Near-Death (Out-of-Body) Experiences by a patient

 (I tape recorded the following conversation June 5th, 1994.....Richard R. Grayson, M.D.)

Ms. J. T.

Age: 47

My first experience I remember as I was coming home from work in Aurora, Illinois from the Copley Hospital, I was head of the Acute Team for the Dialysis Unit there and I was crossing a main street and a drunk driver ran a red light and hit me broadside at 65 m.p.h.

The next thing I remember is just being on the roof of my car, not the hood of the car, but looking down between my legs kind of because my legs were over the windshield, and watching the paramedics take my body from the car and put on a stretcher with a brace on my neck and all this stuff.

I had a very good feeling of well being and not unhappiness, not fear, you know, not afraid of anything or being unhappy that this was happening, just a good, good feeling about myself and I can even remember smiling while I watched them. I did not have another incident.

 Dr. Grayson: Do you remember going back into your body?

 Ms. T.: No, it was just like when, as soon as my body came to, lying on the car, I came to before they completely had me onto the stretcher, and then I was back in there.

 Dr. Grayson: Back in your body.

Ms. T.: Yes, I was just there. I came to and I was there.

 Dr. Grayson: And did you have any tunnel or light experience.

 Ms. T.: That I do not remember.

 Dr. Grayson: No tunnel, or no light, no other people?

 Ms. T.: I don't remember.

 Dr. Grayson: Or voices?

 Ms. T.: I feel like I saw people, but I just don't remember, it's been so long.

 Dr. Grayson: Okay.

Ms. T.:  This happened January 14, I went into the Elgin, St. Joseph Hospital for surgery for a spine reconstruction and fusion which was a very serious thing. I had nothing on my mind except me. I had no thinking of anyone else that had passed away, or people that I knew or was I going to die, or anything, it was just the fear of being put to sleep and that the surgery was going to be okay.

Sometime after the surgery, and I believe according to what my husband has told me and what my daughter has told me in my mind because I could not put a time on the incident because I was on Morphine of course, after surgery and all, and I went in and out of sleep, so I felt that the last thing that I heard was a nurse say she is in shock. They put several hot blankets over me, but I was gone.

 Dr. Grayson: What do you mean you were gone?

 Ms. T.: I mean just unconscious or sleeping, or whatever, you know, knocked out, I remember the hot blankets, saying that she was in shock and that was it, okay? At that point in time my husband said that they made him leave the room, and I guess I went into PAT after that which I have been treated for that condition several times.

 Dr. Grayson: Were you in ICU at the time?

 Ms. T.: I was in ICU, yea. And, sometime during that, like I said, I could be vague on the specific time, this is the time I felt that this happened, not, you know, during the Morphine, I remember being awake at many other times before this, before going into shock and a lot of times afterwards, so this is the time and place according to my daughter and my husband.

After I came out of that, that they kept saying, I thought there was people standing there and I was telling them about certain things of this vision or out of body or what ever you want to call it. The main thing that struck my mind is that I was sitting on a stool...

 Dr. Grayson: Now this is in the vision?

 Ms. T.: In the vision itself, right, the main thing that I remember, and remembered as well is as if it happened to me right now.

 I was sitting on a stool and it felt like a low stool, you know, close to the ground, and Jesus Christ was sitting in a higher chair or stool, or something like that, and I could remember like we were having this conversation and it seemed like it was going on hours and hours that we talked, you know, a long period of time, not just a fleeting thing or anything like that. I remember touching his robes and I still can remember the feel of his robes and how rough the cloth was and how coarse it was, the material, and how primitive,

I guess it's a better work, of, you know, the roughness of the cloth, the weaving in it and all, and that he had a crown of thorns on his head. He held my hand and his hand radiated, I had my hand like on his leg, I am showing Dr. Grayson, on his lap like this and he had his hand over the top of it like this, just exactly like that.

The warmth radiated from his hand, it was like almost like he had a heating pad, it was just so extremely warm. We talked about a lot of things at the time, but I remember the part, Dr. Grayson's family would probably be the most interested in, and I still feel that I saw this and this was real. I do not feel that this was a dream brought on by morphine, I have mulled it over and over in my mind for the last four and a half months now.

