An Exercise of Will:
The story of one woman's near-death experience

L. is a woman who recently had a profound experience in her life: she nearly died as the result of an ectopic pregnancy. Because she is a private woman, we are choosing not to print her name and photograph. We want to thank her for agreeing to be interviewed, and for being so articulate and frank about her feelings and thoughts. We began by asking her what her life was like prior to Feb. 16, 1996.

L.: It was nothing at all out of the ordinary. I knew that turning forty would be a different phase, but I didn't know how. I just felt that it would be. But it was actually just before I turned forty that everything really changed.

My kids are grown, and I have grandchildren. I really believed that I couldn't get pregnant, so it was really out of the blue. My children had grown and were living nearby; their father had died when they were three and five years old. After that, I had gotten together with this man, and we had had a relationship for about sixteen years. So I was approaching forty, and never dreaming of getting pregnant again.

 Desert Exposure: What were you doing in terms of contraception?

L.: Nothing, because the man I was with was sterile; but I guess, he wasn't as sterile as we thought. It can happen, over periods of years, that [a man's sterility] can change. I wasn't conscious of missing any of my periods, because they had been erratic; miss, hit, miss, hit. I wasn't aware that skipping two periods was out of the ordinary; I didn't feel pregnant - I was that unaware of what was going on (laughing).

Anyway, what happened was that at one o'clock in the morning, I get up with this pressure that gradually over a few hours turns into pain, a lot of pain. Still, I'm just thinking that it's time, and my period is happening. So I get up and start making tea, and the pain just increases and gets worse and worse. I went to another room to keep from waking my partner up, and I just lay down, thinking I just needed to sleep and let it happen. You see, sometimes my period was really hard, and sometimes it wasn't.

I went to sleep, and woke up feeling really strange. Light. I went in to him and told him I didn't feel good, that I felt weird. He had me lay down on the bed but that wasn't helping. It seemed that when I lay down, the feeling of lightness would increase. I had no control. So then he got afraid, and called my son, and then an ambulance.

 DE: What time of day is it, at this point?

L.: Oh, this is already later in the morning, like 10 or 11. My son came. I don't remember being afraid, at that point, or even aware that I needed the ambulance. I was aware that the people there were very distressed, but I had this feeling of detachment about it, like, "don't worry about it."

 DE: Were you in pain?

L.: There was a lot of pain, but I was detached from that too; that was an interesting feeling. So then, the EMT's [Emergency Medical Technician's] come, from Reserve, and they can't find a pulse that will give them a decent accounting of what was going on.

DE: And you were aware of them?

L.: Yes. I knew them - we lived in the same community. When they got alarmed, that's when I began to wonder. They ran outside, brought in the gurney, put me on it and strapped me down. And I thought "who is asking me what I want? I don't want to go!"

DE: What did you want?

L.: I remember thinking, "what's going on? I really don't feel that bad." But I could see on everyone's face that they were freaked out. I probably looked like hell. They loaded me in the ambulance, and the driver takes off, and I don't get to say goodbye to anyone. And I get this real sense of electricity in the air, of the people who were trying to take care of me. They had put me on oxygen, and were trying to find a way, any way, to get a pulse. The lady who was supposed to give me an I.V. wasn't able to, because, I guess, my veins had all shrunk up and hidden away. So she begins to get really upset and I couldn't talk to her, to say "it's O.K., it's going to be all right." So she gets real frantic with the driver and tells him he needs to call an ambulance from Silver and to meet us on the road.

Then I kind of started to get back into my body; up to this point it was real strange, a feeling of being out here (L. points to a place about a foot and a half away from her body).

 DE: Did you see yourself, your own body?

L.: I was aware of myself, but I wasn't seeing my own body. When I felt like I could get back into my body, it was in a lot of pain. I kept trying to find the pain, move through my body to find where the pain was. And finally I did, I found it here (L. puts here hand on her lower abdomen, on the right side). So I got my hand out of the restraint and held it there. They kept saying, "just leave it alone, leave it alone." Finally I felt the vehicle stop and two paramedics from Gila Regional made everyone else get out and then they got in. This one man actually finds a vein, and everybody's relieved; they were praying and had probably thought I was going to die right there, on the road. That would have really upset them.

So then the guys leave and we start up again. Then I remember that I really went inside - I didn't want to hear them anymore, or have them poke or prod me; I didn't want to answer any more questions. So we got to the hospital and they were trying to go through the preliminaries: name, rank, serial number. The emergency room people were talking to the paramedics and they were getting really excited, and they told me that they were going to find a doctor and draw some blood, and I just thought "have at it- do whatever you want to." At that point I was starting to feel light again, really light.

 DE: And what were these feelings of lightness about?

