The Aftermath of the Afterlife: Part 2
*** TRIGGER WARNING: Please be advised that the following post contains graphic and triggering content.***
The physical repercussions of what happened to me in that operating room have been the catalyst for me to learn all there is to know about the human body and how it functions. The long road of recovery is still taking place even 10+ years later. The autoimmune issues and secondary complications from all that took place is still a learning process. Just when you think you have it all figured out, your symptoms change, you become reactive to "safe" products and foods, and suddenly you have to start from square one.
Although the physical challenges have been my most difficult to overcome, the emotional, mental, and spiritual challenges I have faced weren't any easier. Of course with that kind of trauma and loss it takes a toll on your emotional and mental state. I spent 4.5 hours every week for the first year after the trauma with a psychiatrist and a mental health team who specialized in Women's Health Postpartum issues. I worked with grief counsellors to process the loss of my babies, and with the help and support of these specialists, I slowly but surely found my center again.
It was hard to process all that went on, all that had happened, and filtering my feelings and experiences to not reveal the spiritual crisis I was in after what I had saw. I was walking a very thin line of receiving help for the emotional and mental aspect, all the while knowing that I couldn't reveal the spiritual experience I had, in fear I'd be looked at as crazy or trigger some kind of event where I got locked up in the mental ward. I was terrified that what I had experienced would be looked upon as a mental crisis, so I kept those details and my experiences to myself.
I knew the minute I woke up in the hospital that I was different. I didn't feel like myself. I could see colourful mists around people, and somehow knew what they were thinking. I remember waking up when one of the nurses came into do a check on me, she smiled as I opened my eyes and hovered over me asking me if I needed anything. I said, "You have to go." She came closer to me and asked me to repeat myself, as my voice was still very much a whisper from the damage that took place during surgery. I said, " You have to go." "Go?" She asked, "Go where?" "The girl down the hall, she needs you." I said. Confused she looked at me and said, "What girl?"
At that moment a CODE BLUE rang throughout the hospital requesting all medical teams to head to the room the emergency was taking place in. As the nurse heard the call, she looked at me. I put my finger (the one with the "ET" heart rate monitor on it) up in the air pointing at the ceiling where the speaker was sounding off. "She needs you." I said. "You have to go!" The nurse was confused but left my room in a hurry to respond to the code call.
Later on that day, before she ended her shift, she came back into my room for final rounds. I opened my eyes and asked her if the girl was alright. She nurse looked uncomfortable, but told me that she was doing fine, that it was a close call but they were able to bring her back. I smiled at her, and said "She's scared. She's all alone with a new baby. She doesn't think she can do it. But she can. This is her chance." The nurse politely smiled at me, and quickly left my room.
When I finally got out of the hospital and could head home, I went to stay with my father. My house had too many stairs and I wasn't even able to walk unassisted at that point, so the stairs were a deal breaker for me. I was on some pretty heavy medications after the trauma. I would slip in and out of a dream state where I was experiencing some pretty new dream content, with some really disturbing messages. I had chalked it all up to the drugs until I stopped taking all my meds and the weirdness continued.
Once I stopped taking my meds, I actually couldn't sleep. I would fall into a dream state where I was back in the hospital waking up for the first time with all the doctors standing over me. I could hear babies crying in the background and the dream took a scary turn when the doctors started yelling at me about how I had already forgotten about my babies. They were tormenting me saying that I just left without my babies and now they will be given away, how someone else will raise them.
At that point in the dream I would wake up, terrified, sweating, crying, and reliving the whole trauma over again. This happened multiple times a night, and went on for weeks. The lack of sleep didn't make my days in physical and emotional therapy any easier. It took a toll on me. It got to a point where I was even scared to fall asleep because I didn't want to experience that dream again.
After 11 days of being awake, not falling asleep for even one second, I asked my doctor for help. She gave me some meds to help me sleep, and we worked through the mental and emotional issues connected tot the dream. I got an overwhelming urge to get a tattoo for my babies, memorializing them in the most permanent way I could think of. My boyfriend at the time (the "would be" father of my children) carried me into a tattoo parlour and laid me in the chair where I got my tattoo.
On my right arm, the side of my body that received the most damage, the side of my body that didn't have collapsed veins, the side of my body that kept me alive, I memorialized my children where I wear my heart on my sleeve. That night, as if I had made some kind of peace within myself. I slept for the first time since the trauma without any kind of nightmare forcing me to wake.
