The Point Of Death


Has anyone out there ever had a near death experience ?
I'm interested to know.
This morning I talked to Mrs Trellis about a patient of hers that nearly died giving birth.
After the emergency was all over, the woman recounted that she had seen " a light" during the worst time of her collapse , a light which was surrounded by relatives and friends long dead and gone.
It's a stereotypical account of the near death experience I think.

The Prof nearly died when in his twenties. He was gassed by carbon monoxide. He experienced no weird sensory event or spiritual enlightenment at the time , just a bad headache and a nicely pink face so typical of an over abundance of  the gas.
I nearly drowned when I was 10. It was in a swimming pool in Loret del Mar in 1972. I remember little of the event except being very calm with my arm thrusting out of the water above my head. A passing man pulled me out of the pool and left me sitting by myself on the hot tile surround.
The only emotion I had at the time was of embarrassment.

I have dealt with many seriously ill people who have eventually survived a near death event, but I have have never heard one admit that something spiritual happened to them at that crucial point where life and death mingle.

So has anyone out there know of such experiences?
Please share them with the group
I would be interested to know

112 comments:

  1. My grandmother told me of seeing her own grandmother holding out her arms to her through the transom over the door of her hospital room. My grandmother looked back at her husband sitting beside her bed, and though she didn't quite know who it was, he seemed so sad she didn't go.

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    1. My own great grandmother saw he husband at her hospital bed a few hours after he was killed in the air raid that injured her

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  2. Over my career I probably performed CPR a couple hundred times. Maybe 40 percent successful, a mix of in and out of hospitals. I've never had a recovered pt. mention anything of the kind.
    cheers
    Mike

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    1. We have clinic follow up for all itu patients. Many that attend will talk about delusions and hallucinations experienced when sedated

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  3. So far so good for me, but I remember a family story told by my father. He had acute appendicitis and was rushed to hospital for surgery. Afterwards he was in and out of consciousness for 10 days. During that time he remembers talking to God, and being told that he must go back to his wife and family, as it wasn't his time yet. He went on to recover, and lived about 40 more years....
    Barb

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    1. Was the experience visual or audial ?

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    2. I believe he saw God and heard him speak...he was not a terribly religious man and only went to church once in a while..even after his experience.

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  4. not me either but I think you have to actually die or be dying. my sister was in a terrible car wreck that should have killed her and she remembers feeling very peaceful and not in pain and drifting towards a source of peace (don't remember if she saw the light) but she could hear her husband calling to her begging her not to leave him and so she went back into her body. she broke her jaw, busted up her elbow, broken ribs, the blow to her sternum should have killed her outright.

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    1. This seems to be a fairly common experience which some could say is just a movement in between consciousness levels

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    2. perhaps but she was pretty sure she had died or would have had she ignored his pleas.

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  5. My mother-in-law told me that she was very sick with diptheria as a young teenager. The doctor was called to the house but there was nothing he could do at that point and she stopped breathing. She told me on many occasions that she had seen Jesus and he was so beautiful and was sitting with a child on his lap. Without using words, he asked her to come to him. She told him, again without words, that she needed to help support her family as her father was sickly and unable to work. She did not want to go back but knew she had to. The next thing she knew she was awake in her bed. She recovered and live to the age of 92 and passed away in October 2015. She was also born with what they called in the old days, a veil over her face which was generally viewed as a bad or scary event. She was blessed with a gift seeing family members that had passed. So many other up pages and pages. I've started reading a book called "20 Minutes in Heaven" written by a man who died in a horrific car accident and came back to tell about the experience.

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  6. Sorry, I deleted a few words accidentally. I meant to say that she was blessed with a gift FOR seeing family members and that there are many more stories she told me but too numerous to relate here as they would take pages and pages.

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  7. I had a friend that was thrown from a car in a car crash. She became paralysed from the chest down. She told me that as she lay there on the ground she was aware of being attached to a silver thread and felt as though she had died. I don't remember any more about it than that.

