November 18, 2022. The day that changed me.

I barely slept the night before. There were a million things going through my mind. I couldn’t put my finger on it then, but something just didn’t feel right. I wasn’t sure if it was because of my nerves, maybe I was just scared? But looking back now I should have trusted my intuition.

November 18th, I was all set for brain surgery to remove my brain tumor. I arrived at the hospital a little bit early (Surgery was at 11 am I arrived at 9am) so I could gather my thoughts and try to clear my head. As you can imagine I was very nervous.

I went to the registration department to fill out my forms to be admitted for surgery and went up to the surgery wing of the hospital. I wanted my husband to be able to come back with me in the waiting room because I was nervous but they would not allow it. I had to go alone. The doctor was running late from his previous surgery so I had to wait even longer. It seemed like it took hours but in all reality I’m sure the wait was not that long and being In my head about the surgery made it seem even longer.

Finally at 12pm they are ready for me and start to wheel me down to the OR. We go down this very long, very cold hallway. I remember thinking man, I’m fricken freezing and I don’t remember the hallways being this long. I have had surgery before but I guess I never really paid much attention to my surroundings before. But this time felt different. It felt unusual and I paid attention to everything around me. We get in the operating room and the nurses are talking to me, going over the basics and verifying me and my hospital bracelet. I remember the nurses being exceptionally nice which was a great comfort being as I was very nervous to do this surgery. It’s about 1pm now.

The Anesthesiologist came in to talk to me and get ready to be put under. I remember him saying count to 10 and I think I got to 3 before I was out. According to my records surgery started at 3pm. Reading that back from my hospital records that seemed seemed kind of strange to me. What was happening during the time I was just sleeping and waiting? The next thing that I remember is being above my body on the ceiling of the operating room. This freaked me out a little bit because I kept thinking to my self how am I here if I’m there. I watched as utter chaos broke loose in the O.R. Nurses running around the doctor yelling to call someone and I just watched.

I remember not really caring. Like I know that’s me but I didn’t feel like I had any connection to that person/body lying there. I wasn’t worried, afraid or bothered. I saw them working on me trying to stop the bleeding. I saw that the stitches were not working. They couldn’t stop the bleeding. See, As soon as the surgery started, like not even 5 minutes into it, the doctor nicked my Left cervical – vertebral artery and I was bleeding out. In total I lost 3 liter’s of blood.

With in seconds, I was in another place. It was dark but not scary. It was actually very warm and beautiful. There were a ton of stars. Purple, pink, black and silver stars. It was the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. There was so much energy in each star. It was like I could feel them. Like I had become them. I know what this sounds like. That’s why it took me so long to tell my story. Well, at least one of the reasons.

So I’m there in this place, a place I don’t know, never been before, just floating around in it. Almost absorbing it. I could feel there was something else on the other side of where I was. Something even prettier. Even better. And I wanted to go. I wanted to see what it was. But right as I thought it I felt a presence with me. It was my grandmother.

My grandmother passed many, many years ago which left a huge hole in my heart. I was very close to her. That loss was very hard. But here she is! Being with her felt like a warm hug. We talked but not with our mouths. We talked in our heads, in our thoughts.

She told me I had to be strong and fight. And that I couldn’t stay because it wasn’t my time. I had to go back. I rarely won an argument with her when she was a live. She was very persistent and persuasive. I knew I wouldn’t win this one either but in that place and in that time, all I wanted was to stay there with her.

Now keep in mind, I’m a wife, a mom, and a grandma. In my human body my first and only thought would have been about my family and getting back to them. They always come first to me no matter what. But the strange thing is that in this place and time, there was no sadness, no worries and no fear. It was just unconditional love and peace and happiness. I had no connection to the other world anymore.

I told her I wanted to stay, but she was very very adamant that I couldn’t stay. I had things that I still needed to do here, and I had to be strong and fight. And no sooner than her telling me no I was sucked right out of that beautiful place. The only way I can describe how it felt was like sucking a thick milkshake through a tiny straw. It happened so fast and before I knew it I was slammed right back into my body.

Now, I’ve never had an experience like this before so I don’t know how it’s supposed to feel, but let me tell you it’s not pleasant. It actually hurt. I know the exact moment I went back into my body too because I was heavily sedated to let my brain heal and out of no where I woke up. I still had the breathing tube down my throat and just woke up out of a heavy sedation. I was freaking out. I couldn’t swallow with that tube in my mouth, I couldn’t talk and I felt like I couldn’t breathe even though that was the whole purpose for the breathing tube. 2 of my daughters were there and I kept motioning to them to get this thing out of my throat. I had questions and I needed answers and I couldn’t talk with it in there.

Not only was it very uncomfortable, but I needed to know if I just died. I saw my dead grandmother so I knew something had to have happened. My daughter Ashley gave me a napkin and a pen because she couldn’t understand me and I wrote down “Did I die?” She went and got the nurse and they called for more sedation right away and the next thing I knew I was out.

I woke up later that next night no tube in my throat thankfully. I remembered everything about what happened when I left my body. But what I didn’t understand was why. What exactly happened to me in the operating room.

I was very groggy when I woke so it took me sometime to get my barring back. Not only was I out of it from all the heavy sedation but remember I also lost a lot of blood during the surgery.

When I woke up all the way I was confused on what happened. Do I still have the tumor or did they at least get that out? Now if they were able to get it out and all that happened to me then ok. I call it a win. However that wasn’t the case. I still have the brain tumor. They called off the surgery when I almost died.

Here’s what transpired according to my medical records:

Within the first few minutes of cutting into my head to remove the tumor the doctor nicked my artery in my brain. You have 2 main arteries going into your head. One of the left and one on the right. He nicked the one on the left side which caused heaving bleeding that he wasn’t able to stop with sutures. They wouldn’t hold and the blood just kept coming out. Then all hell broke loose in the operating room. that’s what I saw. The nurses scrambling the doctor working on me. It was chaos.

They called in another doctor who was a neurosurgeon and a vascular surgeon to take over. He was able to stop the bleeding with a clamp of some sort and he called the surgery off at that point. I guess it was more of a save my life mission.

During the time of blood loss I had 2 stokes on the operating table. So during this time when they nicked my arty is when I had my NDE (Near Death Experience) after I was stable they decided to check and see if my brain was still bleeding inside my head. So they did an angiogram in the groin area going in through my femoral artery. This is a very dangerous and risky surgery, however they couldn’t go through my wrists again because they had just done that prior to surgery and your arteries need time to heal before going in that way again.

So I go in for that surgery in which they find that the nicked artery is now dead. No blood flow at all. So in your brain you have 2 main arteries that branch off to other blood vessels to feed your brain blood and oxygen. One on the right side and one on the left side. My left side artery was now dead and gone. Now I only have one artery feeding my brain.

Once they see that the artery is gone and I am not bleeding internally they conclude the angiogram and start to remove the camera. In doing so the flap that opens and closes in your femoral artery was damaged and stuck closed. Meaning there was no blood flow to my right leg.

They did not figure this out until my husband mentioned it to the nurse who came in to check me and discovered I had no palpitations in my right leg and it was cool to the touch.