One of the Best Documented NDEs: The Case of Pamela Reynolds

Pamela Reynolds has been mentioned here on ATS a few times, but I thought she deserved a full thread for discussion. Pam Reynolds is often held up as most significant and well-documented near-death experience to date.


Here is her story:


For those that would prefer to read her story, here it is. This is from All Things Considered on NPR. You can also read the entire article or listen to the radio story by following this link

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An MRI revealed an aneurysm on her brain stem. It was already leaking, a ticking time bomb. Her doctor in Atlanta said her best hope was a young brain surgeon at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Arizona named Robert Spetzler.

"The aneurysm was very large, which meant the risk of rupture was also very large," Spetzler says. "And it was in a location where the only way to really give her the very best odds of fixing it required what we call 'cardiac standstill.' "

It was a daring operation: Chilling her body, draining the blood out of her head like oil from a car engine, snipping the aneurysm and then bringing her back from the edge of death.

"She is as deeply comatose as you can be and still be alive," Spetzler observes.

When the operation began, the surgeons taped shut Reynolds' eyes and put molded speakers in her ears. The ear speakers, which made clicking sounds as loud as a jet plane taking off, allowed the surgeons to measure her brain stem activity and let them know when they could drain her blood.

"I was lying there on the gurney minding my own business, seriously unconscious, when I started to hear a noise," Reynolds recalls. "It was a natural D, and as the sound continued — I don't know how to explain this, other than to go ahead and say it — I popped up out the top of my head."

She says she found herself looking down at the operating table. She says she could see 20 people around the table and hear what sounded like a dentist's drill. She looked at the instrument in the surgeon's hand.

"It was an odd-looking thing," she says. "It looked like the handle on my electric toothbrush."

Reynolds observed the Midas Rex bone saw the surgeons used to cut open her head, the drill bits, and the case, which looked like the one where her father kept his socket wrenches. Then she noticed a surgeon at her left groin.

"I heard a female voice say, 'Her arteries are too small.' And Dr. Spetzler — I think it was him — said, 'Use the other side,' " Reynolds says.

Soon after, the surgeons began to lower her body temperature to 60 degrees. It was about that time that Reynolds believes she noticed a tunnel and bright light. She eventually flat-lined completely, and the surgeons drained the blood out of her head.

During her near-death experience, she says she chatted with her dead grandmother and uncle, who escorted her back to the operating room. She says as they looked down on her body, she could hear the Eagles' song "Hotel California" playing in the operating room as the doctors restarted her heart. She says her body looked like a train wreck, and she said she didn't want to return.

"My uncle pushed me," she says, laughing. "And when I hit the body, the line in the song was, 'You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.' And I opened my eyes and I said, 'You know, that is really insensitive!' "

A Vision That Matches The Record

Afterwards, Reynolds assumed she had been hallucinating. But a year later, she mentioned the details to her neurosurgeon. Spetzler says her account matched his memory.

"From a scientific perspective," he says, "I have absolutely no explanation about how it could have happened."

Spetzler did not check out all the details, but Michael Sabom did. Sabom is a cardiologist in Atlanta who was researching near-death experiences.

"With Pam's permission, they sent me her records from the surgery," he says. "And long story short, what she said happened to her is actually what Spetzler did with her out in Arizona."

According to the records, there were 20 doctors in the room. There was a conversation about the veins in her left leg. She was defibrillated. They were playing "Hotel California." How about that bone saw? Sabom got a photo from the manufacturer — and it does look like an electric toothbrush.

How, Sabom wonders, could she know these things?

"She could not have heard [it], because of what they did to her ears," he says. "In addition, both of her eyes were taped shut, so she couldn't open her eyes and see what was going on. So her physical sensory perception was off the table."'

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source: www.npr.org...

There has been criticism of this NDE, most notably from anesthesiologist and atheist G.M. Woerlee.

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"That's preposterous, says anesthesiologist Gerald Woerlee.

"This report provides absolutely no evidence for survival of any sort of consciousness outside the body during near-death experiences or any other such experiences," he says.

Woerlee, an Australian researcher and near-death experience debunker who has investigated Reynolds' case, says what happened to her is easy to explain. He says when they cut into her head, she was jolted into consciousness. At that point, they had not yet drained blood from her brain. He believes she could hear — despite the clicking earplugs.

"There are various explanations," Woerlee says. "One: that the earphones or plugs were not that tightly fitting. Two: It could have been that it was due to sound transmission through the operating table itself."

So Reynolds could have heard conversations. As for seeing the Midas Rex bone saw, he says, she recognized a sound from her childhood.

"She made a picture in her mind of a machine or a device which was very similar to what she was familiar with — a dental drill," Woerlee says.

Woerlee says Reynolds experienced anesthesia awareness, in which a person is conscious but can't move. He figures back in 1991, that happened in 1 out of every 2,000 operations. "

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source: www.npr.org...


What are your thoughts on this case?

reply to post by VegHead


Does being "Documented" add credibility?

I am interested in knowing as I myself have had an NDE where I saw things and had experiences.

Should I get that documented so that I am Not perceived as Loony when I tell people of the experience?

It is my understanding that we are not our bodies, rather the human body is just a vehicle which is driven around by what we actually are, that being a "soul" for lack of a better word. I'm not a religious person, but I do believe in the non-physicality of our real selves. When the body fails, we leave it and go somewhere else.

Sorry, but I'll take the word of the patient over the gas sniffing
anesthesiologist any day.

Originally posted by ShadellacZumbrum
reply to post by VegHead

 

Does being "Documented" add credibility?

I am interested in knowing as I myself have had an NDE where I saw things and had experiences.

Should I get that documented so that I am Not perceived as Loony when I tell people of the experience?

"Documented" as in it had an unusual amount of medical monitoring going on throughout the NDE, also the verifiable things she saw and heard during her experience.

The veracity of her NDE has little bearing on the veracity of your NDE. Most NDEs, maybe like yours, are most valid and meaningful to the individual that experiences it. I'd love to hear your NDE experience, but I understand and respect any hesitation to share it. It can be very difficult to allow something so profound to be picked apart by strangers... You will be seen as a loony by some no matter how much "documentation" you have!

Originally posted by Urantia1111
It is my understanding that we are not our bodies, rather the human body is just a vehicle which is driven around by what we actually are, that being a "soul" for lack of a better word. I'm not a religious person, but I do believe in the non-physicality of our real selves. When the body fails, we leave it and go somewhere else.

Word for word lad. I believe the same.

reply to post by VegHead


I believe her and I don't usually believe anyone.