On the afternoon of January 10th I began to feel kind of funky, like maybe I had eaten something bad. I went home that night and went straight to bed. Thursday, I went to work and by the afternoon I had a stomach ache and thought I was coming down with a virus. I went home that night and straight to bed again. About 12:30 a.m. I awoke with a strong pain in my gut like someone had stabbed me; it would not go away. I tried to call someone I knew and all I got was an answering machine. I waited (in pain) until I finally reached my neighbor at about 7 a.m. I had her take me to the nearest urgent care place hoping that if it was serious enough to go the the ER that I could bypass the wait from a doctor's referral.

When I got there they saw me right away (to the annoyance of the others there) and gave me a "direct admit" to the nearest hospital and called them to say I was coming. I got to the hospital a few minutes later, but it was almost eight hours before I saw anybody. Meanwhile I called work throughout this time to give updates and became less and less coherent. The ER decided I had crohn's disease (which I knew was wrong) and an inflamed appendix which was a routine surgery and I would be out by Monday.

Well, when the surgeon went in, it was discovered that I not only had appendicitis (which the doctor later said probably went on Wednesday afternoon) but also a ruptured ilium (which the doctor later said probably was the sharp pain I was feeling starting the previous night). Puss went as high up as my liver. I did eventually recover (to the doctor's amazement) but I never told him about the NDE that I had during this process. I figured he would probably think I had lost my mind and fill me with antipsychotics. I went through this in multiple steps throughout the next several days.

During the wait in the ER at some point I slipped away. It started with a darkened area (which was not a void) that was kind of a roadway with different colored streaks and sparks. I had the sensation like I was riding one of those airport level moving things. Then the next thing I knew I was in a kind of desert-like place and I could see a stream of people going toward a building. At that point I knew what had happened and went to the building. It kind of looked like a cross between an old 19th century church and a barn. There were people there (none of whom I knew) and some small animals. No one would talk to me because they were occupied with whatever they were doing. I finally found a badger who would talk to me. I was there for a very long time but he told me that I would eventually go to where I needed to go. I went outside and it was real bright but I needed no adjustment for discomfort. There were large animals and several roadways. I went back inside and was met by an unfamiliar man who told me, "You don't belong here." I was sent away. I went to another place which was kind of a neutral place similar to this plane. I knew I was supposed to take a "class" or learn something. My experiental time was approximately a week although only a few hours had passed here. At this point I woke up from surgery. I had the mental state as though I knew I was going to die and was okay with it.

At some point I slipped back into the experience and found myself in a "class" with several other beings. We were all given a "tool" each of which had different functions. Also, they were in groups of three except for mine which was one being and me. The class took experientially about four months. Half of it was actually at a place for learning how to use this tool and other related matter. The last half was going with my "lab partner out in the field" using our tool. I then went to his home and we built some sort of healing construct. His tool built the construct and mine did the healing aspect to it. Experiential time passage was approximately six months. equal to two or three days here.

I woke up to find at least two people (I think there was a third person out of my immediate vision) beside my bed. The nurse had a big needle and was flicking the air out of it. I felt very disoriented. The doctor leaped back when I said, "What are you doing?" He said something kind of lame like, "It took us a lot of time and effort to wake you up...." He asked me to move this, that and the other thing then asked me questions and pushed me to answer. He checked me over for the next several minutes.

At some point, I don't know exactly when this happened in the hospital, but I met "the lady of the veil" who put her left hand beneath my neck and her right hand on my belly and I passed out. I then went to a place that was kind of like rolling hills of memory foam grass with little flowers all over the place. Some entity like none I've ever encountered was embracing me. Complete unconditional love and acceptance. I interacted with this entity for the next experiential two months. This area was clearly a place where the truly dead can only go and I thought that I was not coming back. I knew that the last place I went to was beyond any "barrier" to come back but something or someone made an exception.

Obviously at some point I did come back. I noticed that my "life cord" (I know this is a pagan term which basically is the connection between your immortal essence and your body) was changed or absent and that I really wasn't back on some levels. This has remained true, in fact, if anything it has intensified since. This is only the tip of the iceberg. I went through eight months of experience while only eight days passed here. I did not believe in a higher power before, (It is not a requirement in paganism to have this belief. I believed the "gods" were mentors and elders, not gods in the common sense of the word) but when you are embraced by this higher power, belief is not an issue. One cannot argue with experience.

A rather amusing epilogue is that a week before this happened I got moved to a different program at work. This is rather routine. In this case, there had not been any people common to both positions. I then went through the NDE. Six months later, performance evaluations came around. My boss got reviews from both bosses and they did not match. It was like a review of two completely different people. When they got together with me they argued with each other the entire time, each accusing the other of being totally wrong in their assessment. It got up to the center manager (a level of management about three or four above these two) and he called it a "discontinuity" and attempted to make sense of it. I said nothing for the assessment. The later manager was a lot better that the earlier one.