Did Pam Reynolds
Have a Near DeathExperience?
By: Michael Sabom
THE CASE OF PAM REYNOLDS
The case of Pam Reynolds has been
widely acclaimed as the “single best instance we now have in the literature on
NDEs to confound the skeptics” and as the one coming “closest
to providing solid, scientific evidence suggestive of the post-mortem survival
of consciousness.”
Pam was wheeled into the
operating room at 7:15 a.m. on 8 August 1991 for repair of the first of two
giant cerebral aneurysms by Robert Spetzler, chief of neurosurgery at the
Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona.
A weakness in the walls of two
arteries in her brain had caused the arteries to swell, and rupture was
considered imminent. Anesthesia was induced.
Both ear canals were occluded with
a small, molded ear speaker designed to monitor brainstem function; an
electroencephalogram (EEG) was set up to monitor cortical brain waves; and a
unique electrical device was affixed to test the function of her cerebral hemispheres.
At 8:40 a.m., Pam Reynolds’ NDE
began with the buzzing noise of the bone saw motor:
It was a natural D. As I listened
to the sound, I felt it was pulling me out of the top of my head.… I remember seeing several things in the
operating room when I was looking down.… I was meta-phorically sitting on
Spetzler’s shoulder.
It was not like normal vision. It was brighter and more
focused and clearer than normal vision.… There was so much in the operating
room that I didn’t recognize, and so many people.…
The saw thing that I hated the
sound of looked like an electric toothbrush and it had a dent in it, a groove
at the top where the saw appeared to go into the handle, but it didn’t.…
And
the saw had interchangeable blades, too, but these blades were in what looked
like a socket wrench case.… I remember the heart-lung machine. I didn’t like
the respirator.… I remember a lot of tools and instruments that I didn’t
readily recognize.
After cutting open the skull,
Spetzler isolated the aneurysm.
At 10:50 a.m., Pam was placed on
cardiopulmonary bypass to quickly cool her core body temperature. As her
temperature fell to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, her heart stopped, her EEG flattened
into complete electrocerebral silence, and her brainstem and cerebral
hemispheres became unresponsive.
The head of the operating room table was then
tilted up, the cardiopulmonary bypass machine turned off, and the blood drained from her body.
Pam’s NDE progressed:
There was a sensation like being
pulled, but not against your will. I was going on my own accord because I
wanted to go.… It was like a tunnel but it wasn’t a tunnel.
At some point very
early in the tunnel vortex I became aware of my grandmother calling me.… The
feeling was that she wanted me to come to her, so I continued with no fear down
the shaft.
It’s a dark shaft that I went through, and at the very end there was
this very little tiny pinpoint of light that kept getting bigger and bigger and
bigger. The light was incredibly bright, like sitting in the middle of a
lightbulb.…
I noticed that as I began to
discern different figures in the light — and they were all covered with light,
they were light, and had light permeating all around them — they began to form
shapes I could recognize and understand.…
They would not permit me to go
further.… I wanted to go into the light, but I also wanted to come back. I had
children to be reared.
After the blood had been drained
from her body, the aneurysm collapsed, which allowed Spetzler to safely excise
the empty sac. The cardiopulmonary bypass machine was turned back on, and the
blood was rewarmed. Her vital signs and brain function returned with no
evidence of a seizure.
Still in her NDE, Pam recalls being led down the tunnel
by her deceased uncle and reentering her chilled physical body as her heart was
shocked back to normal rhythm. The operation ended at 2:10 p.m.
Nine days later, she underwent
repair of the second cerebral aneurysm. This time hypothermic cardiac arrest
was not necessary.
While under anesthesia, tests of brainstem and cerebral
hemispheric function showed “well maintained responses.” No NDE was reported.
http://www.equip.org/article/did-pam-reynolds-have-a-near-death-experience/
No comments:
Post a Comment