Sammy E NDE

Experience Description

This was the day after my son's birthday. All three of us went to the zoo park in France, as part of the celebration. It was an unusually hot and cloudless day, so by around 5 PM we were exhausted and had been drinking a lot of water throughout the day to stay hydrated. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the lifelong condition I suffer from includes complications that require extra sodium intake when rehydrating. By the end of the day, I started developing metabolic acidosis as a result of ignoring this aspect, which manifested as progressively worsening headaches, abnormal breathing patterns (Cheyne-Stokes), brain fog, and nausea. By the time I sat in the passenger seat of our car for the trip back home from the zoo, I started noticing that my hands were curling into fists and joining over my chest seemingly of their own volition, which I found amusingly peculiar at the time. My legs were also spontaneously tensing straight, with my feet turning inwards. I just relaxed as best as I could against the pain and tried my best to keep conscious control of my breathing while we were on the road.

I became increasingly unresponsive and subconscious on the road, and once home continued experiencing intensifying brain fog, an atrocious headache, an intermittent deep and paused breathing pattern, and still contorting in what I would later learn was called 'decorticate posture'. I felt simultaneously parched and not thirsty at all on top of the nausea. By 9:01 PM I took a deep breath, exhaled even deeper, then slowly dozed off.

I suddenly felt incredibly relieved, detached from all the physical sensations of my body, and fully awake again. In fact, I felt more awake than in normal waking life, experiencing effortless thinking, like my mind was finally unencumbered by anything and unconstrained. Examining my own thoughts, I found I could have multiple parallel trains of thought without any confusion, and also recall memories instantly with ease and complete accuracy, and hold them in my mind all at once. I was also somehow sharply aware that I was at a threshold of sorts, and that if I did not take decisive action immediately I would not be coming back. I immediately took advantage of this unusual clarity of mind to try and figure out what was happening to me by pulling back all the memories of emergency care, nursing tutorials, and medical presentations I had consulted in the previous months as part of trying to understand my condition better. By joining together my parallel reflections about this topic, thinking at what felt like lightspeed, I concluded that my blood was turning increasingly acid, which caused it to carry less and less oxygen while my body was cooling off, that it was carrying too much water for too few electrolytes, and that the water was seeping into my brain cells, swelling them dangerously. I reasoned in this strange flash of mindfulness what I needed to do: by ingesting baking soda to counteract the acidification, by forcing my breathing deeply to breathe out as much carbonic acid as CO2 as possible, by not taking in any fluid to not worsen the osmotic pressure from my blood into my cells, and by warming up to combat the self-reinforcing cycle I was trapped in. While in this state, I only had a distant awareness of how my body felt, without direct perception, like I was floating in a dark void with no dimension and no physicality. My mind was isolated, like I was a being of pure thought only, but with my attention directed towards my body like it was a memory rather than a thing.

As soon as I had formed a plan of action, all my body sensations returned at once, with the crippling headache, the nausea, the cold, the feeling like cotton in my ears, the unfocused eyesight, and the suffocation. I noticed that the clock on my computer now said 9:08 PM, and I realized I had not been breathing for nearly seven minutes right as I took a huge gasp of air in, loudly, which startled my wife so hard she almost fell from her seat (she mentioned soon after she had thought I had fallen asleep). I immediately followed the course of actions I had devised, taking two spoonfuls of baking soda (dry, which was almost enough to make me vomit but I resisted), wrapping myself in a blanket, and breathing as deeply and quickly as I could. After about twenty minutes I started feeling progressively better, with the headache receding at long last, and felt safe enough to sleep off the rest of the crisis.

Background Information:

Gender: Male

Date of NDE: 2016-04-10

NDE Elements:

At the time of your experience, was there an associated life-threatening event? Yes
Cerebral edema

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

Did you feel separated from your body? 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? After taking a last breath, while detached from my body and seemingly floating in the Void
My thoughts were unencumbered, effortless and instant, happening in parallel and simultaneously along multiple trains of thought. I could recall anything in full with accuracy, even detailed technical or medical information I had reviewed in the previous months.

At what time during the experience were you at your highest level of consciousness? More consciousness and alertness than normal

Were your thoughts speeded up? Incredibly fast

Did time seem to speed up or slow down? Everything seemed to be happening at once; or time stopped or lost all meaning
The Void felt timeless, everything was happening inside of the same moment of frozen time.

