I was on vacation at Lake Powell and rented a two-story houseboat for one week. On the last day of the trip we decided to go down the swim slide that was 10 feet from the top of the second story. I went down the slide 18-feet and fell into a rock, which shattered my tibia, fibula, and tibia plateau in eight places--a compound fracture. I was airlifted by helicopter to a trauma center where I spent eight months. At the center, they put me into emergency surgery the next day to rebuild my calf with metal and screws. Three days later I came down with compartment syndrome, but the doctors missed it (funny as my calf was the size of a basketball at the time). A nurse brought a doctor in and begged him to do something as I was looking pretty bad and she claimed she thought I was going to be in real trouble if he didn't. Later, they brought me into ultra sound where they discovered that the blood flow had stopped circulating into my leg (killing my anterior muscle from lack of blood flow), and hence not circulating around my body at that time.

The doctor and my fiancée rushed me down the hall into emergency surgery. I closed my eyes for a moment. All of a sudden I was off the planet and floating way above the earth, although I could feel it behind me. I was looking into a star field--a massive, infinite entity that encompassed all of the galaxies, all of space, and some presence which is right in front of us all of the time that the earth sits in. It was massive and unimaginable. And, I had the thought that all of the dark matter and dark energy in the whole of the void was God. I was overwhelmed by the size of this presence. I understood that it knew everything about me as if it had built me cell by cell.

I felt the earth behind me. I realized it was seething with life, an ocean of blue and white froth waves being life and teaming with it. Then I didn't hear a voice, but rather I was asked a question by this entity. It told me if I wanted to come out now I could, or I could go back. No voice, but I felt the question in a big way. I thought of my life and fiancée and decided to go back. Right then I opened my eyes and was still on the rolling gurney, almost in the very same spot as if no time had passed at all. I leaned up and told my fiancée that I didn't think I was going to make it, and goodbye. The doctor started running and pushing the gurney into surgery.

When I woke from surgery many hours later, I had the strangest thought that we are all floating around in a gas. Where we are going, there is no gas and everything is crystal clear, like diamonds. Here we are looking through a foggy gas, kind of like when it is very hot and you see those heat waves on a road as you drive. That is what it looks like here.

My fiancée said when I first woke up I told him that I wasn't baptized (strange since I had no religious beliefs). Anyway, compartment syndrome was a very serious life-threatening event and I had no clue that I was dying at the time nor did I have any religious beliefs.