James G Probable NDE

Experience Description

In 2010, I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis that soon evolved into a more serious diagnosis of severe Crohn's disease. I had several years in which I had severe diarrhea, multiple rectal abscesses and surgical procedures to drain the abscesses. My symptoms were managed for 2 years with Remicade biologic infusions.

However, in 2013, during one of the regular infusions I developed a severe fever reaction to the medication. The infusion was stopped and I was observed in the Emergency Room for the rest of the day until the fever went away. Several months later, I met with a gastroenterologist and was prescribed a new medication called Humira. I had to give myself intramuscular injections every 2 weeks. However, after about 2 months of these injections, I began to feel ill and decided to stop taking this medication. Shortly after this, I developed pancytopenia and my spleen became enlarged (which is called splenomegaly).

The doctors and specialists were unable to determine the cause of this, even though the Humira was the most likely culprit. Over the next year, my pancytopenia worsened and I suffered from severe anemia and various inflammations of body organs. I suffered from Iritis (inflammation of the Iris), inflammation of the foot, and Shingles on right-side of my face. All of this led to a consensus among the medical professionals I was in consultation with at Kaiser that one possible way to reverse these problems would be to surgically remove my spleen. There was medical research indicating that this could cure persistent splenomegaly and pancytopenia.

From February through March of 2014, I underwent several tests to rule out any other medical causes of the splenomegaly, including a bone marrow biopsy, CT scans, X-rays, abdominal ultrasounds, and endoscopic evaluation. All of the tests came back negative, which ruled out the possibility of a tumor or viral/bacterial infections at that time.

On 03/28/2014, I received a splenectomy via open abdominal surgery that required an 8-day hospital stay for recovery. It was the most painful experience of my life. During this time, the Crohn's disease symptoms persisted with severe and persistent diarrhea. However, after about a month, the pancytopenia and anemia went into remission and it seemed as though everything had returned to normal, besides continuing to suffer from the Crohn's symptoms.

In July 2014, I developed an incisional hernia in my abdomen due to the splenectomy. As well, I began to have night sweats every night and had some difficulty with a persistent mild chest cough. I noticed some problems with my ability to breath after exertion as well.

On 08/15/2014, I went to the Kaiser Hospital for the hernia repair. As I was being checked in by the nurses for the laparoscopic surgery, the nurses were having difficulty reading my body temperature. They had to use multiple versions of thermometer devices and they all ranged from 103 degrees to 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Finally they used an old mercury thermometer and got a body temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. They decided to admit me as medically cleared for surgery at this point. I underwent the surgery with no significant problems.

On 08/16/2014, the day after the hernia repair surgery, while in recovery in the hospital, I began to have difficulty when I attempted to urinate or defecate. I was unable to succeed in these efforts after multiple attempts. I alerted the nurses to my situation, but they said that sometimes that happens after a person has undergone general anesthesia and to not worry about it. Then, after a little while, I began to experience problems breathing. My face got very hot and I began to feel panicked. I altered the nurses that I was having trouble breathing and was uncertain if I was having a panic attack. At this point, they moved me to a different room and had me lie down on an elevated gurney bed. I kept gasping for air and repeatedly said, 'I can't breath, don't let me die.' A swarm of nurses came into the room to try to determine what was wrong. A resident or administrator came into the room to assess the situation. She was blond-haired woman who appeared to have a very worried facial expression. I grabbed onto her arm, amidst all the verbal speculating going on amongst the staff, and looked into her eyes and said, 'Don't let me die!' At this point, they placed an oxygen mask onto my face and I was still unable to breath. I heard one of the medical staff yell, 'Get him to the ICU, stat!' They lowered me down on the gurney and began wheeling me down the hallway to the elevator. This is when I started to feel sleepy and shortly after lost consciousness.

The loss of consciousness felt as though I was falling asleep, and the fluorescent lights of the hospital overhead blurred and faded into darkness.

I'm not sure how much time elapsed at this point. But there was a period of time that I was unable to account for. I suddenly regained awareness, but I knew that I was still unconscious. I intuitively understood that I was outside of my body. However, the problem was figuring out where I was. I knew who I was and remembered the entirety of my personal history and everything that led up to my loss of consciousness and my current predicament. I was floating in a vast dark void, like a bubble floating out in the middle of nowhere. It felt like I was in deep space, so far from any galaxies, as though it was on the farthest edges of the universe, trillions of light years from any star system or galaxy cluster. I couldn't see anything except for a very faint speck of light sparsely in the distance. These light specks appeared to be stars that were on the farthest reaches of the nearest galaxy. They were so faint, that when I first looked into my surroundings I did not notice them being there.