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    1. I worked with spinal injury patients for two decades many related strange experiences around the second of thei paralysis

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  8. Sorry for using a link to my blog. Delete this comment if you wish. I wrote about my experience here. http://thepinkteeshirt.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-story-i-didnt-tell.html

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    1. That was fascinating I especially thought how vivid your perceptions of the colours were interesting given other people's experiences...

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    2. Was it a near death experience, or a religious one?

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    3. I have a heart condition called LQTS7 that can cause polymorphic ventricular tachycardia and sudden cardiac arrest. Heat and exercise are two of the triggers. I believe it was a near death experience.

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    4. I understand though CARDIAC is not my forte

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  9. I often wonder about how many near-death experiences we have had that we were not even aware of.

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    1. Can you explain Tom? Near death as in accidents that have never been acknowledged or near death experiences as in the tunnel of light thing?

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  10. We (in the US) will let you know Nov. 9th. If Trump wins, half of Americans will have that near death experience.

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    1. Drum roll and bash of cymbals

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    2. Yeah, i'll let you know...

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    3. I've loved everyone's comments Donna, but yours made me laugh out loud and shudder at the same time. Badumdum.

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    4. I will be the one who goes fully gray if that happens!

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    5. And I will look more seriously about moving to Canada if that happens! Horrid vile man.

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    6. Oh my yes . . .

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  11. When I was 4, at the lake on a family outing, I slipped under the water. The next thing I knew, I was watching the scene from above, witnessing my dad running into the water in his good slacks and Sunday shoes (and thinking how much trouble I was in for that). Then I was on the grass in the sun with my parents fussing over me. I never thought about it much for decades until some discussion of near-death experiences caused me to look at it more closely.

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  12. I've never had the experience. But I thought you were going to explain what the whole point of death was (I mean what it's all about), oh wise one.

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    1. I if I could do that, why would I be writing this pile of shit?

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    2. This pile of shit gives a whole lot of people a whole lot to look forward to every day. This is some very good shit.

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    3. Mitchell is Moving - that's the best articulated reason for blogging I've seen, thank you!

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  13. My neighbor had a heart attack and died but was brought back. The first story she told she was moving up towards a bright light and had a wonderful feeling of peace. She could see her body below and it looked like it was wrapped in an old burlap sack. When she came home for the hospital the story had changed to she was whisked up to heaven and was standing at the pearly gates with St. Peter and she could see all her loved ones behind the gates.

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  14. Not me. I also nearly drowned, at Southend on Sea when I was about ten. I fell into some very deep water and probably only survived because I instinctively started swimming (having never swam before). But no, I didn't have any near-death experience.

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  15. Not me, but this is an interesting post!

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  16. Fortunately, I have not.

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  17. I forgot to tell you this one. My Mom's name was Kitty. She died at 40 from cancer and I was a teen. My eldest daughter, Erin, was in a terrible car crash at 19 and had a TBI. When she finally woke up, she said she saw Kitty and she told her she could come to heaven whenever she wanted. Erin never knew Mom or any other Kitty. I'm not religious, but it was a strange time.

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    1. It's these kind of family stories which I love

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  18. Anonymous5:23 pm

    Chiming in a little with Tom's comment. I haven't had a near death experience as it's commonly understood. However, I have been so razor sharp close to death it made me retch and hold onto the nearest anything in the aftermath. The last occasion when crossing an often busy road - but at the time of the day as calm as a lake in summer - when a car was tearing down it in the WRONG direction. It was such a close shave, John, it took me a little while to get myself together. Shock, I suppose. I thank my stringent education, looking left, looking right, regardless, even if YOU know it's a one way street. Otherwise I wouldn't be here writing this.

    Other than that I do believe that sleep (dreams?) occasionally do bring us close to that strange in-between life and death no-man's land.

    And then there is "When you see the "light" in the tunnel it's an oncoming train." I can barely bring myself to still like the person who told me this. What a downer.