The weirdness didn't stop there though. I had been experiencing these really weird times where my ears would ring so badly that it was debilitating. It sounds like a microphone was too close to the speaker inside my head. I couldn't see anything, or hear anything around me when it happened, other then this loud screeching inside my head. This went on for a while. With no physical or medical explanation, I was left to deal with it on my own.
One night as I was watching tv, this happened again. But this time, the loud speaker in my head came through, like I had been scanning the radio for a clear channel. It sounds like many voices speaking together at one time. RUN! That's what I heard. RUN! Run?! Run where? I can hardly even walk how the eff am I suppose to run?!
The messages "RUN!" came through at least once a day. Me, now confused and numb to these experiences, I just let them come and go. Spirit doesn't like to be ignored though. Of course I didn't know that at the time, so it was a hard learning curve.
When I went to sleep at night all I dreamt about was me being in bed in a dark room. The whispers in the shadows kept repeating "Run... run.... run..." This went on for weeks. Finally, one night, the dreamscape changed. The whispers were still chanting, but this time they became louder. And the louder they got, the more I covered my head with pillows in my dream. I remember watching myself all curled up in my bed, my head covered with pillows, and then the chanting stopped. I watched myself take the pillows away from my head and when I sat up in my bed, there were figures of people standing all around me. They stood there, still, unfamiliar, and silent. And then they opened their mouths all at once and this high pitched frequency came streaming out.
In that moment I woke up.
This dream went on for months. The same dream, the same chanting, the same figures, the same high pitched frequency. I woke up at the same time, every time.
Six months later, I reached a huge goal in physio therapy. Finally walking unassisted, and able to stand for more than 10 minutes, I had another crisis. My boyfriend at the time, was an alcoholic, and an abusive one at that. The truth is, I had no business being with this guy. I knew he was trouble. We had had our first physical altercation the day before I found out I was pregnant. We decided that was our wake up call and that we had to put the past behind us, to start new and be better for our child.
To say that he was supportive of me during my trauma would be a lie. He spent the time I was in surgery drinking in the parkade, he was talking to other women and inviting them over to my house while I was still in the hospital, and he beat me down emotionally for "Not being able to provide him with children." "What's wrong with you? he'd say. Thirteen year old girls get pregnant and have babies the first time they have sex. What's your excuse?"
That kind of mental and emotional abuse is never okay, but when someone is already at their very lowest, that kind of talk can be deadly. Not in a position to fight, argue, or defend myself, I just took it. I just took whatever crap he threw my way and internalized it.
That night, on the day I reached my physio goal, he was drinking and became very dangerous. I had asked him to leave many times, but we both knew he wasn't going anywhere. At the end of my rope, I grabbed the phone and hid it under my blanket. I hit redial knowing he had talked to his parents earlier on that evening. Trembling, I held the phone still allowing them to hear the shitshow that was taking place in my living room. After a few minutes, when I felt they had heard enough, I hung up the phone. They immediately called back, and when he answered he played it cool like all was well in the world.
As I watched his face, I knew they were confronting him about all they had just witnessed. His eyes glazed over in blackness and he threw the phone at the wall smashing it in a million pieces. He threw is lit cigarette on my carpeted floor, dumped his beer over me before throwing it threw my window and came at me as I was sitting on the couch. "RUN!" The voices in my head screamed at me, "RUN! RUN! RUN!"
That was the first time in my life I had been thrown across the room like a rag doll. What seemed to be the longest minutes I had ever lived turned into a nightmare that even I couldn't wake up from. I crawled over the floor trying to reach my cell phone to call the cops. Just as the operator answered he grabbed the phone from me smashing that too. He had spent time in jail as a young defender and was terrified to go back as an adult.
"RUN!" They screamed, "RUN!" I got up an ran to the kitchen. He was screaming at me that he was going to kill me and I believed him.
Just as I reached my butchers block of kitchen knives, he came from behind and attacked me, trying to get the knife from my hands. He threw me against the cupboards and stood over me as I was screaming on the top of my lungs for help. In that moment I knew there wasn't a chance in hell that my neighbour was going to hear me screaming and that I was going to die in my own kitchen.
