Death and resurrection - First Person - Column

Humanist, Nov-Dec, 2002 by James VanOosting

I've only died twice. This happened six ears ago when I was forty-five--and both times it was painless. I was in San Diego, California, visiting a coauthor on the morning of September 11, 1996, when I awoke with the beginnings of a migraine. Mentioning this to my hostess at breakfast, she recommended I try an extra-strength Motrin before resorting to my usual prescription antidote. I swallowed one. My colleague and I drove off to Kinko's to copy some manuscript pages and enroute back to her house I commented, "My hands feel itchy." Glancing over at me in the passenger seat she said, "Your hands must be way more than itchy. Just look at them." They'd swollen to the size of catcher's mitts. I never knew skin had so much give.

No more than twenty seconds passed between the onset of feeling itchy and my declaring, "I can't breathe." That was the last thing I remember. The sensation of not being able to breathe was uncomfortable, but I wouldn't describe it as painful. The moment passed quickly, as did my consciousness.

I learned the details of what later occurred from my colleague and the physicians and workers in the hospital emergency room. I become a mere character while they narrate for the next part of this story.

My colleague executed a 180-degree turn and drove in excess of 100 miles per hour on the shoulder of the freeway--against traffic--and then pulled a U-turn up an off-ramp to the nearest hospital. There, a trauma team of seven doctors, nurses, and technicians, currently idle, rushed to the car at the entrance of the ER. They opened the passenger door, unclasped the seat belt holding me upright, and lifted me onto a gurney.

My heart stopped beating and physicians referred to me as having died. They then did that electrical thing to the heart that you see on TV--defibrillating, I think it's called--as well as some other medical stuff and eventually, about two hours later, I regained consciousness. I was put in a private area in the ER and hooked up to lots of machinery. They had "cut off" my clothes--and apparently I soiled myself, which is one of the truly embarrassing things about dying.

Over the next few hours I became conscious in a twilight state and grasped the gist of what had happened to me (it's called anaphylactic shock), what was happening to me now (the unidentified, toxic allergen was continuing to attack), and what was likely to happen to me soon (I was expected to die again, this time for keeps). All the doctors were excited, and I received their rapt attention. From a physician's point of view, anaphylaxis is an intriguing phenomenon. It's about the only situation in which a perfectly healthy person's organs all shut down simultaneously. Furthermore, it's unusual for a victim to survive one of these deals.

I'm told I was unable to speak while in the ER, although I distinctly recall trying to apologize for making a mess. I don't remember being transferred to the intensive care unit, which happened sometime in the late afternoon. But I do recall coming fully awake while there.

My entire body was swollen with medical paraphernalia attached to my arms, chest, and face that restricted my movement. Otherwise I was in no pain. I'd always wondered what it felt like to be a patient in ICU. I looked around at the bodies lying in other beds and hypothesized what ailed each of them. I met allergists and infectious disease specialists and answered all their questions. They were fighting the clock to find out what was attacking my body and, I gathered, they were losing. Their greatest suspicion focused on a herbicide applied to a lawn I had walked across that morning.

I found laying in the ICU to be restful and contemplative. I determined I was happy, more or less, with the forty-five years I'd been given. I would have liked to have seen my boys--then twenty and thirteen--grow to adulthood, but I could already detect the pattern of their development, and I was pleased. I thought I had some more writing in me--better stuff than I'd yet written--but I was grateful for the length of time I'd been allowed to work as a professional writer. All in all, if the angel of death wanted to swoop into San Diego's Alvarado Hospital and fly me away, that was okay. (I know this sounds flippant, but honestly it's the way I felt. No complaints. Ready to go. Content in the moment.)

About 2:00 AM on September 12, 1996, my heart stopped beating again. First I heard the steady beep, beep, beep of the heart monitor go silent. Then I glanced over at its visual readout and saw the spiky line go flat. This couldn't be good news. I heard voices shouting, "Code Blue! Code Blue!" I saw doctors and nurses running toward my bed. All of this took only a second--maybe a fraction of a second--between the moment my heart stopped pumping blood and the time oxygen was cut off to my brain. I remember thinking, "Damn it. I'm going to die as a TV cliche. I've seen this scene a hundred times." Then, just before losing consciousness, I was amused by the view I had of the situation and said to myself, "But this `camera angle' is cool. I don't remember ever seeing a code blue with the lens shooting directly from the patient's eyes."