From Sudden Death to Paradise: The Story of a Near-Death Experience

CHAPTER 1

I t’s hard to believe, but I died for ten minutes. My heart stopped for ten full minutes. Looking back on it, I am still in shock, because for most of my life I felt as if I was almost immortal. Obviously, this feeling of immortality was delusional, since I clearly did die. Death came whether I thought it could or not. I really never imagined anything capable of causing my death, except old age. I had been a military police (MP) officer in the army, serving in some of the most prestigious MP units alongside some of the toughest soldiers who ever served. I was medically retired due to injuries sustained from toxic chemical exposure. I didn’t die from the exposure; I lived (for a while, anyway), but I never really gave God the credit for this. Instead, I attributed it to my personal strength. I had a couple of serious motorcycle crashes after the military, but I walked away from them virtually unharmed. I have worked with high-risk mental health patients in and out of prison as a psychotherapist, and I competed competitively in MMA and boxing. My illusion of immortality abruptly ended when I woke up in the middle of the night of August 26, 2016, experiencing the worst pain I could have ever imagined.

Before I went to sleep that night, I didn’t think I was about to die anytime soon. I had a belief that no matter what happened to me, nothing would have the power to overcome my strength. I especially did not see heart failure as a possible cause of my death. So when death stealthily creeped up and ambushed me, I couldn’t believe it. My feelings of immortality had developed over a lifetime, so it was reasonable to experience disbelief in those first moments of death’s attack. I have survived several close calls, dangerous experiences, and brushes with death during my life, but I was about to meet an adversary of immeasurable power, stealth, and cunning. And I was totally unprepared for what lay ahead for me.

While I have been involved in many high-risk situations during my life, I was never really scared of dying. I have always felt like I have had a fighting chance or some sense of control of every situation, and because of this power I never doubted that I would survive. I expected my strength or intelligence to provide me the ability to always produce a positive outcome. I had grown certain that my death would come from something along the lines of a heroic adventure, or even simply dying in my bed of old age, but never once did I consider heart failure. Truthfully, I had hoped that something exciting and worthwhile, like saving someone’s life, would be the cause of my demise. I did not expect lying on my living room couch, barefoot and in a T-shirt and shorts, to be how I met my death.

I was only forty-one years old and in great physical shape. Only two weeks before, I had a physical that showed me to be in excellent health. I was muscular and lean from a lifetime of weightlifting and running. I didn’t do drugs or smoke, I rarely drank, and I ate healthy. I couldn’t possibly be a candidate for heart failure. I had perfect cholesterol, good blood pressure, and a resting heart rate in the low 50s. My physical showed absolutely no signs of a heart condition. Up until this time, I ran marathons, and I had fought competitively in MMA and boxing until my thirties. I maxed every one of my physical fitness test scores while in the military, made the army boxing team, lifted weights regularly, and otherwise have been active and athletic throughout my life. So heart failure could not even be a reasonable possibility. How could it be, when I was so successful at intense and high-impact sports and exercise?

I was soon to find out that anyone is susceptible to cardiac sudden death, and one’s heart function and physical health is no guarantee in preventing this vicious, silent, and merciless killer. You may have heard people say their life flashed before their eyes when they came close to death. Well, my life did flash before my eyes, except mine seemed to flash continuously over the course of the next five months. I began to see everything I had worked for slip away in slow motion, and there was nothing I could do to prevent the losses. During the next few months, I would experience such a terrifying attack on my life that it left me completely defeated. A rare medical condition was about to commit a terrible and brutal series of attacks, determined to destroy my spirit and take my life.

CHAPTER 2

I f you struggle with believing in near-death experiences (NDEs), I can’t say I blame you, because I rarely thought about them, until I had mine. I am still amazed at how my tenuous struggle leading up to my NDE permanently changed my approach to and outlook on life. I never gave a fleeting or even a curious thought to NDEs, and yet as a result of my experience, my viewpoint is now vastly different. I was clinically dead for ten minutes; my NDE was so much more profound than all my previous life experiences combined. In an instant, I became a truly transformed man. How could I not change, now that I knew what was waiting for us after this life. I want to introduce who I was before my NDE so you’ll know I’m not an irrational man or a religious fanatic, then I’ll tell you what I experienced and how it has changed me.

I will try to keep this introduction into my life short, because I know you’re more interested in the story of my NDE, miraculously surviving my extreme medical condition leading to my NDE, and my struggle to recover, leading to my heart transplant. I want to provide you just enough background information to understand my physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual development experienced through my life up until the day of my death, January 16, 2017 without glorifying who I was or the things I accomplished. I no longer consider these early events to be as important to my life’s purpose as I previously had. Instead, I view them as a few steps imperfectly taken, leading to my new life and a closer relationship with God that I gained through nearly three years of suffering, struggle, and hardship. This new relationship also demands a closer relationship with others, and I feel sharing my personal story openly is part of my responsibility to people. Although these events did contribute to me understanding my new life after I had died, they are only contributions, since I now know what is waiting for us once we die. Who I am now is based in something so much more profound than what we can experience in this life.

I was born on a fairly calm and uneventful afternoon, and maybe that’s why I tried to never have another uneventful moment again. I craved excitement and adventure my whole life. My parents were very young; my mom was seventeen and my dad was eighteen, and as you can probably guess, I was not privileged with a lot of luxuries while growing up. Yet I never seemed to lack the things I needed. I certainly didn’t get everything I wanted, but I don’t feel like I missed out, and perhaps that made me stronger. I do remember not having cable TV or many toys like my friends, but I also learned to appreciate what I did have and to work for what I wanted. I learned to love reading, playing outside, using my imagination, and playing sports. I learned that I had to be responsible for my own happiness in life.