Suddenly I was looking over my body, again. I was up in the corner of the ceiling looking down on all that was taking place. I kept telling myself that it was okay, help was coming and that I was going to be alright. My physical self kept kicking and screaming and trying to get him off of me, to get his hands away from my throat. My spirit self was screaming at my body from up in the corner of the ceiling, trying to cheer me on and keep fighting.
Just as I thought I was living my last minutes of life, my spirit self, hoovering above me and him on the floor, seen his parents running down the hall. His father grabbed him off me and rushed him to get out of there before the cops came. His mother kneeled down beside me and when I took my first breath free of his hands my spirit self jumped back into my body.
With the boyfriend now gone, and me in utter distress, his mother picked me up off the floor and got me settled on the couch. I was covered in beer, spit, blood, and tears. My house was totally destroyed. Broken windows, smashed tv, broken phones, curtains hanging off the wall, the fridge and its contents tipped over. His mother cried with me as she cleaned me up.
The police arrived and walked threw the hanging screen door that he ripped off on his way out. And when the cop entered my home he was just about as impressed as I was.
I lied. I lied to the cop. I made up some bullshit story about what had happened, and brushed it off even though his mother begged for me to tell the truth. I couldn't do it. It wasn't because I loved him, or wanted to protect him, it was because I loved his parents and his family so much, that I couldn't bear to be the reason of why their son would be in jail.
Against the cop's and his mother's advice, I stood my ground and stuck with my story and let him get away "Scott-free".
I laid in bed all night without closing my eyes for one second. I was waiting for the sun to come up so I could go to my father's house when we woke up. Beaten and bruised, I showed up on his door step and that was the last time I ever stayed in my own house.
I was struggling both mentally and emotionally with all that had just took place. I was getting ready to take a shower to wash the night off of me and I broke down in tears.
In my head, I asked for God or whoever was listening, to give me a sign. Give me a sign that things will be okay, that I did the right thing, and that I'm safe. Not sure, what I was actually expecting, I took off my clothes to get in the shower, and as I stood there, looking at myself in the mirror, tears running down my face, I got my sign.
On my chest was a bruise in the shape of an angel. He had forcefully pushed me against the wall with such power, that his handprints were embossed in my skin.
The angels were with me. The angels were in me. I was finally safe.
The Aftermath of The Afterlife: Part 1
Thank you so much for all the love and support you've sent my way since the release of My White Light Moment. I know I left you all in suspense with that cliff hanger, but honestly, there is sooooo much to my story that it's hard to know when to stop. Waking up from that White Light Moment wasn't fun. My life was never going to be the same. Dealing with the physical repercussions of the events that took place in that operating room have also changed my life forever.
When I woke up the next day, my Mother stood staring out of the hospital room window. It felt as if I were looking in on her from another world. She looked tired and worried. I could feel she was scared. I spoke her name but nothing came out. I tried to move and couldn't. I cleared my throat and felt such excruciating pain that I stopped trying. The grunts and moans were enough movement to get my Mother's attention.
She quickly rushed to my side, frantically asking me if I was okay. She swiped my hair back off my face and kissed my forehead like she was never going to see me again. She screamed for the nurses and quickly ran out of my room to get help. I could hear her screaming down the hallway, "HELP! She's awake! She's awake! I need help!"
The nurses quickly rushed into the room and tried to keep me calm as they injected my IV with more meds. Suddenly everything was dark.
The next time I woke up, it was as if I was on Grey's Anatomy. The scene where the patient wakes up and all the doctors are standing over them telling them how lucky they were to be alive.
Everything went back to black.
When I woke up the next time, I was able to speak. I had a "smelly cat sexy voice" like Phoebe off of Friends. It wasn't my normal voice, but it worked well enough to ask some questions. I asked the nurses who were standing over me uncovering my blankets to change my dressings what had happened. They explained to me that my veins and airways had collapsed in surgery and alarmed a CODE BLUE. They retracted the tube from my airway, and tried to run it through my nose to intubate, but failed. They ended up using excessive force to get a tube down my throat and ended up damaging my vocal chords, and breaking some teeth in the process. They had to run all my IVs and monitors to the opposite side of my body where the veins were still open, and the doctors had to cauterize the hemorrhage in my abdomen where they had removed my baby, in order to close my ports in preparation for resuscitation.
Not really sure how to respond to all that information, I just nodded my head. They took my last blanket off my to reach my dressings and I was immediately traumatized from what I saw. My body was black and blue, swollen and bloody. I was not the very pale-skinned person that I normally am. I was beaten and bruised beyond any type of recognition.
