I haven’t ever died or really come close to dying, except once on the operating table – I don’t remember a thing but apparently I started having an asthma attack so they had to intubate me. When I woke up I felt as though my lungs were full of water and my throat was sore. It turned out that they managed to chip part of my jawbone, so that hurt more than the incision ever did, until the chip worked its way out.
In the few serious car crashes I was in what happened was that time started to flow very slowly and everything went totally silent and slightly gray until the car came to a stop with a crunch. I never realized I might be getting ready to die. I was just observing everything.
My husband, however, has actually died several times.
The first time he died he was in surgery and discovered himself looking down on the table and listening to the doctors fuss. Then he saw a bright light in one upper corner of the room and went towards it, but his late uncle came out of it and told him it wasn’t time yet. Next thing he knew he was in a hospital bed with drains coming out of his abdomen.
When his heart stopped when he was in the hospital after angioplasty he remembers yelling at the doctors to quit using those damn paddles because they hurt. However, those of us standing near him didn’t hear him make a sound any of the several times they had to do that.
The last time he died he was in a coma and when he shocked the doctors and woke up he couldn’t remember anything from three days before the coma to the day he woke up.