# Who here has been dead? (Clinically, anyway) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 28, 2009, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-here-has-been-dead-clinically-anyway/522816 "2009-12-28T17:43:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Captain\_Mumble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/439d5e/32.png) [@Captain\_Mumble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Mumble)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-here-has-been-dead-clinically-anyway/522816/21 "2009-12-29T14:17:09Z")
I clinically died 3 times as a 12-year old on the operating table due to blood loss from a severed femoral vein. No bright light or conversation or dream. I woke up in the recovery room thinking heaven looked ‘kinda tacky’. FTR, the longest ‘downtime’ was 25 seconds and,yes, it HAS coloured my outlook on life YMMV -Mitch ---
**Author:** ![Dusty\_Rose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ba8739/32.png) [@Dusty\_Rose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dusty_Rose)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-here-has-been-dead-clinically-anyway/522816/22 "2009-12-29T14:49:50Z")
> [@Surly\_Chick](#): > > **Dusty Rose** , I would be really interested in hearing your experience. PM me if you don’t want to share on the board. I promise not to send it to Great Debates. > > I was mostly dead (does that count) when I was 18 months old. I had viral pneumonia and a fever of 108. Can’t recall anything about it except the animal curtains in the children’s ward. Which I really didn’t remember until my parents were talking about it one day and mentioned them and I promptly burst into tears - at age 22. It was weird. Hi Surly. I don’t mind sharing this in general. I just don’t want to be bothered trying to prove it to anyone. Lots of people don’t believe in this type of thing, and that’s ok. The problem is, some of these same people insist upon trying to convince me that it didn’t happen. IMO, that’s just stupid and a waste of time for all involved. It’s long, but I couldn’t decide how to shorten it. I was 10 or 11, in or around that age, when I went with our old neighbor’s family to a horse show in Ohio, in their motorhome. B. and I were in the very back, on the two sofas, one on each side of the cabin. P. and K. were at the table, playing cards. Their parents were in the front, just driving down the highway. B. and I were talking and I remember getting sleepy. This part is what S., their mom, told my mom: They were driving down the road, when all of a sudden, K’s head just went “thunk!” down on the table. S. jumped up to check on K., and screamed at her husband to pull over. B., K. and I were all out cold. They took us out and laid us on the side of the road, and started slapping our faces and wrists. K. came to fairly quickly, B. and I took longer. I remember that B. also went into convulsions, but I don’t remember if she said I did. What I remember is this: I remember talking to B. and getting sleepy. The next thing I know, I’m being pulled up quite quickly, but in a floaty, weightless kind of way. When I looked down, I could see the motorhome on the side of the road, I could see people laying on the shoulder, with other people leaning over them, but I have no concern as to who they are, or what they are doing. It just didn’t matter to me at all. I was propelled up, and entered darkness while being pulled toward the moon. (I was a kid. Never heard of an NDE. That big, round, white light looked like a full moon to me.) I am aware of a voice in my head, asking if I had any questions, and I couldn’t think of any. What I do remember feeling, but have a horrible time describing, is how I felt. The way I’ve always thought of it, and maybe because I was young when it happened, is it’s the most incredible sense of “okayness” that you can imagine. All is right, ok, and safe. That everything is as it should be. And I had a _true_ sense of being loved. _Really, truly loved._ A most amazing feeling. When I am in the light, a lady with short, dark hair and dark eyes comes to talk to me. I don’t remember exactly what she wore, but I want to say a white robe type of thing. My memory could just be adding that. I honestly don’t remember. She knelt in front of me, and said that I needed to go back. Without talking, she said that. And without talking, my entire being wanted to stay. She “said” I needed to go back, because my mother needed me. That I understood, right? My mother needed me. I was a little confused, because I knew my mother didn’t need me. There was some concept of agreements. That I had made agreements, and needed to follow through on those. At that point, I agreed to go back. The very next instant, I am sucked back into my body. I open my eyes to P. leaning over me, slapping my face… I remember being in the back of the police car, waiting for the ambulance. I remember being really out of it, but probably more due to the carbon monoxide poisoning than anything else. A lot of this is fuzzy. It’s been 30 years; I’ve considered hypnosis to take myself back so I could remember it all. The two sensations I remember most were the sense of “okayness” and that feeling of being drawn back into my body. The feeling of okayness is something that I’ve yearned for time and again. It’s also something I’ve tried to remember the feeling of during some of my darkest times. I’ve not shared the story that often. Most have met it with skepticism. But, I don’t care whether anyone believes me or not. Because I remember it. I can still visualize it. I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that it happened. None. