Fingerprints of God_ The Search for the Science of Spirituality - Barbara Bradley Hagerty [94]
The device used to measure brain-stem activity was a set of molded ear speakers, affixed with mounds of tape over her ears. These emit loud clicks of 90 to 100 decibels, equal to the sound of a jet plane taking off.
“As the brain goes deeper and deeper into sleep, it becomes less and less of a signal, and in her case, they [the vital signs on the monitors] go completely flat,” the neurosurgeon explained.“So not only is she given medication to put her into the deepest coma, but then you add on this hypothermia, which puts her into an even deeper coma. Her brain is as asleep, as comatose, as unresponsive, as it can possibly be.”
“She wasn’t technically dead, though, was she?” I asked, anticipating the criticism of skeptics.
“It’s an artificial definition,” Dr. Spetzler explained. “If she were awake, and she had no pulse, no blood pressure, no respiration, we would call her dead. But if you are in this suspended state, because we know you can come back, I would not define it as dead.”
“During this time, could she see anything or hear anything?”
“Absolutely not.”
After Pam’s aneurysm was clipped and removed, the doctors reversed the process, warmed the blood, introduced it into her body, and at around 78 degrees, Pam’s heart began beating on its own.
When she awakened, Pam had a story to tell.
The View from Above
After the doctors administered the anesthesia, Pam told me, “I barely remember going to sleep. And I was lying there on the gurney, minding my own business, seriously unconscious. Dr. Spetzler said I was in a deep coma—when the top of my head began to tingle. And I started to hear a noise. It was guttural. It was very deep. It was a natural D,” she recalled, with the ear of a musician with perfect pitch. She listened to the harmonics for a few moments.
“As the sound continued, I don’t know how to explain this other than to go ahead and say it: I popped up out the top of my head,” Pam said, looking for my reaction.“It felt like a suction cup at the top of my head, popping. And then I was looking down at the body, and I knew it was my body, and the odd thing was, I didn’t care. It was wonderful.”
From her vantage point just above and behind Dr. Spetzler’s shoulder, Pam said she could see the entire surgical team. She wondered why they needed twenty people in surgical gowns to operate on her. At first she thought she was hallucinating but realized she felt too clearheaded to be on a drug-induced trip.
“My hearing was better than it is now, my vision better than it ever was, colors were brighter, the sounds were more intense. It was as if every sense that I had ever known—and add on a few—was perfect.”
Pam’s attention was drawn to the source of the natural D: an instrument in Dr. Spetzler’s hand that looked like a dentist’s drill.
“It was an odd-looking thing,” she said. “It looked like the handle on my electric toothbrush. And there was a case—it all kind of freaked me out because it looked like my father’s toolbox, like his socket-wrench case. And there were these little bits in there so it looked like he was doing home improvement and not brain surgery.”
This was a Midas Rex bone saw—and Pam’s was a near-perfect description of the saw and its blade container. At that point she noticed the other doctors midway down the table.
“It looked like they were doing surgery on the groin area. I heard a female voice say, ‘Her arteries are too small.’ And Dr. Spetzler—I think it was him, it was a male voice—said,‘Use the other side.’ I’m thinking, Wait a minute, this is brain surgery! I did not know what they were doing. I was quite distressed, but about this time I began to notice the light.”
At that moment, Pam’s out-of-body experience ended and her journey “into the light” began. Michael Sabom, the doctor who analyzed the surgery