L.: It was about leaving. Once I figured that out, then it was a real battle to stay grounded, to find anything to hold on to. It made me aware that when you are at that point, there's no one and nothing that can stop it. When it's time for you to move across, for lack of a better word, that's it - you're going to go.

DE: But you felt you had some control?

L.: Well, I finally realized, I'm dying. It finally hit me. And then I got really angry, I got really, really, super angry. I had this list of all this stuff that I didn't have ready in case I died. It was bizarre.

 DE: So you felt angry at being taken away without warning, when there was all this stuff to do?

L.: I was mad at myself; I wasn't mad at God, or anything in particular. It was so inconvenient.

 DE: Did you have anything "flash in front of your eyes?"

L.: I got really focused on my will, on the fact that I hadn't said goodbye to my kids, or my father; things were left hanging, legal things...

DE: ...and the anger translated into...?

L.: The anger translated into a desire to get back. The sense of being absolutely weightless left for a little while, after I got angry. So I just held onto that.

DE: Did you feel torn between forces...?

L.: Yes, it was a real battle, to stay here.

 DE: Did you have control? You see, I'm still trying to get at the idea that when you're called, there's nothing you can do. It seems as if you were in the middle of something; it seems as if it was a premature call ... I mean, here I am talking to you.

L.: Well,yes, in a sense. I think about that day, and that whole experience, every day. I carry it around with me like a handbag, something that was given to me, for me to have, every day. So, premature may not be the right word... it was something that I needed to have happen, for some reason, for many reasons.

 DE: I want to return to this idea, but getting back to the experience, there you were on the gurney, fighting to stay in your body ...

L.: I'd been back since the ambulance trip. It was probably a good thing I got back then, and felt the pain, and tried to hang on. If I had let it get away, there might not have been any... well, right now. At some point the doctor came in, very excited, and told me that we were going into surgery, that I was pregnant, and that the baby couldn't be saved.

 DE: You had only missed two periods, so this is a very premature baby here...

L.: Yes, two months or so. And this experience was like a wash of cold water, giving me a startling feeling.

DE: So it woke you up to what was going on in your body?

L.: Yes, but that only lasted an instant. Then I remember telling him "yeah, whatever," and I was right back, away from everything, trying to hang on. I was back fighting my own battle.

 DE: What words would you use to describe that battle?

L.: Gosh. It was just such an exercise of will. Willing myself not to lose consciousness, not to slip away, not to float away. And any relaxation, any easing up of that, it would have been over, I really felt that. It would have just been . . . over. I don't feel that "I" would have been finished, but wherever "I" was going, this body would've had to stay where it was. I couldn't take it with me. I remember thinking that that idea was cool, but I wasn't ready for it.

 DE: So at some point you go into surgery, and they put you under...?

L.: Yeah, and I was afraid of that.

DE: You were afraid because you thought that if you were put under, you wouldn't be able to fight this battle?

L.: Yeah. But I yielded after two or three seconds under that mask. They wheeled me in, I caught glimpses of my kids and my dad, and I couldn't talk anymore. Once that mask came down, that was it.

 DE: So to wrap up with the experience itself, you had become pregnant and...

L.: It was ectopic. It had never left the fallopian tube, in fact, it was just at the entrance to the womb, to the uterus. The child was growing there, which caused the tube to burst, which was causing the internal bleeding. I found out later that I had lost over 60% of my total blood volume. The doctor told me that I really should have died in the trip down, in the ambulance. I had been bleeding for some time, like maybe since the day before.

 DE: So then you spent how long in the hospital?

L.: Three weeks. They had to give me a lot of blood. And they had to make sure that everything they had done was going to be O.K., because they had made a mess.

DE: This had been pretty invasive surgery.

L.: Yes. And they gave me lots of fluids, bags of fluid. So there was a lot of time in the hospital to think about it, to think about "What does this mean, you're still here..."

I didn't feel the same. I knew it was still me but I felt really strange, really different.

 DE: In your body, or...? L.: Emotionally. In my body, a little bit. It was a time of trying to figure out where I could have lost track, of these events, and of this condition. I tried to backtrack and figure out how I could have been so unaware [of myself, of this pregnancy]. I dwelled on that for a little while but then decided that it didn't matter that much. I quit trying to understand it and just focused on healing. I hated being in the hospital even though they took excellent care of me. I was getting claustrophobic and just wanted to go home, get out. So later, when I started feeling better, I was really weak. I thought that if people reached out, they were just going to put their hands right through me; so I wasn't altogether back. I stayed split for almost another three weeks.

DE: "Split" how?

L.: I was having a hard time being back, in my physical body.

DE: Were other aspects of the physical world seeming strange to you?