    U

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    1. Dreams and dreaming is an interesting topic all of its own....another way of communicating mainly just with yourself

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  19. I have not had such an experience, but I believe both my mother and my mother-in-law did just before they died. My mother-in-law died very unexpectedly in her 80's in hospital. Just before she died it was reported that she suddenly and joyfully laughed. And she had a wonderful musical laugh, so it is nice to know that. Just before my mother died she was heard talking to her father. She was 95...

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    1. Do we regress in those final moments?

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  20. Never saw a light, but had the most peaceful feeling. Nothing hurt any longer and during this time I felt like I was floating. I had appendicitis and was in ICU for two weeks after surgery.

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  21. I had a serious illness and was taken into hospital, pumped full of drugs and on oxygen. At 4am in the morning I heard someone near to me saying 'she's dead, she's dead' I can remember thinking I had died and that I could still hear people around my bed discussing this. However, as I came out of my night sleep I was being prodded by an auxillary nurse trying to tell me that Princess Diana had died in the fatal car crash. It was a really strange time that I will never forget.
    The only other strange thing I saw when I was so ill at the beginning was a black raven sitting on the curtain track around my bed. I really thought that this was a sign of my impending death and could not shake that feeling off. Looking back I could have been hallucinating as I was on a lot of drugs at the time. The mind plays funny tricks

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    1. Interesting and funny..... The answer may lie in your comment Annie x

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  22. Have been an ITU nurse since 1986 and never heard patients tell these type of stories. However, my best friend was very ill with cancer, and dreamed of her dead father who was on a bus, it stopped by her and she wanted to get on but he said it wasn't her turn yet and the bus went on without her.

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    1. Bev, you must have seen itu psychosis though

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    2. John, my husband had ICU psychosis after having his left lung removed and being in the ICU for 5 days. It was terribly frightening for him and at one point, he became convinced that he was dead and everyone was just pretending he was still alive. Also that the hospital was on fire and the nurses were all in a conspiracy against him....

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  23. Not quite a near death, After my Mother's Funeral I was sitting on her bed going through some of her things. I was thinking of a lot of things and yet nothing all at once. All of a sudden I felt like someone just got up from the other side of the bed. I know in my heart it was my Mum. Just making sure all was fine.
    I miss her so much.

    cheers, parsnip

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  24. When I was born, my mother began to bleed out suddenly. She says that she recalls looking down at her body and seeing nurses and a doctor working on her and feeling tremendous sadness that she would never hold her baby (me) and then suddenly plunging back into her body.

    When my mom's father, my grandfather died after being in a morphine coma for days, he suddenly sat straight up in bed, reached out his arms and said, "I'm coming. I'm coming," then he laid down and died. Weird.

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    1. My mother often spoke of having a similar experience of looking down at her body when she was ill as a girl and going back into her body because she could see that her mum was crying at the bedside thinking she was dead and heard the doctor saying there's no hope.

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    2. This floating sensation is common....is it an out of body experience or is it because you blood pressure is soo low you are faint? Or hypoxic ?

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    3. I'm catching up on your blog a few days after this was posted...

      I can speak of the outer body experience. I was about eight or so, my extended family was at our house for dinner. I was outside w/ my slightly mentally impaired uncle and found a really cool bug! I told him to watch it while I ran inside for a jar. I floated up over the house and watched myself run in to the house. Then the spirit and the body joined back together as I ran back outside of the house with the jar. But the bug was gone. :-(

      This is so vivid in my memory almost 50 years later...

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  25. It's a "Nope" from me, but just because I haven't personally experienced it doesn't make me disbelieve others' experiences. (Do I have the apostrophe in the right place? If it's incorrect , that would be a near-death experience!)

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  26. Luckily nothing like this has ever happened to me, or indeed to anyone I know.

