Near death....anybody??

typically an adult will have few memories of when he was four, but some impressions last a lifetime......
As is the same with me, I tried to suck a piece of candy out of it's wrapper with my mouth.(huh kids, whatta you gonna do) It got stuck in my throat and i remember the complete panic that than took place.....

My mother was crying for my dad to do something while he was holding me up-side-down and banging me against the refrigerator door....
As this did not seem to help any my dad put me back upright and started banging on my back like he was gonna smash right through it.

All the while this was happening i remember being more of an observer of what was going on in that room Seconds seemed look like an eternity but the funny thing is i was the only one not in panic.(still don't know why..)

Give or take 3 minutes later my dad was shouting out loud he couldn't get it out and "we're loosing him". I know my body by now had absolutly no muscle tension anymore in it and to my dad it must have seem like he was holding a ragdoll.

Now i have always been good at holding my breath and as to today (smoking a pack of cigarettes a day) i can still easely stay under water for 2,5 minutes but being four years old my lungs were half the size they are today.

I was still well aware of my surroundings and the fact my bodie was shutting down. i can still remember how i could not control the fact that my eyes were shutting by itself while i know they were open....it was like i was looking in a tunnel that semed to get darker and darker( no there was no light...just darkness)

At this point i felt this amazing feeling of peace and serenity. I was not worried about my phisical condition. The voices in the background were blurring out more and more and i didn't mind. It really was the most peacefull moment i had ever exerienced.

What happend next i only know because i was told or because i can semi-remember but my mom managed to jam her finger down my throat and while ripping the inside of my throat open with her fingernails she got the piece of candy out. CPR and all and a few hours laters a woke in the hospital not remembering how i got there.....

Now ,27 years later , i can still close my eyes at any moment and recall the exeact same feeling i got when choking on that piece of candy. But here's the weird part and here's were my question comes in :

I have absolutly no problem with death. Not for myself but also not for my social enviroment. (Don't get me wrong, i'm not running around in the weekend carrying a chainsaw) I could never kill anything that lives ,even ants, spiders and other little bugs can count on me for not harming them but when somebody in my surrounding dies of natural causes or accident i have never cried or felt sad.

It's almost as if i don't care somebody died. I tried to force myself to care but i do not have a problem with people dying. Nore do i have a problem with dying myself. I hear people being affraid to die but i cannot understand this emotion. It's also not if i have nothing to live for ,don't get me wrong, i love life and i love people, i love everything in an extreme way. I can sometimes stand amazed looking at the sky or some other every day think and look at it for 30 minutes thinking how beautifull the simple things are in life and nature.

Does anybody have the same experience...do you also seem to appreciate small and semingly insignificant every day thinks but are not concerned with death???

I'd love to hear about it....

Maybe it's just time to see a shrink and get some clossure.....



Edit : oh boy this thread is just infested with typos...please do not pay any regard to 'm because i'm not gonna correct it all.......

[edit on 25/11/2008 by operation mindcrime]

That is an intense memory! I had the same experience when I had a reaction to penicillin. The dark closing tunnel is when you are losing consciousness, and then that "peaceful feeling" is exactly what I felt, too. When I was in the ER they gave me a shot of epinephrine (I think) to stop my throat from closing. I actually thought for many years that they had used those paddles to start my heart again. When I had regained consciousness there was someone standing nearby with the paddles ready, and I wasn't rational anyway, so that memory stuck with me. Once I read my medical records years later I understood what had actually happened. I recall that falling feeling so well- it is really nice. If I were to fall in a conscious state from a height it would be terrifying, but this was not.

I can't say that I am more accepting of death from my experience, however. I get very emotional when people or pets die- even people who are on the TV and total strangers. I don't think I would be afraid of death if I didn't have a child, though. I just don't want to leave her without her mom. I don't fear death just because it is death, if that makes sense.

I have two distinct memories. The first was when I was having surgery when I was a teenager. My last conscious memory was the anesthesiologist to my left saying, "you will be fine" and then the next thing I remember was I was looking down floating above the room. I remember seeing the nurse walk around the table with my body on it and the dr. and anesthesiologist standing around me. I remember feeling indifferent to what I was seeing. As if I had no attachment to what was going on.That is the only memory I have of that incident.

The next one was not so nice.

I was in a very bad relationship in my early 20's. We had a fight and he was choking me on my bed. I just remember thinking,"my god?! this is it! I'm gonna die like this?!" next thing I remember is slowly the light in the room seemed to "squeeze out" from my eyes and like a tunnel closing in it went from light to black. Then I remember feeling like I was buried in black darkness as if I were in a cave. I remember hearing a distinct drip of water and feeling like I was surrounded by a cavern of rock. My feeling was that of numbness. I felt nothing. If I were conscious I would have felt very clausterphobic, but I didn't. I just remember feeling nothing. Indifference, again.
Needless to say, I did come "back", but I came back convulsing as if I was having a seizure. That is all I would like to share about that one.

Both those incidents feel like yesterday to me. As I typed about them, I could still relive and see what I felt and saw. I used to have a great fear of death but I no longer do.

i have never had any near death experiences and i am very scared of my own death but when people around me die i feel no emotion. i didn't even feel anything when my father died.

i hope i get that peaceful feeling when it is my time to go.

I have a few too many, here is one. If I posted them all it would just be great for me-in an off my chest sort of way, but too annoying for anyone else.

