiences them. There is something about the human mind that in most cases does not allow us to believe in things we have not seen or experienced.

In my case I cardiac arrested after an appendix rupture when I was 5 years old. I still remember after 43 years watching them revive me in the operating room. I was too young to understand most of what was happening but the doctor and nurses voices are still so vivid in my mind. Now that I am a nurse I know that they gave me some IV drugs and a lot of IV fluids quickly.

I thank my grandmother for being a nurse at the time, I was crying after dinner about a tummy ache that was really bad. After a few hours she bent my one leg up and I screamed and almost passed out and vomited all over her. She called my doctor and he came to the house and picked us up. I remember my ride in the back seat of a Volkswagen bug in my grandmothers lap...lol loved the 60's. Yeh, I puked on her in the car too.

And no grandma didn't scrub-in, but she did care for me in the recovery area at docs request. And grandma must have heard many patients experiences as she asked me questions about what I had experienced like, did you hear voices and did you see a light? She also asked me to describe what I saw in the operating room. She just seemed to know and understand. She also told me to not talk about it as most people would not like to hear about it, it was a special experience with GOD I think she called it. Somehow she made me feel special and unafraid after a very scary experience. Nurses are wonderful, I am glad I am also a nurse after wandering down a few other interesting paths in life.

JeanettePNP, MSN, RN, NP · Mar 8, 2006

Thanks for sharing your story, Smiling Blue. I think the reason lots of people have difficulty with spirituality is because of others trying to impose their view of God or spirituality onto others. It becomes an issue of whose religion is true and whose god is the real one, rather than allowing people to be open to experience the spiritual on their own terms. When people are at peace with their own spirituality, it allows others to be open and discover their own spiritual side as well...

that said, I wonder how NDE's are explained naturalistically. Is it an elaborate dream/hallucination? Why are the descriptions so similar, for people of all walks of life and all religious backgrounds (or no religion at all)?