My heart monitor alarm went off and then I was quickly injected with more meds as I was to beginning to freak out. I was sent back to the darkness.
After all was said and done, I was in the hospital for over 10 days; most of those were spent in a drug induced coma to help the healing process. I had gone through 2 emergency surgeries, 3 blood transfusions, I was resuscitated after my airways and veins collapsed on the table. I sustained injuries from the struggle to incubate, from my teeth being cracked by the tools they use to stick the tube down your throat, to a damaged sinus cavity and vocal cords from a forceful intubation.
I suffered permanent nerve damage from them retracting their tools in my abdomen in a hurry. They nicked a nerve bundle from my spine that runs down my right leg. I had to endure 6 months of physiotherapy to walk again. Over 600 hours of absolute torture just to be able to walk unassisted. I gained over 100 pounds in 6 months from a blood disorder that I received from the blood transfusions, and now have such a compromised immune system that eating normal foods makes me sick.
The first year after the trauma was spent going to doctor appointments and seeing specialist after specialist. It was a horrible time in my life. I also suffered some memory issues. The Doctors thought it was due to having such a traumatizing thing happen to me, but even to this day, I'm still not so sure about that. It was as if everyone and everything was new to me. I had no clue who my boyfriend (now ex boyfriend) was, or why I would even choose to be with him in the first place.
I didn't recognize my own family and had to rebuild a new relationship with each of them. I also didn't recognize my own house and decor. I had no clue why I would have ever chosen those curtains!
This trauma allowed me to see some of the greatest doctors in town. It took many years to get a full diagnosis. Medically, I was diagnosed with endocrine issues, adrenal issues, neuropathy & CRPS (a degenerative nerve disorder), and suspected for lupus and/or MS. I still have a benign pituitary brain tumour in my head that flares up causing more health issues in my body. My immune system is so overactive that I have a reaction to anything that gets put into my body. I can no longer tolerate scents and fragrances, foods and products that I'd used my whole life. Now it seemed like everything was causing me to be sick.
I ended up having to sell my house and car - along with anything else that was of value - shortly after getting out of the hospital, as I was now fully disabled. I was unable to work and couldn't keep up with the lifestyle I had previously established. No one plans to be disabled at 24 due to trying to have a family. I had no medical benefits or insurance coverage and was forced to downsize my life.
Being grateful for a second chance at life was really hard throughout these times. I had spent a lot of time thinking about WHY I was spared a second chance. I thought of all the people out in the world that want to live so badly that they'd do anything just to continue on, and they don't get the chance to. But here I was, not wanting to be alive and having to deal with the aftermath of a horrible situation.
Everyone you hear about having a near death experience is always so grateful to be alive, and so happy and beyond blessed to be able to continue living. I didn't get it. I just didn't feel that way. I felt the weight of the world, the sadness, the heaviness of life. I felt pain constantly throughout my body. I didn't have any fight left in me but yet, I was spared my life. I should have felt grateful. The fact that I didn't feel grateful made me feel bad.
I just couldn't understand how anyone, if they had the same white light experience that I had, felt that kind of warm, loving, oneness, and to see that beautiful indescribable light like I did, how they could be happy coming back here. This world, although has its beauty, is nothing compared to what I saw. It's not even comparable. Even those rare moments in life when you experience TRUE beauty, a sunset, sunrise, true love; nothing even compares to the breathtaking beauty of that light; that love; that feeling of being at peace. The feeling of being home. Your soul's TRUE home.
These other people who are so happy to be alive, who have seen THAT light, couldn't have seen the same beautiful light I had. If they did, they would be here longing to go home; back into that light, as I do, every single day of my life. Don't get me wrong, I do my best to be happy and try to create a life for myself of gratitude and positivity despite the many horrible challenges I face on a daily basis. But in my heart of hearts, I know I'm here doing what I have to do, and once I've completed my mission, I too, will get to go home.
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My White Light Moment
With the energy of the cosmos now focused on our inner journey, our inner healing, our inner pain, I feel supported in sharing my "White light" experience with you.
If you have been following me for any length of time, you may recall my near-death-experience I described in the post: On The 10th Anniversary of My Death, and the events that have "gifted" me with my abilities to help others heal, in the post: How I ended Up Dying.