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-here-has-been-dead-clinically-anyway/522816/23 "2009-12-29T15:27:55Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > **BigT** mentions [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11909570&postcount=15) having been clinically dead for 45 minutes. Thanks, Der Trihs! Apparently I’m actually somewhat memorable around here. But I’ll elaborate a bit more than that post. You see, I had a seizure at 16 months, due to a high fever. They tried all sorts of things to get my fever down, but it kept rising. At some point I stopped breathing, and couldn’t be resuscitated. They declared me dead. But my parents refused to believe it. They got all their church friends together and held a prayer meeting. Forty-five minutes later, I started breathing again. Obviously, everyone said it was a miracle. When searching for a cause for why this happened, it was noticed that I’d had my MMR shot only a few days before. While correlation does not equal causation, I’ve been wary of vaccinations ever since. I’ve only gotten the ones I absolutely had to. And you’d better bet I got a doctor’s waiver so I didn’t have to get the booster when I entered junior high. I do want to point out that, just like Dusty Rose, I don’t want to talk about any religious significance. Believe what you want. Oh, and, since I was only a baby, I don’t remember any NDEs. ETA: @Dusty: Hypnosis is probably not a good idea, as you’ll pretty much make up what you don’t remember. You’re memory’s not going to get any better than it already is. Hypnosis is bad about making false memories. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-here-has-been-dead-clinically-anyway/522816/24 "2009-12-29T15:33:46Z")
I didn’t breathe for the first 15 minutes after my birth. I’m told. ---
**Author:** ![goldmund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a4c791/32.png) [@goldmund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/goldmund)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-here-has-been-dead-clinically-anyway/522816/25 "2009-12-29T15:34:55Z")
> [@Dusty\_Rose](#): > > I’ve not shared the story that often. Most have met it with skepticism. But, I don’t care whether anyone believes me or not. Because I remember it. I can still visualize it. I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that it happened. None. I’ve experienced similar things, and I’m still a skeptic. I don’t doubt that you experienced it; I experienced many bizarre things as well. What I don’t believe is that it’s anything supernatural. I mean, the mind is capable of simulating absolutely any experience, it happens every night when we dream. Occam’s razor would dictate that things like this are just fabrications of our brain… a dream, and nothing more. When I was fading in and out of consciousness as my brain was shutting down, I saw and heard people in the room with me. It was as real as anything else I’ve ever experienced. To this day, as far as my memory is concerned, these people existed. I only know they weren’t actually there because logically they couldn’t have been. It seems as real as any other memory, though. It seems like it happened. I distinctly remember them saying to me “it’s OK, just relax, come party with us!”. They were sitting right there on the couch in my living room. Was I seeing some sort of spirits, ghosts, another plane of existence, or merely figments of my imagination as my brain was shutting down and lost its grip on the borders between imagination and reality? The simplest answer would be the latter. I remember, VERY distinctly remember the feeling I described above, as if my “self” expanded beyond the limits of my body, as if the “essence of me” expanded to fill the whole universe. That was shortly before my senses gave way to the enormous burst of light akin to snow on a TV screen. Was this what it feels like for my soul to leave my body? Was this light the light of the infinite souls in the spirit plane? Or was my brain losing its connection to peripheral nerves, and no longer able to sense the size of my body? And was the endless sea of light just my visual cortex shutting down? Can anyone provide a cite for any near-death experience, out-of-body experience, etc, that is only explainable by supernatural conditions? My own “near death experience” didn’t change my life any more than would a really intense acid trip. ---
**Author:** ![Kickback\_Joe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/cdc98d/32.png) [@Kickback\_Joe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kickback_Joe)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-here-has-been-dead-clinically-anyway/522816/26 "2009-12-29T17:15:47Z")
If absence of heartbeat qualifies as dead then I was for a short period of time. I was electrocuted during work due to failure to verify my lockout was still in place after lunch. When I came to in the hospital they told me that the paramedics shocked me twice and brought me back. No visions of the afterlife or anything. I was blinded by the initial flash so maybe that prevented me from seeing anything. ---
