A Near Death Experience in Young Adulthood

Well, I’ll begin by saying that blogging about ‘relationships in young adulthood’ (as much as I enjoy it) is going to have to take a brief hiatus, as I have experienced something truly life changing and I feel compelled to talk about it. On the night of October 3rd, I awoke from a nap to find my heart racing…really racing. Now, my heart has been doing some funky stuff for a year or so. However, it’s been in the form of ‘flutters’ which, as strange as they may feel, have not been alarming to the point to make this stubborn guy go the doctor. But this was something different…more serious- and I knew that immediately. So, with little hesitation (or the use of logical thought, for that matter) I drove myself to the ER. After walking into the ER from my car (and almost passing out in the process), I was met with the predictable “sir, you’ll have to wait your turn” line, to which I responded with “put your hand on my chest!” Well…an “oh my God” and a couple of minutes later, I was surrounded by half the ER staff who- after informing me my heart was beating 250 times per minute- proceeded to stop and restart it on two occasions (the first did nothing). This in itself is probably the weirdest sensation I’ve ever experienced in my life: it essentially felt like all the energy in my body was sucked into my heart and then released in the form of a tidal wave which traveled throughout my entire body (except that doesn’t even begin to describe it). And then I was shot so full of Ativan I didn’t particularly care about anything from that point forward.

It would be more than safe to say that, at that time and in my mind, my death was seemingly inevitable…so much so that I had begun to make preparations in the short time which I presumably had left. As it turned out, I wasn’t far off with that line of thought…I was told in the ER that a young, healthy person could survive an arrhythmia like mine for about two hours. Well, my whole ordeal lasted approximately an hour, so you do the math. Throughout the whole experience, I never saw my life flash in front of my eyes…I never really experienced any of the cliché b******t you hear about. I also didn’t think about the things I would have thought. Of course I thought about my religious faith and I tried to come to terms with that as much as possible given my erratic thought processes at the time. I also thought about my parents. But, mostly what I thought about was this beautiful face which had, from out of nowhere, come into my life and turned it into upheaval…but the good kind of upheaval. When it was apparent that I was going to make it, my thoughts quickly turned to that fact that I was happy to be alive because I would now get to see that face again after all. And when I return to ‘relationships,’ I’ll start there.