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  27. I have not had a near death experience but instead an almost opposite...almost a near life experience. First off I am not religious or even hardly spiritual. My husband passed away suddenly 21 years ago. I was fairly young...42...and of course I missed him terribly. I was truly grieving but at the time I was training to run a marathon and so I continued doing that. I can remember it like yesterday even though it has been over 20 years ago. I was running around the track and crying my eyes out. I came around the corner of the track (at the high school) and truly the heavens just opened up...to the most beautiful colors and I swear on what I hold most dear I heard angels singing. It was glorious! It lasted for maybe 45 seconds and then it was gone. I remember thinking I am going around the corner again and it will be there but never again. From that time forward I was completely at peace with my husbands death...I just can't tell you how peaceful my heart felt.

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    1. Oh my goodness, that truly is beautiful. Anna

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    2. One of The most powerful comments to date

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  28. I was hit by a car when I was eleven. I remeber seeing myself crawling across the road and laying my head on the pavement. When I regained conscioussnes I was told that it was exactly as it had happened

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  29. I experience one every night when I take a sip of wine. It is of no surprise to me that the Bitch on the Blog took her experience chiming near to Tom and I guess her second coming chime would be close to you.

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  30. I experience other peoples deaths. For some reason I am linked to a person and have to go through what they are going through. A few months ago I was linked to someone dying of cancer, the 2nd most horrendous one to date, it took months as he deteriorated so did I.

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  31. I had a near death experience when I switched channels and saw some of "The X Factor". It was very frightening.

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  32. My next door neighbor was dying from pulmonary fibrosis, she was in her late forties. The night she died I stayed with her, I remember her giggling and smiling, and yet was on the verge of death. Right before she died, she said I'm going home, 'meaning to be with the Lord' and then she was gone. I truly believe she was at peace and held God's hand.
    Jo

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    1. My father's last words about 2 hours before he stopped breathing were mysteriously "Jesus is coming."
      He wasn't at all religious and only went to church if it was expected of him for funerals, weddings and births.

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    2. Do we regress to need something " higher" when very poorly? Who knows

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  33. This was fun. And really interesting, especially all the medical professionals who chimed in. I can see very much why you would want to comfort yourself in the circumstances described by finding a meaning in actions and words and that could explain a lot. I fall in the believer's camp - our loved ones don't leave us when they die, they just get harder to hear. Bad apples too, but far fewer of those. I've always been able to hear them, but I try really hard not to see! It''s too much. Just pass the message on to the person they want you to and they will stop bothering you. Can be quite embarrassing having to tell someone you barely know that their five year old drowned little sister wants a chat, but I never allude to it after unless the person wants to discuss it and it is all ok. It's as real as living and breathing and I'm pretty sure I'm not insane and sadly none of it drug or alcohol assisted. My own near deaths were drowning, like John, I was just calm, and focused on getting off the bottom of the pool, the second, bleeding out after childbirth, I just knew I wasn't going anywhere. Three crash carts and some nasty surgery later, still kicking. Besides which, I was cracking jokes, or trying to and no one was laughing. THAT was a crisis. No angels that day, except the ones in scrubs and one small man in a suit (surgeon) who spoke very calmly to my terrified husband as everyone else flew around like demented bats. My hubby to this day is so grateful for his kindness and calm. NHS at its best and worst in one day! Sorry that last bit was a bit off topic.

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  34. My grandmother was the youngest of a large brood, most of whom had passed before her. She was in hospital dying and woke from a regular sleep one day to describe all of her family waiting and waving to her.
    She recovered a little and everyone started to go back to their normal lives but she died quite suddenly about a week later

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  35. I was sat with my mother in law through the night in her darkened bedroom with just the light coming through from the hall. She hadn't spoken for hours and was drifting in and out of consciousness. All of a sudden she asked who was stood in the doorway. I looked toward the door then back to see her smiling and looking very peaceful. She died a few hours later. The experience freaked me out but I was happy to know that whoever it was she saw brought her peace.

    My aunt was dying in hospital and told us my late dad had been to see her and her late husband was coming again and taking her home. She died that night.

