Inspired, naturally, by this column that’s currently featured on the Straight Dope Homepage. Has anyone on the boards actually experienced this?
Just curious.
Funny that you should ask…
I’m sure he will be here shortly.
I had those experiences when I was operated on, but I didn’t think it was near-death at all. You can be sort of out of it when you realize someone’s shining a light in your eye and there’s talking. A lot like a dream but you realize you’re not dreaming but paralized and your eyes can’t open.
That said, however, I really think most people repeat the stories that are expected of them, just like they do when they report meeting aliens or seeing a sasquatch. Just lack of imagination but it get the attention of the small town reporter.
I’ve been close enough to death to have an out-of-body experience, but (fortunately, perhaps) didn’t get as far as the “floating-down-the-tunnel” stage. I suppose that’s a “no”.
I was without pulse or breathing for 4 minutes before they managed to get me started back up again. Nothing to report at all, no tunnels, nothing. I did pop awake in recovery so hypothermic I about shook myself off the gurney before they got one of the spiffy electric blankets for me. Oddly enough, absolutely no bad effects from my experience, I was out of recovery in 30 minutes, and had eaten, drunk and pissed within one hour and was trying to convince the nurse to get the TV authorized for me to watch because they refuseed to spring me to go home for 3 more hours [ a total of 4 hours out of recovery, pissing, eating and drinking apparently is the minimum they are willing to go.]
Ok, you want a spooky story? This isn’t about my NDE, but that of a four year old girl I cared for many years ago.
I worked in a bone marrow transplant unit. One of the serious complications of BMT, is graft vs host disease. In other kinds of organ transplants, the body defends itself against the preceived invader. Unfortunately, in BMT, the part that’s been introduced is the defender and sometimes sees the rest of the body as the invader. One of the systems most effected is the skin.
The child had the equivalent of third degree burns over 99% of her body. We weren’t able to help her. All that could be done was to make her as comfortable as possible.
On this particular day, her daddy was rocking her. She had been barely conscious for the previous two days. I had just come in to take her vital signs. Her blood pressure was very low. I told her dad it wasn’t going to be much longer. He asked if he should put her down and I told him that as long as he was comfortable, it was fine. Her breathing was so shallow it was barely decernible. Her heart rate had dropped to the thirties. She looked like she was sleeping and comfortable for the first time in weeks.
I turned to go get the doc, when dad made a sound. I turned to see her eyes open and she smiled this angelic smile. It seemed to light up the room. She even made a tiny giggle, then said,
“Daddy look at all the shiny people! Oh, Daddy, they are so pretty!”
Then she was gone. I was stunned. I would have made myself believe I’d dreamed it, but the doc happened to come in just as she spoke.
We didn’t talk about it until several weeks later. Who knew what to say.
Did somebody put up the lekatt signal?
NDE’s are probably caused by floods of DMT in the brain.
I had an NDE, but mine was actually caused by the use of massive amounts of hallucogenic drugs.
The symptoms were exactly like the ones described in proper NDE.
One more sign that NDE’s are hardwired in the brain in some manner.
One of my pet theories is that they are actually the basis for all religion.
Bwahahahaha!
As lekatt is not posting, here, let’s leave comments about him out of this thread.
Every time I sass my wife.
This does not necessarily follow. When I was on morphine I had hallucinations of having a conversation with my Dr. It seemed real, but he wasn’t there. Is this one more sign all conversations are hardwired in the brain in some manner? My point is, if the brain can experience something through reality, it may be able to reproduce the same experience while on drugs, but that doesn’t negate the times it was real.
So…who is ‘lekatt’?
I’ve seen Death approach (in the form of a 4x4) and survive, but I was fully conscious throughout.
My father nearly died a few months ago and was kept in a medically-induced coma for a few days. He claims to have been aware of a “turning point” when he knew he wasn’t going to die just then. He “remembers” feeling very peaceful and finding himself walking in a garden with someone who assured him that everything was going to be all right.
He is religious, being a minister and all, but that was the first time I’d heard him talk about it that way.
He was a poster here, especially on NDE’s, which he believed in (passionately).
I think he’s either left or been ‘dealt with’ by moderators.*
*I don’t mean anything derogatory by this - I didn’t know how else to put it.
lekatt has not been banned, but has not posted in a long time. As noted, Near Death Experience was an extreme passion for him.
My brother said and did about the same thing right before he died (he was 9); he spent most of the last half-hour of his life with a blissed-out smile on his face, staring at the upper corner of the hospital room. I’ve had plenty of time to wonder about this since, but I don’t know the cause (angels, brain drawing on every available painkilling hormone available, etc.).
Our brain compells us to experience a common “reality” composed of energy that exists mostly in “empty space” and not only that in an environment which is not bound by “time” or “place” and which the brain translates into bodies, cars, grass, etc. And this is rockbound reality for us. So, why isn’t the experience as death approaches just as real? Why is it any different? The answer is that it isn’t different; it’s just that our focus has changed. Death is a change of focus. Just like turning the dial on a radio. We need a physicist, not a religion, to explain our existence.