I was fully aware that I had no physical body. I was just an invisible entity that was spherical in shape, but relatively small in scope. I realized just how insignificant I really was in the vastness of space and the grand scheme of things, if there was such a thing. The concept of time was a strange one. It was as though time did not exist, but existed paradoxically as well. I felt like I understood the history of the universe from the beginning and end of the infinity of time, including the historical events and chronology of Earth and a vague understanding of other planets' histories as well.

I then began to think to myself, 'Did I just die? Is this the Afterlife? Where is this? Is this all there is when we die - nothingness?' I started to worry that perhaps this was a type of Purgatory as described in the Holy Bible. I felt completely isolated and wondered if perhaps this was not Purgatory, but that in fact there is nothing but a black dark void when a person dies. Perhaps there is no Afterlife and atheism was accurate - when we die there is just nothingness. After pondering this for a while, I decided that this did not make sense. Because if that were the case, why would my self-awareness continue to exist? If I still knew who I was, even if I didn't know exactly where I was, how I got there, or why I was there, then this was some type of Afterlife. There was the only explanation that made sense to me at the time.

As I floated in this void, I started to think to myself, 'Okay, so what did I do with my life on Earth? What did I accomplish? What did I do that meant anything?' The initial feeling that overwhelmed me as the answer to these questions was, 'I accomplished nothing. Everything I did was meaningless and no consequence.' But then I began to realize that this was true only to a certain degree. There were some things that mattered, but only a few. The first was relational connections with other sentient beings. The second was any altruistic acts I engaged in while living on Earth in a physical form. But those were basically the only things that really mattered.

In reviewing the details of my life, I realized that I had some genuine relationships with others that were significant. However, I felt like I was never going to be able to see them again or interact with them again. I felt completely isolated and cut off from everyone on Earth who I had caring and loving relationships with. This included my sister, mother, and various friends that I had developed strong emotional bonds with while on Earth. I tried to telepathically communicate with them through sheer will and determine, but all of these efforts failed. It was as though I was so far away, in the farthest reaches of deep space, that the signal was unable to reach anyone. I then decided to try to communicate with any sentient being in the universe, but these efforts failed as well. There was an intuitive understanding that there were other sentient beings besides the life forms on Earth, on other planets in various galaxies throughout the universe. I was vaguely aware of their existences. However, my ability to communicate with anyone or anything besides myself was completely and utterly out of my reach.

After further review of my life, I realized that I did do some altruistic acts toward other human beings, animals and plants. These acts were significant and meaningful, but they were not as many as I had hoped would be the case. Kindness that I showed toward people I cared about, toward animals in need or distress, toward helping the plants and oceans of Earth; these things mattered. I felt like I had wasted my life on trivial pursuits of material success, hedonism, and social esteem. All of these things were understood to be of no value and completely meaningless. Those things really did not matter. It was as though they never occurred. They were inconsequential. A great feeling of sadness overcame me at this point. My life was insignificant.

The one thing that disturbed me the most was the realization that I never had found true love while alive on Earth - all my attempts to find a soul mate were in vain. There was a deep pain that I felt when realizing this, as though I had failed in some cosmic way.

Suddenly, I experienced some type of gravitational pull that was almost instantaneous. It was as though I was pulled through a wormhole and transported trillions of light years back to Earth. I gradually floated down from the orbit of the Earth down through the sky to a point in the air about 20 feet above the hospital building my physical body was located within. I was looking down on things like a space craft hovering in a stationary pattern. I noticed feeling the heat of the pavement from the building and the streets below and could smell the odor of the asphalt pavement of the parking lot and streets below. I could see the trees, various vehicles bustling about, people moving about, and so forth. Then as I focused my gaze on the hospital building below, it was as though I had the X-ray vision and was able to see through the various concrete floors and ceilings of the building, down to the floor and room my body was lying in. The details of my body and face were fuzzy and blurred. I could see the nurses buzzing around me, going in and out of the room, as though in fast motion. My spirit (or essence) was suddenly pulled down through the concrete and physical objects and floors of the hospital down into the room I was laying in. I hovered in the corner of the ceiling looking down at my body, the fluorescent lights brightly distorting my view of things. I slowly was pulled toward my body through the air until my essence returned to my physical form.

There was darkness again for a period of time. It was unclear how long this process took. But then, I regained consciousness within my physical body. I looked up at the ceiling and realized that I was laying in the intensive care unit (ICU) of the hospital and quickly realized that I was unable to move my limbs due to being in medical restraints. I wanted to talk, but gagged. Then I realized that I was unable to talk due to my throat being filled with an intubation tube/device. I somehow got the attention of the nurses and they tried to reorient me by telling me that I was medically stable and they were glad that I had finally regained consciousness. I somehow signified to them that I wanted to communicate to them via writing. I wrote to them and asked various questions about what had happened. They verbally explained to me that I had suffered from respiratory failure and had to be intubated. They had put me under anesthesia but my heart had a negative reaction to the medication. They apparently had almost lost me several times when my blood pressure when from very low to very high throughout the night. I almost flat-lined a few times. They said they needed to resuscitate me in order to keep my blood pressure from becoming unstable. They had notified my emergency contacts and they were on there way to visit with me.

