Commentary thread for tim's "NDE's" thread

Laird, please could you transfer these three posts back to the thread 155 160 234 ? I would think they belong there but if you don't agree, that's okay. Cheers !

[Laird]

Laird, please could you transfer these three posts back to the thread 155 160 234 ? I would think they belong there but if you don't agree, that's okay. Cheers !

Done!

Looking through an NDE forum on Facebook recently, I was fortunate to spot this very interesting and quirky account, witnessed and reported by registered nurse and midwife, Dee Holme Werner, from South Africa.

(I don't have any social media accounts but I joined (temporarily) so that I could ask Dee a little more about it. She very kindly responded in detail)

Dee's initial post on Facebook :

In Nursing School we had to do an operating theatre rotation. I think I was third year by then. A patient died on the table and was successfully resuscitated. Later I went to see how he was doing in the ward. As I walked in he said, "You are the nurse who worked that bag!"

I had assisted the anaesthetist for a very short time 'bagging' (ambu bag) the patient while the anaesthetist prepared to extubate and reintubate the patient. I don't recall what the problem was with the existing tube but it had to be replaced. The patient said he was floating around near the ceiling. He said he saw each detail of the room, adjacent rooms and corridor.

He related lots of details he could not have known about (the surgeon had his own (particular) theatre boots, identified by a funny face drawn on the toes using coloured koki pens (marker); all the intravenous bags were hanging up with the front facing forward but the unit of blood was back to front; the ampoules on the anaesthetist’s table were all in a row but not in size order and not in alphabetical order; the surgeon told a golfing joke during the early part of the surgery; there were other details).

What interested me was his visual memories. We all know about hearing being the last sense to go but how do you explain the things he saw?

And her additional response :

To answer your questions:

1. When did this occur ?

I was at Nursing School from 1967 to about 1972 and this occurred during my operating theatre rotation in my third year.  So the year was probably 1970. 

2. Please could you give as much detail as possible ?

Some of them were quite personal.  The anaesthetist had left the bedside of the patient after the patient had been re-intubated and stabilised.  Everything was going okay.  The anaesthetist asked me to stand by.  I was only a student at the time and would have called him back very quickly if I or anyone else on the team had been worried.  The patient said the anaesthetist went to the loo. I didn’t check that out with the anaesthetist, I didn’t ask him or ever follow that up.  It isn’t the type of information I would put on Facebook anyway.
 
3. How many other medical staff were witnesses to this patient’s account ?

The first person to get the information was the surgeon. Apparently the patient asked the surgeon about his boots.  The surgeon came across me in the tea room and asked if I recalled any conversation about his boots. He asked if anyone had talked about the little face on his boots.  The face was in koki pens of different colours - perhaps placed there by a paediatric patient or the surgeon’s own children? 

I said I didn’t remember talking about the boots and why did he ask.  Apparently the patient had said to the surgeon when he saw the patient later in the ward, "Oh doctor, I like your boots."  This puzzled the surgeon as there is no way the patient could have seen the boots.  The patient was already anaesthetised before the surgeon walked to the table side from the scrub room.  The surgeon’s point was how could an anaesthetised patent be aware of information dependent upon visual input while he was unconscious.  We all know about hearing being the last sense to go and would have accepted the patient knowing about the boots if the topic had been discussed in his presence. 

I tended to talk about these things.  I cannot remember when my interest in mysticism began but it seems it has always been with me and being a nurse I had a lot of exposure to things, including accounts of NDEs.  I spoke to the other girls in my group.  It was just one of those stories we nurses shared at the meal table.  A story would take centre stage for a bit and then the spotlight would move to another. The span of stories reached wide. 

I mentioned to the surgeon the way the patient had greeted me when I walked into his room, "Ah! You are the nurse who …" and asked him what he thought of the patient’s account.  The surgeon said he’s a surgeon and a scientist and doesn’t know why patients say these things or have these experiences but he did find some of the details odd. 