I knew too much. That's my hindsight.

I was walked through a field and asked to stay back. I heard a loud pop and the grasses rustled some ways off my right. Then a pop and something went in front of my eyes. The world seemed to stop, to feel hollow, and desolate. That is my near death experience of the moment.
I knew, had it hit me, whatever it was, by it's velocity, it would have gone through my head, and I would be dead.

My ears rang. I couldn't move. I couldn't even really identify it-because of it's context. I looked to the source and there were 2 men up on the hill with a rifle, firing at me. My partner had her nose up in the air and was walking 15 or 20 feet forward staring strait forward. She didn't even turn her head. (I was in the 3rd or 5th grade-I really havent' sat back to remember all the surrounding circumstances enough to pinpoint which horrid year of all the horrid years it was), anyways my partner, likely paid by my 'mom' just walked on hypnotized or despondant. Another miss.

I could see them up there (this was in an undeveloped lot in the residential portion of the city) An older and a younger white man. Men. The older one rushedly instructing the 18 or 20 year old to 'hurry'. The rifle was pump action, but it was no beebee. They missed my head (which appeared to be their target) no less than 5 times.

I called up to her and said we should run, she said we no, we should walk, they won't see us if we walk-like a bad rerun of the Harpee scene of The last Unicorn. "Walk, don't run, you'll get it's attention if you run".
The men had been trying rapidly to pump up their gun-and I knew guns from the family. DC sniper anyone? My unfortunate circumstances had inadvertantly involved a very sinister Bullseye shooting center crowd. That is how bad my life is. Though I never had my head above water enough to think about it.

So I was watching their actions and the younger one only got about 7 pumps into the next shot which would hit me in the seam of my calf and take me down, charlie horsed. The round, galvanized and larger than a peanut reflected a few feet away and I grabbed it up as I ignored the witch and went forward on the trail. Then, she finally helped me after some arguement. My leg wouldn't hold me at that moment and for the next hours. She shouldered me and I hopped out. There were no more shots.

I didn't understand why I couldn't just take charge and run. But I couldn't. Having been through it-now I can- heh. :w:
Too trained to listen to the 'older' person-and she was older. :w:

I took the bullet home to 'mom', and didn't call the police, because the last time I called the police over-I don't remember it was either the home invasion with the gun or the van with the men trying to pull me in, I think the first, because of the time spatiality of the local child murders; anyway, she took the bullet and gave me a sinister smile, and said, "It never happened....". 911 had told me not to call them on a prior instance-which I now know was because of some 'story' they were told about what a 'storyteller' I was.

Sad really. There is my submission to your near death query.
Bullet went by my eyes. No body cared.
:w:

Just had a seizure friday at my boyfriend's house. Convinced him not to say anything about it to anyone. Yesterday I had one at a football game. Not so much fun with all those people staring at you...so you're asking how this is a near death experience? No one knows what's wrong with me. Yet, I keep having seizures and my muscles are deteriorating. That's too close for me.

First off, thanks everybody for sharing...i hope you're all well and have given your experience a place in your life.

I'm by no means an expert or even somebody with knowledge about neardeath. I was just interested in hearing other peoples stories.
Since i was only four years old when this happend to me i don't know if this has changed my person in any way.

As i said i somehow don't seem to care about death, my own or anybody elses. This is not because i don't value life but because i have a deep believe that it could end any moment and the things we think are important really aren't.
This is not just talking sunshine but i wake up every morning happy. I can stand in the rain and when all are running for shelter i stay and enjoy the feeling of the rain hitting my face. I never gave a damn about money and when a bill collector rings my door i'm the last person to stress. I don't think it's important enough to worry about.... The funny thing about this view of life is that everything in my life seems to work itself out. Things i should be worried about kinda work themselfs out without my action.
I get the remark often that i'm a lucky b*stard because i always get everything and don't have to do anything for it.
But all things i get are things i never asked or wished for. I don't need it and somehow i wind up getting it while people around me are struggling to get what they want. And when you ask them if they are enjoying life and if they could die happy right now, the answer is allways :" Heck no, i'm working to hard to achief this or that...i still wanna do this or that...."

I don't have that...i could die right now and have no regrets. Lots of things i haven't done but don't see it as something i have to do before i go. Along as yesterday was a good day then i'm ready to go.....

I'm starting to believe that the less you worry about things the more actually happens. The most important thing and the only rule i live by is :" always give more than you take!!"

In some weird way i never accept any thing from somebody when i might need it. But when people ask for my help i will go to great lengths to help them out. Destructional lenghts actully cause sometimes i promiss so much people that i would help them that there isn't even time for me to sleep or i will lend money when i can't even miss it myself....

Can anybody relate to this way of life and confirm that when you give more than you take somehow things always seem to work out??

Ps: sorry for the lenghty post and the typos but i'm just curious about other people's experiences in this subject and english isn't my native language....

oh and psps: i think there is no def. definition for near death. The only thing i'm going by is the experience of always being in control over most of the thinks in your life and when you are dying the first few moment are complete panic and fear but when you realise you can't do anything about you situation you sort of let go and come to terms that you are going to die.....that moment ,the moment you let go and actually don't fear death anymore. That for me is an near death exprience. But i can also believe people not coming to terms with that and it being a struggle to the bitter end........