Not long after my birth, my little sister arrived on the scene, and I always felt she was favored by my parents. She seemed to always get more things and nicer clothes than me. I felt she had fewer chores and more freedom to hang out with her friends. I can see now that my natural happiness was such a contrast with what my sister seemed to experience that my parents were just trying to balance things out. However, once she was married and on her own, her true positive nature bloomed.

There was a significant event that occurred when we were young, and it ended up having a profound effect in shaping my personality. One day at the park, an older boy pushed my sister off the swing, and she began crying while he stole the swing from her as she lay there underneath him. I don’t remember the actual event myself, but the retelling of the story by my parents had a huge impact on me while I was growing up. I was four years old, and the other boy was about 8 and twice as big as I was, but I fearlessly protected my little sister.

The story was that when I saw him push my sister off the swing, I ran to her aid and pushed this older and larger boy down. When he stood up to confront me, I yelled, Don’t ever hurt my sister again, and pushed him down once more. My parents said I told them I pushed him down the second time to make sure he got the point. The boy then ran off, but the praise I received from my parents for protecting my sister was satisfying to my young ego, and I learned I’d be rewarded with a sense of significance if I intervened to help others.

My parents praised and rewarded me, and they often spoke of my heroic actions that day to friends and family. I believe this event led to me developing a protector’s mind-set, but perhaps it was already ingrained in my DNA, just waiting to be released. However it came about, I have always felt brave and courageous when defending others. This trait was validated and rewarded by my family, which ultimately reinforced this protective characteristic and supplied me with a feeling of importance and purpose throughout life.

I have always cared for other people, even strangers. Yet I had never truly understood love, probably because I never felt I really needed other people, leading to only a partial understanding. I arrogantly felt I could do everything on my own and that other people, instead, needed me to protect them but offered little that I required in return. I felt brave and courageous when protecting others, and this led to a validation of my worth, which contributed significantly to me developing a righteous protector self-identification.

When I was young, I really enjoyed learning about Jesus and other heroes of the Bible, and I was particularly drawn to David, Samson, and Moses as they fought for the rights of their people. I used to love to think about how brave Jesus was to sacrifice himself for us. During my childhood, I felt a strong connection to Jesus; my heart was full of love and loyalty for him.

Beginning around the age of nine, I began to be regularly tormented by severe night terrors. The only way I could go back to sleep after one of these nightmares was if my dad would read from the Bible, usually a story of one of my heroes. I felt so weak and vulnerable after waking from these horrific dreams that I couldn’t bear being alone. I was afraid to sleep, because as soon as I would begin to drift off to sleep, I would fear being attacked by the terrors of my dreams. My dad usually chose a story about bravery and trusting in God, which always encouraged me to face those horrors I had seen in my dreams. I eventually became brave enough to return to my bed. I always slept so peacefully afterwards.

My dad was great this way because even when he had to get up early for work the next morning, he never refused to read to me until I was ready to go back to sleep. He would give me one of Mom’s homemade cookies and milk, sit at the kitchen table, and read to me until I was brave enough to go back into my room. These night terrors caused me great fear of going to sleep for a couple years. I would see fearsome deaths that seemed to never end, and there was an obvious inability to control the outcome of my life in the dream. I often couldn’t protect myself. It’s strange, but these night terrors had the end result of strengthening my confidence in God’s power to protect me; I felt a closeness with him. I learned to trust God because of those stories my dad would read.

Dad never missed work, even when I didn’t return to sleep until just before he left in the morning. This taught me the value of self-sacrifice for others and the value of hard work, dedication, and loyalty. Through his example, my dad was teaching me that to sacrifice self for others was the best way to show that we care for them and an important function in serving God. He also taught me the value of hard work and dedication to your job. When I was weak and vulnerable, he would sacrifice his sleep to ensure that I would calm down, feel safe, and be able to sleep and still never missed a day of work. He was selfless to me and my family with his time, loyal and dedicated to his job. He always helped people from church and other friends. He was a great model to learn from.

I have always admired these qualities and tried to imitate them throughout my life, and they led me to great success in everything I’ve done. However, over those couple of years, I developed an uneasiness when going to sleep, because as I’d begin to drift off, I’d feel vulnerable to those terrors sneaking up on me. I feared being attacked by my dreams. Later in life, after growing past the night terrors, new issues developed to disrupt my sleep.

I grew up in a typical 1980s working-class neighborhood, and like most families, both my parents worked outside the home. The neighborhood kids didn’t seem to have a lot of supervision while their parents were at work. It was not uncommon for the older kids to beat up on and push around the younger or weaker kids. Due to my stubborn nature and my desire to protect others, I often drew their attention, as I wouldn’t give in to their demands and readily stood up for other kids. I always stuck up for my friends and often got involved when I saw other kids being bullied, whether I knew them or not. I could not seem to resist standing up whenever I saw any injustice. I learned how to fight through this real-world educational system, and the bullies were all too willing to provide me with as many lessons as I wanted to receive. I was never able to ignore the victimization of others, no matter the cost to myself. All through my life, I practiced boxing, martial arts, and wrestling, because I enjoyed the challenges they provided, but they also helped to improve the odds of my winning these confrontations, physically and mentally. During high school, this approach to injustice was strongly reinforced, and I was often involved in fights.

After high school, I left home for basic training in the US Army to become a military police officer. I wanted to continue to protect the rights and freedoms of others. I attended MP school at Fort McClellan in Alabama (once recognized as the most toxic place on earth). The base was shut down a few years after I graduated, and my old barracks looks like a decimated city after a nuclear attack. MP school is a challenging experience for all who attempt it. It is sixteen brutal weeks of training, both physical and mental. However, I thrived in this type of environment. I seemed to crave the school’s discipline, structure, and pace.