Near Death Experiences

You don’t have to be a paramedic for very long before you get see many near death experiences…

Near death death experiences appear to be different for everyone and fortunately, although we as paramedics see these near death experiences regularly, we are only witnesses to it. These few stories are the accounts of patients who I have talked to after near death experiences such as a return of spontaneous circulation after cardiac arrest.

Everyone seems to experience these things differently – sometimes it depends how long they were down for (dead), what was happining around them at the time (such as noise, lights, etc) and sometimes their religious backgrounds play a part in what they see of think they see. This is not to say that I have resuscitated many people over my time who were not religious and still heard or saw things… the truth is, until we all travel to that “next stage of life/death” – this is just about as close a report as we’re going to get…

Patient John – had a history of ectopic beats leading into VF and was awaiting ablation surgery to remove his excess pacemakers. Over the course of 3 months – we cardioverted him (shocked him) during a VF cardiac arrest 5 times, each time with a good outcome and a return of circulation. One day, I asked him what he saw/felt. He said he normally saw bright lights… but that the last time he saw nothing/heard nothing…. and felt nothing…

Patient Jenny – had called us with chest pain, and then during treatment for the pain in her chest, I asked her a question and I noticed that as I did, her eyes dilated fully, she went rigid and stopped breathing (she had gone into an assystolic arrest). Over the course of 2 minutes of CPR, she had a spontaneous return of circulation… she became fully conscious within 10 minutes (about the time we were arriving at hospital). When asked what she saw/felt – she said it was as though someone had just stopped time in her life and now restarted it (and she has no idea what happened in between that time)…

Patient Sam – Had a VF cardiac arrest in front of an Ambulance Station. He was shocked twice and regained circulation. He was unconscious for 24 hours, but when we got a chance to talk to him, he said that remembered thinking everytime he heard the defibrillator charge up that it was going to hurt… and said that, although the pain never came, he was intensely aware of everytime we shocked him…

Patient Michael – Had a sick sinnus syndrome (basically his normal heart pacemaker wasn’t working and consequently his heart was throwing off all sorts of bad rhythyms). Otherwise, however, he was perfectly well. Consequently, every time we’d start CPR on him he would yell, kick and scream until we stopped – and then he would lie there unconscious wihtout a pulse until we started CPR again… eventually an external pacemaker was used and the patient became conscious and told us that he kept on having the worse nightmare…

More stories to come…