I was standing in the basement at a white and red metal table with chrome legs that was facing the basement's west wall, with the stairs to the basement behind me. I was playing with an 8" plastic cupie doll that had a mint green and dark green crocheted dress and bonnet on it. The dark green satin bonnet strings were knotted and I couldn't get the knot undone. I started calling to my mother for help to get the knot out and I heard our family dog (Collie and German Shepard mix), who was lying at the foot of the stairs, start to growl. I turned around toward the dog, which continued to lay there and growl. I became afraid and stood still and continued to call for my mother. She didn't respond. My voice was not very loud when I was calling for her because I was scared. I started to walk toward the foot of the stairs very slowly with my body close to the stairs. Watching the dog all the time I was moving towards the bottom step. I paused half way to the bottom of the stairs and called again to my mother but I couldn't get my voice to be loud. The dog was still lying there and continued to growl at me.  Because my mother didn't come I inched my way to the bottom of the stairs to climb them. I turned my back to the dog, as I went very close around the gray metal pole at the bottom of the stairs, to climb the first step while still calling for my mother.

The dog attacked me from behind. But, I don't remember the actual attack. All I remember was my mother at the top of the stairs with a rolled up newspaper in her right hand coming down the steps as I was going up the bottom three steps. She was screaming at the dog. She got me up the steps and slammed the cellar door and took me into the bathroom and put my head under the sink faucet. There was a lot of blood. My mother got a pink summer weight blanket out of the hall closet and wrapped me up in it and ran to the neighbors screaming for them to take us to the hospital.

I remember being carried into the emergency room to my grandmother and grandfather. My grandfather was a doctor and my grandmother was a nurse. They put me on the operating table and my grandmother stood by me while they put a black rubber thing with a metal tube on it over my mouth and nose. There was cotton balls in it and they put ether on the cotton balls to make me go to sleep. There was a huge round light fixture above where I was laying on the table and very tall cabinets all the way to the ceiling with hospital stuff in them. Other people where there in the operating room and I could see the door to the room.

My grandmother told me to count backwards from 100. I didn't know numbers and thought this was  a dumb request. They told me not to be afraid. So I repeated the numbers after she said them. I remember only getting to number 97.

The next thing I remember is waking up at night in my mother and father's dark bedroom in their bed. My mother was standing at the bottom of the bed and I asked her, "Mommy what is it like to die?" She said nothing and I went back to sleep.

Right before I woke up and asked her this I had an out-of-body experience where I was suddenly, in spirit only floating stationary in a void of darkness. I could sense myself in the outline form of my body but my body wasn't there. I could see like there wasn't darkness just like a person can see when there is light in a room, but everything is black. It was extremely soundless in this space. So soundless that it actually hurt my ears not to hear sounds. No light was present. Yet, I could see clearly all around the black space just like being in a space that had light. I knew there were invisible boundaries that I could not go through. I just knew they were there. I called out, "Isn't anyone there?" I did this several times and started to get upset. No one answered. I knew I was the only one there. I thought I was going to be alone like this forever. I was feeling extreme emotional anxiety because no one would answer meand no one was there with me. I was just there floating stationary and calling out. I didn't like it. This bothered me a lot.

Then suddenly I was in my mother and father's bed and I woke up and saw my mother standing at the bottom of the bed. I had absolutely no pain. I didn't remember at the time that I had been bitten by the dog either. I only wanted to know what it was like to die. I sat up and my mother was at the foot of the bed. I immediately asked her, "Mommy what is it like to die?" She looked horrified but said nothing. I laid back down and went back to sleep.

My mother latter told me that the dog had bitten me in the back of my head. My grandfather had stitched my head up and he had told her that he did not know if I would live or die. My mother had been allowed to take me home instead of leaving me at the hospital. She and my father had been sleeping with me between them at night to keep watch over me. My head was swollen for over a month from the bite and they said I looked like a water head baby.

It was a long recovery and after I was terrified of going down the basement stairs and near any kind of animals. I was extremely jumpy for years if anything moved suddenly around me, especially animals of any type.

My grandfather said the dog had bitten through my skull and missed my brain by a quarter of an inch. The dog had been put to sleep immediately after it bit me.

My mother told me what I had said to her and that it made her afraid I was going to die. I never told her about the out-of-body experience.

I think about death everyday of my life now.