**Author:** ![notfrommensa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/f14d63/32.png) [@notfrommensa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/notfrommensa)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-here-has-been-dead-clinically-anyway/522816/27 "2009-12-29T17:46:13Z")
My mother had 4 NDEs, and all four were different circumstances in four different decades. In the 40’s, her heart stopped beating during an emergency operation for ectopic pregnancy episode. In the 50’s, she had a severe gallbladder attack, in which her heart stopped beating again. In the 60’s, she got found out that she had a deadly allegy to clams which doctors had a difficult time diagnosing. In the 70’s, she had a heart attack, in which her heart stopped beating. In the 80’s, she passed away from a massive stroke. She was clinically dead in all 4 circumstances, in fact during the ectopic pregnancy incident, the surgeon told the nurses to “cover her up” but the anesthesiologist said she was still breathing. She never said that she saw a “light” or anything similar. Me? I almost drowned when I was a toddler. At a cocktail party/engagement party. when the only that saw me fall into the pool was the mother of the bride. Who was all-dolled up in an expensive cocktail dress and spent all day at the beauty shop. I certainly made a splash that day. ---
**Author:** ![Surly\_Chick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ec9cab/32.png) [@Surly\_Chick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Surly_Chick)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-here-has-been-dead-clinically-anyway/522816/28 "2009-12-29T19:13:09Z")
I find stories like yours, **Dusty Rose** , comforting. I choose to believe in an afterlife and I hope it’s filled with “okayness!” ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-here-has-been-dead-clinically-anyway/522816/29 "2009-12-29T21:04:58Z")
> [@teletype](#): > > Can anyone provide a cite for any near-death experience, out-of-body experience, etc, that is only explainable by supernatural conditions? Don’t have any cites on hand (or any of the books nearby), but I’ve read some stories where people saw things they couldn’t have possibly known. The one that sticks in my memory is the lady who said she was floating upwards and she saw a red shoe on the roof in the gutter. Just a random shoe. On the roof. Some of the nurses decided, why not, see what the top of the hospital really looked like- and they found the shoe. Again, I know this doesn’t mean anything without a cite, but the amount of stories I’ve read on the subject leads me to believe that they shouldn’t be too hard to find. (Even if you can’t prove it, I like the shoe one just for the random weirdness of it). ---
**Author:** ![Dusty\_Rose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ba8739/32.png) [@Dusty\_Rose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dusty_Rose)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2009, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-here-has-been-dead-clinically-anyway/522816/30 "2009-12-30T00:54:32Z")
> [@Surly\_Chick](#): > > I find stories like yours, **Dusty Rose** , comforting. I choose to believe in an afterlife and I hope it’s filled with “okayness!” I’m glad you find comfort in it, **Surly Chick**. I do, too. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Dusty\_Rose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ba8739/32.png) [@Dusty\_Rose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dusty_Rose)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2009, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-here-has-been-dead-clinically-anyway/522816/31 "2009-12-30T12:29:36Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Thanks, Der Trihs! Apparently I’m actually somewhat memorable around here. But I’ll elaborate a bit more than that post. > > You see, I had a seizure at 16 months, due to a high fever. They tried all sorts of things to get my fever down, but it kept rising. At some point I stopped breathing, and couldn’t be resuscitated. They declared me dead. But my parents refused to believe it. They got all their church friends together and held a prayer meeting. Forty-five minutes later, I started breathing again. Obviously, everyone said it was a miracle. > > When searching for a cause for why this happened, it was noticed that I’d had my MMR shot only a few days before. While correlation does not equal causation, I’ve been wary of vaccinations ever since. I’ve only gotten the ones I absolutely had to. And you’d better bet I got a doctor’s waiver so I didn’t have to get the booster when I entered junior high. > > I do want to point out that, just like Dusty Rose, I don’t want to talk about any religious significance. Believe what you want. Oh, and, since I was only a baby, I don’t remember any NDEs. > > **ETA: @Dusty: Hypnosis is probably not a good idea, as you’ll pretty much make up what you don’t remember. You’re memory’s not going to get any better than it already is. Hypnosis is bad about making false memories.** Sorry all, don’t mean to hijack, but… I didn’t know this! ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2009, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-here-has-been-dead-clinically-anyway/522816/32 "2009-12-30T13:59:45Z")