The other visual perception the patient had was the ampoules on the tray.  He commented they were not arranged alphabetically or in size order.  Of course they wouldn’t be, because they were arranged in order of administration but again this was a visual experience of the patient, not auditory. 

I wish I had followed up more on that patient but hospital life has to remain on the hop to get everything done and one interesting thing follows another.
 
I trained at Greys Hospital in Pietermaritzburg in South Africa.  The operating theatres were in the new block on the first floor.  Greys has subsequently moved to much bigger premises.  There are other experiences patients have related to me or things I have experienced myself.  50 years as a Registered Nurse and Midwife! 

I asked Dee this in addition:

Just a couple of questions. When you were "bagging" the patient, presumably he was completely unconscious, is that correct? Otherwise of course, you wouldn't have been surprised at his description, I guess. 

And can you remember how the patient described floating around the room ? Did he just say something like "Hey, nurse, during my operation I was floating around above you and could see everything, including the corridor outside the room etc..." Did he express surprise at such an out of the ordinary experience ?

Did you get the impression that he thought you believed him ? I don't suppose he described anything about in what "form" he felt he was in when he was up there?

Dee Holme Werner:

The patient was completely anaesthetised while being bagged.  The bag is an ambu bag.  It is applied to the patient’s nose and mouth (good fit) then squeezed according to the volume and rate suitable for the patient.  This puts air into the patient’s lungs. The patient has a passive expiration and the next squeeze is done to re-inflate the lungs.
 
The patient showed no interest in being believed or not believed, it didn’t come into his account at all.  He described 'floating around the ceiling' in a way I would describe what I had for breakfast.  It happened and he was telling me about it.
 
I got the impression he was delivering an account of an experience he had gone through that surprised him for its unusualness.  He was figuring out what it meant.  The possibility that I would not believe him didn’t come into it. 
He didn’t say anything about the form he was in except that he was able to float at will, could see and hear everything and felt no attachment to the body on the operating table. 

If this patient’s account is of interest to readers that is great.

Many thanks to Dee Holme Werner !

Very interesting thanks Tim.

Very interesting thanks Tim.

Thanks, Obiwan !

Marcial Reyes says he "met death" (experienced dying) whist battling covid 19. Not much detail revealed but I think it's worth taking note that at least our dead descendants (as always) seem to be 'there' to help us if the worst comes to the worst. 

https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2020/04/...ronavirus/

The famous case of Maria's shoe has become something of a euphemism (amongst sceptics) for a good story that never really happened the way it was presented.

Typically, some even suggested that the shoe never actually existed, simply because Kimberley Sharp couldn't produce it (as if that would have made any difference) when asked (she'd actually lost it)

This video features several NDE's, with comments from Melvin Morse and Peter Fenwick amongst others and the actual "Maria's shoe".  

From Surviving death by Leslie Kean :

The story has not changed an iota since day one, even though over the course of time, I forgot about a Nike Logo on the shoe. Years later I came across a filmed re-enactment of the event shown on television using the actual tennis shoe. Sceptics have claimed that the shoe never existed but in fact we do have this filmed documentation.

The film shows me as much younger in very dated clothes, thus belying the suggestion that this was a recently filmed piece.

The story of the shoe on the ledge has become well known. It spread to other hospitals, then to other cities and states, primarily by nurses who invited me to their locations and conferences to speak about it. Absolutely nobody expressed anything else but wonder and feelings of inspiration in response, at least to me. 

Many years later, the sceptics came on board with their opinions, but they were all people with a prior agenda and none were associated with the case. I had no problem addressing their objections and laying them to rest. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XyAQQfuL1Q The shoe can be seen at 36.20.

[Ninshub]

Some members of the forum will be familiar with David Ditchfield's NDE report which I posted back in 2018.

He'll be on Coast to Coast this Wednesday, May 6:
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2020-05-06-show/

His book Shine On will be out June 26 (Amazon says July 1st).