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    1. Do we make our own comfort in our minds eye?

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  36. My mother had her first heart attack when she was 55. When she recovered she said when she was in ICU that she woke to find herself in front of a lecture, being judged. She was told she could go forward to Heaven, but said she didn't want to as she had family to care for. She was asked to make a decision and when she looked down into the blackness she saw herself in ICU. She asked to go home and 'fell' back into her body from a great height. She lived for another 30 years.

    Another time she was worried about her brother who had died some years previously, and prayed that he was okay. Suddenly the room changed to a heavenly scene and she saw her brother 'reigned in glory' (her words, not mine), and a voice told her that he was safe with God.

    When I was sitting with as she was dying I experienced a weird sensation of almost flying through rain/snow, and I slept while thinking about my grandparents, I wanted them to come and collect my mother so that she would be safe. I woke very refreshed, and ready for the ordeal ahead.

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  37. A fascinating post. I have nothing to add though.

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  38. Twenty or so years ago, I was driving across the Mohave Desert, and I hit some sand and wrecked my car, rolling it twice over, landing it upright. The walls of the car crushing in on me was terrifying. After it landed upright, I felt like I left my body and floated up above the wreck, for how long I don't know. Then, suddenly, I just popped back into my body, and noticed right away that the radio was playing static.

    For the next week or so, I truly wasn't sure if I had really survived the wreck, or if I was in some sort of afterlife? At this point, I'm pretty sure I survived, but I can't explain my out of body experience. I wasn't seriously injured in the accident, so I don't know if it truly counts as "near death."


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  39. Had a friend who was in a bad car wreck and reported going up the white tunnel and meeting her mother and grandmother. Fairly standard stuff, apparently, but to her knowledge, she was reporting what happened to her.

    Just this year, I read an article which sought to explain that phenomenon by natural physical occurrences immediately preceding death -- if I recall, bodily functions going into overdrive, with that as the result -- but even it made the point that without dying, one can't prove if that is the only explanation. Actually, the point of the article was to say that it appears animals can experience something similar.

    I believe in an afterlife, but have no idea if it happens that way, and at this point, am not interested in trying to prove it (before my time, so to speak). :) Mary

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    1. There is also a theme of " comfort" here me thinks

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    2. I agree. It pays to remind oneself that no matter what happens, we can't do a damn thing about it. :)

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  40. My mom had had surgery and was recovering, then things started shutting down. After she'd had a particularly bad night where she'd had to be put on a vent due to CO2 issues, I was awakened by her nurse in the waiting room and said she was awake and needed to see me. She had a pen and paper in her hand and had written 'I know him.' I asked who, and she wrote 'Jesus. He knows me. And he sat on my bed and we talked with our hearts, not our words.' My family never went to church, and I know my mom hadn't been to one in years. I asked her what he said to her and she wrote 'that it's not my time and some other stuff' She never really rallied, and after 108 days she died of sepsis from C-Diff. The nurse gave me the pen and paper she'd used and the last thing she wrote was 'I'm going home.'

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    1. My great grandma's last words were also, "I'm going home." Blessings.

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    2. That is rather sweet

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  41. Great question John! Enjoyed the comments and am now 20 minutes later going to sleep.

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  42. I was a third year teacher when one of the student's parent came into the classroom high on drugs. Without saying a thing he shot me once in the chest. I remember ordering the children to run out of the room. Next thing my grandmother and my grandfather who I never got to meet, were telling me that I have to go back. There were things I needed to do. I remember not wanting to go back but I'm glad I did. I married and raised two children.

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  43. This story was told to me by a coworker that I worked with years ago in a bank. She had 2 elderly twin aunts sharing a room in hospital at the same time. One aunt was in great pain and dying while the other had an undiagnosed stomach ailment and was not dying. After a few days my friend's family told the dying aunt she could let go and be at peace with God. She said "no, she could not." Her mother asked her aunt privately later is there something she needed to talk about or have resolved. She said "No, I am waiting for my sister to come with me." Her other aunt was quite upset when she heard this since she was just having an exploratory procedure and her health otherwise was fine. A day later, her healthy aunt has the procedure and everything went well. Unfortunately, while recovering she develops complications and passes away suddenly. Then her dying sister passes away a few hours later.