I remained in the ICU for several weeks while the doctors tried to determine the cause of my respiratory failure. After several tests, X-rays, and CT scans, it was determined that I was suffering from infective endocarditis caused by a bacteria that causes 'Cat Scratch Fever' - Bartonella henselae. They started me on many wide-spectrum intravenous antibiotics at first, and then after they knew which infection I had, switched me to the specific antibiotics that were most effective in eradicating the bacterial infection from my blood. Upon further examination, it was determined that two of my heart valves were damaged from the bacteria, but they were hoping that the antibiotic treatment for 6 weeks would be successful in preventing any further damage. I was transferred to a Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) and remained there for about 4 weeks. During the first week, the nurses had read the wrong order in the chart from the Infectious Disease doctor and administered the wrong intravenous antibiotics. I got severely sick with fevers for several nights. I finally spoke with the Infectious Disease doctor on the phone and told him what was happening. He realized upon further investigation that they had put me on the wrong antibiotics. They put me on the correct antibiotics and my symptoms began to improve.

While in the SNF, I had many visitors from co-workers, friends, and family members. My sister visited me and we had a discussion. She wanted to blame my 'sinful lifestyle' (since I am gay) on this whole situation. As though if I had chosen not to engage in any gay sex, I would never have gotten infected with HIV (back in July 1999) and then I would not have gotten sick with Crohn's disease which led to the mishaps that caused me to almost die. I worried that she was right, and that is why I did not go to a 'good place' when I had respiratory failure. I was worried that since I chose to turn against the practice of Christianity (fundamentalist protestant) that I was raised with that I was doomed to go to Hell upon my death. I talked with a Chaplain after my sister left, and spoke with her about my concerns. She was a Unitarian. She said that she did not believe in Hell and that we end up going to where we believe we are going to go when we die. I asked her why I did not see 'the light' when I was 'dead." She said she did not know, but that some people see a light and others do not. But she said that just because I didn't see 'the light' did not mean I was doomed to go to a 'bad place' in the Afterlife. However, I decided that I had to time to think about this in the future and try to come to a consensus about where I was going to go when I die.

It seemed like things were getting better by the fourth week of treatment in the SNF. However, one day I woke up and felt some horrible pain in my fingers and toes. I was unable to walk on my own without excruciating pain. I called the Infectious Disease doctor and told him about this. He said I should go to the Emergency Room immediately. I was sent to the Emergency Room in an ambulance and found out that I was having emboli from the vegetation on my heart valves. This vegetation was flaking off of the heart valves once the bacteria died. They put me on several blood thinners and monitored my situation. I was sent for an Angiogram and it was determined that the damage to my heart valves was so extensive that I would need to have surgery to replace the valves. They said that open heart surgery was the only viable option and they scheduled it for the first available time (09/30/2018).

The open heart surgery was performed on 09/30/2018 and my heart valves were surgically replaced with bovine tissue prosthetic valves. I recovered fully but had difficulty sleeping after that. I was afraid to fall asleep for fear that I would awaken in the dark void I had found myself after I lost consciousness from respiratory failure back in August. However, I felt much better after that and returned to full physical health. Psychologically, though, I suffered from a type of PTSD and a manic-like reaction. I felt an urgency to do everything I wanted to do in my life hedonistically before it was too late and before I ended up dying again. I wanted to make up for lost time. I felt like the last 4 years of my life had been lost, and as though everyone else kept going on with life, but I was left behind. I felt distanced from everyone else, as though they could not fully understand what had happened to me. Even when I told other people what had happened, it was obvious that they did not understand. They were sympathetic, but were unable to comprehend the experience I had.

I still do not know the answer to where I will go when I die. I do not know if there even really is an Afterlife. However, I learned to try to focus on strengthening my relationships with other humans, animals and plants. I try to act with care, trying to be as altruistic as possible. I no longer worry as much about material things. I know that when we die, we don't take anything physical with us.


Background Information:

Gender: Male

Date NDE Occurred: 08/16/2014

NDE Elements:

At the time of your experience, was there an associated life-threatening event? Yes Illness Surgery-related. While under general anesthesia. CPR given. Life threatening event, but not clinical death. I had respiratory failure due to infective endocarditis, damage to two heart valves (aortic and mitral valves)

How do you consider the content of your experience? Both pleasant AND distressing

Did you feel separated from your body? Uncertain. I was aware of the entire history of Earth including past, present and future events. I clearly left my body and existed outside it

How did your highest level of consciousness and alertness during the experience compare to your normal everyday consciousness and alertness? Normal consciousness and alertness N/A

At what time during the experience were you at your highest level of consciousness and alertness? The entire duration of the experience.