_All I ask is if you’ve ever been dead and has your sister ever Twisted at the Holocaust?_ - Stackridge ---
**Author:** ![Agent\_Foxtrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc29f/32.png) [@Agent\_Foxtrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agent_Foxtrot)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2009, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-here-has-been-dead-clinically-anyway/522816/33 "2009-12-30T14:12:29Z")
> [@teletype](#): > > I have. I’ve traditionally been the stubborn sort that never goes to a doctor, just waits out illnesses and lets his immune system deal with it, etc. Back in 2000, I started to feel “not right” - no appetite, not sleeping right, random weird aches and pains, weird rashes, etc. I chalked it up to stress. My condition steadily deteriorated and in 2001 it should have been painfully obvious that something was seriously wrong. The problem is, by that point it affected my mind so much that my judgment was entirely out of whack. > > Turns out I had Lymphoma for quite some time, which had by that point reached stage IV, and metastasized all over the place. It was in my bone marrow, and eventually led to aplastic anemia; bone marrow completely shut down. So there I was severely anemic, neutropenic (no white blood cells; useless immune system) and with no platelets. Since I had no immune system I also had bronchitis and 2 ear infections to go along with it. My body started shutting down, I got completely delirious, etc. Started seeing a bunch of things and people that just plain weren’t there. I somehow managed to call my dad on the phone, and I explained to him that I had just accidently destroyed the universe, but it was OK, I had rebuilt it, and I wanted to know if I had rebuilt him properly. He quickly drove up to my place, and I told him I was hungry (I hadn’t eaten for several days apparently) and he said we’d go get a pizza. He of course took me to the mental hospital, they took one look at my vitals and said I need to get onto an ambulance to the medical hospital IMMEDIATELY as I was minutes from death. > > I did make it to the hospital but went into cardiac arrest almost immediately after being brought to the the trauma room. I guess my blood was not carrying enough oxygen to keep the heart going. They did manage to get it going again, and transfuse me, etc. My memory of that whole part is extremely spotty. I remember the hallucinations distinctly, I remember being brought to the mental hospital, and part of the ambulance ride. I remember regaining consciousness a few times in the trauma room, one of which was right as they were doing a lumbar puncture (aka spinal tap). Fun! > > Then I went into a coma for I think 7 or 8 days. I had to be regularly transfused for a few weeks until my bone marrow started working again, after chemo and a lot of procrit. > > I didn’t see any tunnels with light at the end or anything during all of this. One thing I did notice was that whenever I was conscious, I was convinced that whatever room I was in was full of sweet-smelling smoke. I remember a distinct moment where I had this feeling like my sense of self was completely dissociated from my physical body, the best I can describe it is I felt like “existence turned inside out”, as if myself and the rest of the universe had swapped places, like all of existence was inside my body, and my consciousness became the rest of the universe. Just call me Wonko the Sane! And I remember a distinct point where my senses just shut off, and I just saw “snow” and heard white noise for a second. I was already unconscious at this point, but the images and sounds in the dream-like state disappeared and were replaced with this noise. And then at that point it all instantly snapped back to normality, which was when I woke up for the first time in the trauma room. > > So, I’m pretty sure that part of the experience was my brain beginning to shut portions of itself down to conserve energy. Possibly the reason it seemed to instantly snap back to normal is that at that point it stopped keeping track of the passage of time, so my perception just jumped forward at that point. I don’t know, I’m not a neurologist, I just know what I experienced. > > Anyway, I’m fine now, it will be 8 years in remission this January. Didn’t even have to have a bone marrow or stem cell transplant. Just chemo. Pretty remarkable, really. That is an amazing story. If you have any other details you feel comfortable sharing, please do so! ---
**Author:** ![goldmund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a4c791/32.png) [@goldmund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/goldmund)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2009, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-here-has-been-dead-clinically-anyway/522816/34 "2009-12-30T19:58:51Z")
> [@Agent\_Foxtrot](#): > > That is an amazing story. If you have any other details you feel comfortable sharing, please do so! Not uncomfortable at all, it didn’t really affect me the way it does some people. I was sick and I got better. Wouldn’t know where to begin though, so ask away. 🆒 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-here-has-been-dead-clinically-anyway/522816.md?page=1)