In 1968, Nicole Dron nearly died from a haemorrhage (that occurred after a hysterectomy) and had a profound near death experience. This was seven years before Raymond Moody had even published his ground breaking book, Life after Life and coined the now well known phrase. I contacted Nicole and her husband Michel and they very kindly agreed to let me reproduce it here on Psience quest.

This translation has been painstakingly carried out by fine tuning the very crude google translation. French does not convert into English and vice versa, at all well. Appropriate synonyms and common sense have to be applied, when it's obvious that a particular word or sentence is clearly not what the author would have intended.

However, I'm confident it's a pretty accurate English representation. Nicole has specifically requested that she is not contacted, just to add. I may follow this up with the remaining part of the story if I can get it right, that is.

Nicole Dron was born in 1941 in Aisne, France She was one of the first "experiencers" to agree to speak publicly about her experience.  Through lectures and radio and television programs, she has contributed greatly to the recognition of EMI's (Near Death Experiences) in the general public as well as among interested researchers and scientists.  For more than twenty years (thirty years ago now), Nicole Dron has tirelessly travelled all over France and other French-speaking countries in order to assist all those (she believes) her story can help.

An experience on the frontier of death by Nicole Dron
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I saw unemployment spread over the whole earth, terrible weather, a plague that ravaged the earth, volcanic eruptions, and many other catastrophes.  But I don't want to be too negative.  I know too well (now) the power of thought and I know that these events will only happen if we continue to ignore our consciences by flouting the laws of love.
.

Overall this is a very impressive NDE account. But I want to point out that in common with many others and many mediumistic psychic channelings, there is the untenable New Age type of thinking that claims that natural disasters like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tornadoes and hurricanes (and even plagues which may be of entirely natural origin) are caused by humans' negativity and not "following the laws of love". This kind of thinking is erroneous because these disasters are in reality due to vast and powerful natural phenomena like (in the case of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions) the titanic forces and heat energies building up in millions of tons of rock miles deep in the Earth. These forces are totally out of the control of human beings.

I think this points out that a portion of the information coming through NDEs is probably generated by human imagination fueled by the "Zeitgeist". Of course other parts of these accounts are true descriptions of actual life-changing experiences beyond death. I guess it's complicated.

Overall this is a very impressive NDE account. But I want to point out that in common with many others and many mediumistic psychic channelings, there is the untenable New Age type of thinking that claims that natural disasters like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tornadoes and hurricanes (and even plagues which may be of entirely natural origin) are caused by humans' negativity and not "following the laws of love". This kind of thinking is erroneous because these disasters are in reality due to vast and powerful natural phenomena like (in the case of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions) the titanic forces and heat energies building up in millions of tons of rock miles deep in the Earth. These forces are totally out of the control of human beings.

I think this points out that a portion of the information coming through NDEs is probably generated by human imagination fueled by the "Zeitgeist". Of course other parts of these accounts are true descriptions of actual life-changing experiences beyond death. I guess it's complicated.

Fair comment ! Just to point out though, Nicole's account was before Moody's book and the whole NDE phenomenon/bandwagon. You could argue that unemployment, the weather and "a plague" could/would be caused by human beings behaving badly but not volcanic eruptions, I agree.

Personally, I doubt if she actually meant to mean that volcanic eruptions were caused by us but I'd have to ask her (The French are quite effusive and evocative by nature). There's also the possibility that in translating it, I've changed what she wanted to say slightly. 

Personally I'm a stickler for detail, I like everything to make plausible sense (within this particular context, NDE's in general) if at all possible, but as you say, some human imagination/filtering must creep in sometimes. That's why it's the (checkable) veridical part of NDE's that really interest me, whatever they see beyond the tunnel we're never going to know for certain, until we get there ourselves.

[Obiwan's was in response to this post in the NDE's thread --Laird]

Thanks for those Tim. I enjoyed reading them.