I remember calling my boyfriend and telling him both my lungs had collapsed and all my vital organs were shutting down and the doctors didn’t know why. I had been in an out of consciousness and was being wheeled back into surgery to look for internal bleeding. My heart rate was low and my blood pressure was dropping. I was looking at the lights on the ceiling. That’s when everything went black.

It felt like I had been sucked out of my body into a black space of non-existence. My own personal purgatory. I knew I had died and all around me was darkness. I didn’t have a body and I wasn’t in pain anymore. However, I was alone. There was no one and nothing. The vibration of life, of nature - there was nothing. I was terrified and heartbroken. What had I done so horrible to be here? But almost as quickly as I felt that, I knew it was temporary.

Then this flash of scenes or like still pictures flashed before me. Things I had even forgotten, and I had this instant urge to get back because my children needed me. Those flashes were showing me my purpose for why I needed to be here now, or at least that’s how I felt. This bright light appeared off in the distance and I knew I had to go towards it to get back.

I could feel myself back in my body and I was trying to scream, “I’m alive.” I could hear the doctors talking and I was trying to move my fingers. I was so afraid they’d given upon me. Then I heard him say, “She’s waking up!”