This has been a touchy subject for me over the years, but because of my soul contract I feel the need to share my experience in hopes of helping others who have experienced similar things. I will go more into detail about the events you are about to read in my book (if it ever feels complete enough to share), until then, I ask you to please be open minded to a world we aren't familiar with.
Before this event I did not believe in God. I always had a strong belief in a higher power but felt that the biblical version of God was not the same version that I believed in. I believed in angels. I believed in an afterlife. I believed that everything happened for a reason. That day laying on the operating table of my second emergency surgery, I experienced events that totally rattled my beliefs. I had a "white light" moment, that would change, my life forever.
I woke up on the operating table and heard all kinds of beeping sounds and doctors screaming. It was very bright as I opened my eyes. My eyes came into focus and I could see were the big surgery lamps over me as they hung from the ceiling. I could hear machines going off; sirens, and CODE BLUE being spoken over the loud speaker.
I sat up and swung my legs to the side and got up off the operating table. As I turned around to scope out the place, I noticed that there I was, still laying on the table. There were a group of doctors who were shoving tubes in me, one down my throat, others in my arms. Another group of doctors and nurses were still working to repair the hemorrhage in my abdomen from where they cut my baby out of me.
There were doctors frantically coming in and out of the operating room, responding to the CODE BLUE call.
And there I stood, over my own lifeless body.
Although I had no clue what was actually happening and how it could be even possible for this to be happening, I started frantically trying to get in the doctor's way. I was screaming at them to just let me go. I had a very difficult childhood and had struggled through a couple suicide attempts in my teens. I had recovered to the point where I no longer attempted to end my life, but I wasn't against dying by accident.
The truth was, if there was a button to end your life, "game over", it would have been pushed years ago. Especially now, having just been through the pregnancy from hell, I really didn't have much fight left in me. All I ever wanted was to be a Mom and now that dream was gone.
I was crying and trying to swipe the doctor's hands away, but just like I was dreaming, I was invisible to these people. No one could see me or hear me, and I couldn't physically make contact with anything I was trying to touch. It was as if I were a ghost and my touch sliced right through these people and objects I was trying to make contact with; as if I had disappeared.
I was having a fit at this point. I didn't want the doctors to save me. I didn't want to wake up and live through this life. I just wanted them to let me go.
In that moment the room lit up. Not as if someone opened the window to let the sun in, but more like this beautiful, mesmerizing, white light that penetrated every inch of that place in an awe-inspiring glow.
The truth is, I don't have the words in my vocabulary to truly describe this light. Not because I am unaware of the words to use in this instance, but because the words just simply don't exist in our language to describe the kind of light I was witnessing.
The light was coming in more and more, every time the operating doors swung opened. There were doctors entering and exiting through these doors where it seemed as if they were getting sucked up and spit out by this engulfing light. But it shocked me that they weren't even paying attention it. They were rushing around as if it were business as usual.
I started to turn away from myself laying on the operating table as I tried to walk towards the light. I had gotten to the end of the operating table where my physical body still lay, where my feet were secured in stirrups; and I was suddenly stuck in space. I was unable to move any further, as if magnets were keeping me from getting too far away from my body.
Still in a state of distress and confusion, I struggled to walk towards the light but couldn't make it past that point. I hung my head in defeat and the tears fell off my face. When I looked up there stood my grandmother. She had passed away when I was 9 years old, but yet there she stood smiling at me in that operating room.
I wanted to walk towards her but still couldn't move any further away from my body as it lay on the operating table than before. Nanny spoke no words to me, but she carried a face and smile that for some reason assured me that things were going to be okay.
The flicker of the white light still kept getting brighter with each opening of the OR doors. A man walked in but wasn't rushing like the others were. He was very calm and peaceful and walked to the right side of my Nanny were he stopped and folded his hands in front of him. I kept looking at my Nanny, but she showed me no signs of worry or concern.
The doors opened again filling the room with even more brightness and this time a girl walked in. I couldn't see her because her hair was long and covering her face from my view, but she wore the same hospital gown as I did. She walked behind my Nanny, and then behind the man, and turned to walk towards the operating table.
The closer she got, the more I started to scream, "NOOOOOO!" . I looked to my Nan and this strange man to stop this girl from coming near me or my body on the operating table, but neither of them moved.
I couldn't move.
I wasn't sure what she was doing, but I felt the need to stop it. She walked like a robot towards me and then jumped up on the table and laid down over my body.
Then I woke up.
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