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  44. i thin it is interestig to note that salot of people have heard these stories form love dones. i' not suprrised if people don't tell medical professionals so often. You would be scared of being locked up, or at the very least treated less well because of it. (and i say that as someone who has lyme and is well used to docs disregarding everything I tell them and writing me off as a nut after I tell them that, since it apparently still doesn't exist in Oz despite all the people who have sent samples overseas and tested positive and been treated and got better.) :P

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    1. Perhaps the realisation of the event only happens when things settle down

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  45. My daughter had a massive eclampsia fit, I was handed baby as they continued to work on her but things weren't looking good, whilst still in intensive care she asked me why my dad had been at the bottom of her bed, he died when I was twelve. She recovered but couldn't remember anything of this.

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    1. This " at the foot of the bed" thing seems to be more common that I expected

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  46. Hello this isn't a near death experience but it happened to me when my husband was gravely ill. In 2005 he suffered a haemorrhagic stroke and was given 50/50 chance of recovery. I sat with him for 3 days , and on the 3rd night , I will admit sleep deprived , I went to bed . I was terribly worried about him, as he had been moved into a sideward [ never a good sign) . As I lay in bed crying and beside myself with worry, I experienced a hugely reassuring presence , ltelling me but not with words , that they would watch over my husband and look after him . I literally felt the weight of worry and burden lifted from me by something far more powerful than me , it was such a lovely feeling.
    I should say that I am not religious in any way, do not believe in ghosts or similar, but that definitely happened , and it wasn't frightening , just a feeling of being loved and cared for.

    I did go to sleep that night and my husband has lived on until the present day .

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    1. On reflection Jon, what do you think was the experience? Can you explain it in any way that satisfys you?

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    2. I should point out I am Shelly, Jons wife , , sorry I can't work thus thing well enough to change it to my sign in , tho I'm sure my 10 yr old step daughter would do it in a trice !

      I have no reasonable explanation , but accept it for what it was , have had nothing like it before or since , but definitely was wide awake when it happened , thanks for introducing an interesting topic that prompted my memory of this.
      I don't comment much , but read your musings everyday :)

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  47. I haven't personally, but I was with my mother when she had a heart attack. She asked me to call the doctor because she had pains in her chest. He came, and I watched as he was thumping down on her chest. He sent me back to the phone to ring an ambulance. I remember looking down at her on the floor and I knew it wasn't the right time. She was technically dead, but they brought her back. She never spoke of it, but I knew it wasn't the right time.

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  48. I am a radiographer, and I have had no personal experience, but I had two male patients tell me about their experiences. One had had a heart attack during surgery and another in ED. Both said they were floating above their bodies witnessing what was happening before they returned. The man in surgery was able to relay the conversations that he heard to the surgical team when he awoke. They were both at peace with what had happened to them and had no fear of death.

    Julie Q

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  49. I was told I died twice on the table during a lengthy operation and had two full blood transfusions. I don't remember any of that, there were no bright lights beckoning me. But I did take an extremely long time to wake up from the anasthetic and during that time I remember feeling as if I was floating inside a warm black velvet cloud, I remember not wanting to leave there, but eventually heard voices and woke up.

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  50. I was six years old when my father had a near-death experience. He said that one by one his senses stopped working with hearing going last. Then he said he left his body and walked down a hallway. On the walls there were picture frames full of events of his life. Then all of a sudden, he was back in his body and he could hear my mom crying but couldn't see or move. He said he felt annoyed that he couldn't continue down the hall. We were in the woods and by the time we were able to get help he was fine. All they found was some kind of insect/spider bite/sting on his leg.

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