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 I did not have sight in this state

Please compare your hearing during the experience to your everyday hearing that you had immediately prior to the time of the experience I did not have hearing in this state.

Did you seem to be aware of things going on elsewhere? No

Did you pass into or through a tunnel? No

Did you see any beings in your experience? No

Did you encounter or become aware of any deceased beings? No

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

Did you see an unearthly light? No

Did you seem to enter another world? A clearly mystical or unearthly realm
I was apparently existing outside of existence in a dark Void, for a brief slice of frozen time.

What emotions did you feel during the experience? I was immensely relieved from the intense suffering I had been enduring for several hours at that point. I was also keenly aware that I needed to take action immediately or else I could not be going back.

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? No

Did you suddenly understand everything? No

Did scenes from your past come back? I remembered many past events
I was able to recall and relive through times where I was reading, listening and reviewing medical information - tutorials intended for nursing students and emergency care technicians, lessons for medical students, etc.

Did you reach a boundary or limiting physical structure? Uncertain
I was intensely aware that I was at a threshold in my existence, that if I did not take decisive action right in that moment I would not be coming back to life.

Did you come to a border or point of no return? I came to a definite conscious decision to return to life
I had made a promise to my wife that I would not go first if I could avoid it, after I was diagnosed with the condition.

God, Spiritual and Religion:

What was your religion prior to your experience? Other or several faiths
Discordian

Have your religious practices changed? Uncertain
I have moved away from materialism to post-physicalism as a result of researching NDEs from exploring the specifics of my experience.

What is your religion now? Other or several faiths
Discordian, with extra New Age flavors

Did your experience include features consistent with your earthly beliefs? Content that was entirely not consistent with the beliefs you had at the time of your experience
The experience conflicted in most ways with the naturalistic reductionism I was holding as the most plausible model of reality.

Did you have a change in your values and beliefs because of your experience? Yes
I stopped being as adverse to risk as before.

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

During your experience, did you gain information about an afterlife? Uncertain
I was existing as pure thought without a body while in a Void, this is suggestive of the possibility of existing beyond physical death.

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? No

What life changes occurred in your life after your experience? Large changes in my life

Have your relationships changed specifically because of your experience? No

After the NDE:

Was the experience difficult to express in words? Yes
There are no words that properly fit the timeless, effortless thinking that I experienced while in the Void.

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 more accurately than other life events that occurred around the time of the experience
I can pretty much replay in perfect detail the whole intense episode from when I realized I had not been breathing for a long while, in a flash of mindfulness and lightning-fast parallel thinking. I know when it happened and the progression of the events throughout the day from the timestamps on the photos I was taking at the zoo, and the clock on my computer once I was back home.

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

Have you ever shared this experience with others? Yes
I stumbled upon an NDE report which described the same sort of effortless lightning-fast parallel thinking I had experienced. As a result I evaluated my experience against NDE clinical assessment tools and discovered it probably qualified as an NDE. I joined a support/discussion group about NDEs in 2021, five years after the event.

Did you have any knowledge of near death experience (NDE) prior to your experience? Yes
At the time I thought NDEs were a pre-mortem experience of walking through a tunnel towards a pleasant light, which seemed entirely unrelated to what I had experienced.

What did you believe about the reality of your experience shortly (days to weeks) after it happened? Experience was definitely real
The experience had clearly happened due to all the immediate evidence for it and the fact I survived the episode. Further research into the medical aspects of the incident showed I had been dying of cerebral edema due to the osmotic swelling of my brain from the metabolic acidosis caused by the combination of chronic hyponatremia and extensive rehydration I had done during the hot day at the zoo.

What do you believe about the reality of your experience now? Experience was definitely real
The evidence still stands to this day.

At any time in your life, has anything ever reproduced any part of the experience? Yes
I experienced the same Void and effortless lightning-fast thinking in previous similar circumstances, in 1992 from a freak gymnastics accident where I hit my head hard on the ground, and from similar medical complications (hypovolemic acidosis) that happened in 2012.

Did the questions asked and information that you provided accurately and comprehensively describe your experience? Yes