L.: Yes. A lot of things that were important to me before no longer seemed important. My relationship had been tumultuous, not very grounded or centered, and all of a sudden that wasn't important. The little petty things, the garbage that you carry with you, that you build up, to throw at that other person when a fight breaks out . . . none of that mattered. I couldn't find whatever it was that had motivated those things . . .

  DE: Sometimes when things become less important in a relationship, it's a sign that we don't care about the other person as much, but your experience wasn't quite that, was it?

L.: These things weren't important because they just weren't. I still cared for and loved this person deeply. But we're very different. I'm more comfortable with this now than I was then. I was now understanding, seeing and sensing, what was important. Fighting over petty bullshit - it wasn't that. It was about appreciatingwhat you're given, every day, every moment, being alive on this planet. What are you doing? What are you doing? Are you feeling centered, balanced, like you've got something to do? Are you feeling like you can make a difference? Anywhere - it doesn't mean that you have to discover a cure for cancer; it just has to be, perhaps, that you have an insight, for someone.

DE: So things have changed a lot?

L.: Yeah. Once I could relax, and wasn't so fearful. I felt like I wasn't totally back yet, and could still be knocked over. One of my girlfriends visited me and said "I'm so glad to see you, and I want to hug and hold you, but I feel like if I did you wouldn't be there." I told her "I'm not here yet, not all the way."

 DE: What other changes have taken place in your life?

L.: Well, I had - well, it's like you're an alcoholic, because you never stop being one - I had an extremely volatile temper, and I've learned how to better channel all of that energy that's wasted when you have a big temper tantrum.

 DE: Do you feel that you're less afraid of death?

L.: Much. I'm still trying to get my affair in order, so that I won't have that. But afraid, no. I don't think I was afraid then, I just wasn't ready. I didn't "have my ducks in a row." (laughing) I read a book one day that said that death always stands on your left, and I thought, "That's as good a place as any. Mine can stand there. That's fine with me." Because every time I get excited, or catch myself behaving badly, irrationally, materialistic, I just look right there, over my left shoulder, and say, "O.K."

 DE: Why do you think you weren't afraid?

L.: I don't know. I mean, it's another experience, that we all have to do. Just like the way you have to get up and take care of what you have to do; death is going to be like that. I think fear of death stems from how you're going to die. Some people are going to die a violent death, and there's going to be time for tremendous fear. We're afraid of our fear, not of our movement through to the other place.

 DE: I myself am afraid of getting old, of being helpless, and dying that way; I think I would rather go quickly.

L.: Well, that's the way we think, sitting here right now, in our youth. We like to drum up the worst case scenarios, and that's O.K., it's looking at it and projecting yourself in it, which is sort of preparation, in case you should have to confront it and be there in that reality, you'll have already gotten past that place of surprise.

 DE: You had a physical experience, but the real experience was mental, emotional . . .

L.: The lasting experience was emotional, spiritual, psychological, those things that you can't touch. That's where all the greater changes came. My body healed, and I take a lot better care of it now, and try to stay aware of it, to keep it running, functioning. But that's - not to minimize it - is not as important as growing and learning in these other areas.

 DE: You mentioned that you thought this thing had happened for a reason. When you look back at your life, do you think that you needed to be woken up, like this?

L.: Oh yes. There are always ways that we can wake up, and usually we fight those ways, those areas. We avoid them, we avoid waking up in certain personal areas. We're just not ready to grow there; we'll do anything to put those off.

 DE: And did this experience wipe away...

L.: Oh man, it threw out the chalkboard (laughing). There was no erasing, the whole chalkboard was thrown out. And a new slate was put in.

 DE: I want to ask, did you have visions of another place, do you feel as if you had seen something?

L.: You know, like I told you, I think about that day every day, and there are places I can remember up to, and then there are places that are blank. And gradually, I'll get to see what was in the blank space. When I'm ready for it.

 DE: In terms of thinking about life after death, what did you think before, and what do you think now?

L.: I thought there was something... oh yeah... something, but no fixed idea - and I still don't have one. I can just remember that feeling of moving on, like I would still be me, but not in here anymore, not in my body. Wherever I was going, it didn't allow anything physical.

  DE: So let me ask you about the physical world, because here we are sitting outside on a beautiful day, with Virginia Creepers flowering on the fence behind you, the sky is blue, with these soft clouds ... I mean, part of your experience was about leaving the physical world, and knowing that you would exist beyond the physical world. So, is the physical world more or less important in your understanding now?

L.: Oh, I cherish it. It's wonderful, it's where I am. It's where we all are, at this point. It's to be appreciated, because it's beautiful, it's a miracle, a work of art.

  DE: Thank you very much for speaking with us.

L.: You're welcome.

. . . . . Desert Exposure