I feel this was a real vision, or real out of body, or whatever, but that there was like an image of people, hundreds of people, or at least a hundred, hundred and fifty people standing, and I had a feeling of I knew all these people, but I really couldn't pick out faces except that of June Grayson, whom I dearly miss and love, was standing up close, more close towards me, like four or five feet away and she had on a royal blue and navy blue kind of a herringbone or houndstooth knit dress, that could have been a one piece dress or a two piece dress and I remember she was barefoot. (You have to excuse me).

She looked at me and I looked at her and she just had this glow, this warm ring, it just like radiated from her head and she said I was to tell Dick that she is okay and everything is fine. I felt that from her, that she was content or whatever, because I had the same feeling sitting here and I had a long talk with Jesus.

He told me things about my kids that, you know, what was happening, or that I kind of guessed the things, and told me how to solve those kinds of problems. I was kind of putting this to the back of my mind, because I am afraid it will hurt people if I say too much.

But he gave me one specific message for my youngest daughter who we have had a lot of problems with over the years with drug use and alcohol use, and that I was to immediately find her, seek her out, and give her this message and that I was immediately to find Dick Grayson and tell him what June said. From the time I left that hospital, that was my main goal, but it was a very difficult thing to do.

I did seek, before I even went home, after 170 mile trip, before I could even go home, I had to find my youngest daughter in that town and tell her the message from Jesus Christ, which was that he was still waiting for her and that he loved her. I took that, I don't remember if he said that he was still waiting for her to pray, or because of what he said, I'm waiting for her, that he wanted me to, you know, I just had that sense that that's what he meant, that she, you know, it's time to come back to me.

 There was some other details about other children and stuff, and right now they are all kind of off the top of my head, my main thing is that I have been thinking about June and since this has happened, and it was very difficult for me to tell Dr. Grayson this because I thought he would think I was crazy or something, but if it gives anyone any peace or mind in this family, or it gave me peace of mind, I came away from there with no fear of dying. I have absolutely no fear of dying, I think it is wonderful and it's beautiful, I mean no one wants to lose us, but I have no fear of dying now.

 Dr. Grayson: Was there a light or a tunnel?

 Ms. T.: There was, the way these people were standing, in fact I just saw a movie on TV the other night and I thought, God, was like they were in darkness, but there was a light reflecting behind them that, you know, how a movie camera or bright lights or pictures will glow behind you and it will just make a halo like around all of the whole group, that is kind of what the people were like, the faces weren't clear to me, that is what that part was like. But June was just as plain and like that to me.

 Dr. Grayson: You said originally that she was radiant and beautiful?

 Ms. T.: She was radiant. Her face glowed. She had a light of like the same kind of light, the halo of light that was showing behind these people standing all around here, that she had that same thing around her own self, separately from them.

 Dr. Grayson: And she didn't say anything else.

 Ms. T.: No, not that I remember. She may have, but I just, you know, it kind of scared me, and it kind of freaked me out a little bit, and it touched me because, I know you asked me on the phone was I thinking about her and I said, "No, I was only thinking about me at that time." But what I was going through, I had no thoughts of her or anyone else, or, you know, thoughts of dying, just fear of being put to sleep and being cut open and....

 Dr. Grayson: You have not had any dreams like this or anything since?

 Ms. T.: No, but I spent a lot of time thinking about it, mulling it over, you know, whether to leave it alone, and you know that the tendency...

 Dr. Grayson: Are you a religious person, do you go to Church?

 Ms. T.: Yea, I'm very religious, I feel I am.

 Dr. Grayson: What church?

 Ms. T.: The Organized Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints.

 Dr. Grayson: Okay. Well, the family will appreciate this.

 Ms. T.: Well, if it helps them at all, I'm glad. I don't want it to hurt anyone, and that's I guess, why I didn't want to even tell you, you know, and but I felt I had to. I mean, Jesus Christ told me...

 Ms. T.: God bless you all.

Dr. Grayson: Thank you.