Were your thoughts speeded up? No

Did time seem to speed up or slow down? Everything seemed to be happening at once; or time stopped or lost all meaning. Time was happening all at once, but also simultaneously had stopped and lost all meaning.

Were your senses More vivid than usual? No

Please compare your vision during the experience to your everyday vision that you had immediately prior to the time of the experience. About the same

Please compare your hearing during the experience to your everyday hearing that you had immediately prior to the time of the experience. Somewhat muted

Did you seem to be aware of things going on elsewhere, as if by ESP? No

Did you pass into or through a tunnel? Uncertain The wormhole that I went through to get back to Earth was a type of tunnel perhaps.

Did you see any beings in your experience? No

Did you see, or feel surrounded by, a brilliant light? No

Did you see an unearthly light? Yes The few small faint specks of light that looked like distant stars from distant edges of far-away galaxies.

Did you seem to enter some other, unearthly world? Some unfamiliar and strange place. It was a dark void in deep space, the farthest reaches of the universe.

What emotions did you feel during the experience? I felt aAlone, isolated, sad, scared, acceptance, and peacefulness

Did you have a feeling of peace or pleasantness? Relief or calmness

Did you have a feeling of joy? No

Did you feel a sense of harmony or unity with the universe? I felt no longer in conflict with nature

Did you suddenly seem to understand everything? Everything about the universe. I felt I knew everything about everything

Did scenes from your past come back to you? I remembered many past events. Everything in detail

Did scenes from the future come to you? Scenes from the world's future. I had an idea of what would happen, and I knew all the details but forgot them when I reentered my physical body.

Did you come to a border or point of no return? I came to a barrier that I was not permitted to cross; or was sent back against my will. I was pulled back to Earth and back into my body. I was neutral about returning to my physical form.

God, Spiritual and Religion:

What was your religion prior to your experience? Unaffiliated- Agnostic

Have your religious practices changed since your experience? No

What is your religion now? Unaffiliated- Agnostic

Did your experience include features consistent with your earthly beliefs? Content that was both consistent and not consistent with the beliefs you had at the time of your experience. It was a paradoxical and very strange experience. But since I am agnostic, I didn't have any particular beliefs about the experience

Did you have a change in your values and beliefs because of your experience? No

Did you seem to encounter a mystical being or presence, or hear an unidentifiable voice? No

Did you see deceased or religious spirits? No

Did you encounter or become aware of any beings who previously lived on earth who are described by name in religions (for example: Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, etc.)? No

During your experience, did you gain information about premortal existence? No

During your experience, did you gain information about universal connection or oneness? No

During your experience, did you gain information about the existence of God? No

Concerning our Earthly lives other than Religion:

During your experience, did you gain special knowledge or information about your purpose? No

During your experience, did you gain information about the meaning of life? Yes Altruism and relationships with others were the only thing that mattered.

During your experience, did you gain information about an afterlife? I am uncertain if an afterlife exists. There appears to be something more after death, but not sure if I was tricking myself into believing this.

Did you gain information about how to live our lives? No

During your experience, did you gain information about life's difficulties, challenges and hardships? No

During your experience, did you gain information about love? Yes Finding true love, or one's soul mate. It was one of the only things that matters after death.

What life changes occurred in your life after your experience? Moderate changes in my life. I moved to a different city (from Sacramento to San Jose) to get away from the traumatic memories of what occurred and got a different job with a promotion.

Have your relationships changed specifically because of your experience? No

After the NDE:

Was the experience difficult to express in words? No

How accurately do you remember the experience in comparison to other life events that occurred around the time of the experience? I remember the experience as accurately as other life events that occurred around the time of the experience. I remember it fully, and probably will never forget what happened.

Do you have any psychic, non-ordinary or other special gifts after your experience that you did not have before the experience? No

Are there one or several parts of your experience that are especially meaningful or significant to you? No.

Have you ever shared this experience with others? Yes With the chaplain at the hospital and with my sister, family and friends while I was in recovery.

Did you have any knowledge of near death experience (NDE) prior to your experience? Yes I had read several books about the subject with lots of examples of others' experiences. I don't think it affected my experience in any way.

What did you believe about the reality of your experience shortly (days to weeks) after it happened? Experience was definitely real. It just felt real.

What do you believe about the reality of your experience now? Experience was definitely real. It still feels vividly real to me.

At any time in your life, has anything ever reproduced any part of the experience? No

Is there anything else that you would like to add about your experience? No.

Are there any other questions that we could ask to help you communicate your experience? Perhaps questions about animals and plants in terms of people's awareness during their near death experiences, rather than just other people, spirits, God, and supernatural beings.