Jen Updates

I am writing this update to you because I want you to know what happened to me on Monday, February 27, 2023 when I had a near-death experience. I am thankful to be alive and aware. I drew some rough pictures on the 28th, above and below. This got long but included is an introduction. 

I hope you all are OK! I send love and care to you!

We face challenges. Global challenges we collectively face include global pandemic, inequity, climate change disruptions, war-mongering leaders with nuclear weapons, displaced people, ongoing challenges to our US democracy from internal extremists at all levels, and more. Our beloved friendships, family, and livelihoods are ever more global and we must step up and expand our perspectives and priorities to reframe our existence in new ways. 

I'm doing my best to cope with work issues (ask me), health issues (some below), and the sheer volume of death: over the last year I've had deaths of a beloved friend, a mentor, 2 coworkers, family (father-in-law), and last month 2 former students in their early 20's. I guess there comes a time when death happens more often but I'm still figuring out how to cope.

Every time something bad happens, I try to balance it with something transcendent like during COVID I started refreshing my tech skills and met a wonderful professor, applying for a workplace leadership opportunity last year and getting in! Hurray! I learned so much and met so many great people! My husband is still alive!!! My former wee bairn is working on a PhD thesis and hangs out doing fun stuff with friends when there is spare time!

There has been a lot of hope, too. So many of you are doing so much good in the world. Taking care of plants, animals, and others, sharing your gifts, making lovely art in so many forms, raising awareness, sounding alarms, raising families, mentoring students, imagining new businesses, stepping up into new roles, being the change needed in daily life! Thank you for everything you do in this life. I'm so happy to know you and wish you the best. We all face challenges and I send you love and encouragement as you face the challenges in your own life.

So as an introduction to what happened to me on Monday 2/27/23 . . .

Dream about Fran

Last month in the early morning of the day my beloved friend and workplace sister Fran died (the morning she was letting go of life), I dreamed that she had suddenly thrown herself headfirst into a beautiful constructed lake (with center whirlpool feature) while we were walking in a lovely park. She was sucked under. Being a former lifeguard, I yelled for someone to turn off the water then dove under, pulled her out, and yelled "Activate EMS!" and asked the unaware crowd for help doing CPR. A random guy said he'd do the chest compressions while I did the breathing. I put my mouth to those dead lips and we began CPR. At some point I realized that EMS was too slow. That Fran was not going to come back and that if she did she would not be aware of herself. In the dream I spoke with the dead woman and told her to please pass on and go toward the light so that she could move into the next phase. That she was loved, it was OK to leave and indeed, that she could move on in peace, without regrets. 

Reality

I woke up knowing that Fran was gone or soon would be. She died within hours, later that same morning. 

After effects

For the last month I've been freaked out and having flashbacks about doing mouth-to-mouth on a dead person. I've also been realizing that there are cases in which death and loss are not to be avoided, feared, or thwarted. In Fran's case, she told me many times that she wanted to die at work without ever retiring; she got her wish. If during that dream Fran and I really were meeting in the Jungian depths where archetypes swim, I hope that I was of some help to letting Fran know it was OK to move on and that however much I personally wanted her to stay, that it was in her own best interests, given her own stated goals and perspective, to let go of this life. That dream helped me come to terms with my own selfish desire to keep Fran alive, and to acknowledge that it was OK to let her go. I am thankful to Fran for letting me know that it was OK to let her go, too. Sometimes it is not about saving someone or holding on to them, it is about letting them go with dignity and grace.

Death (End of Life)

Each of us has our own ideas about death. Many religions have frameworks and ritual, often to provide comfort to the living. In this next bit of writing below, am not intending to offend, undermine, or say that I have the answer. This is personal, but maybe there is something here of general use. 

In life, we exist in a broader context that we each have to come to terms with in our own unique way. Religious friends, atheists, agnostics, those who've read the Tibetan Book of the Dead, those who've had your own experiences, please let me know. 

Until Monday 2/27/23 I had not personally experienced death nor near-death.

I'm writing because maybe this will make sense to you, whatever your framework. Because this just happened, I'm still a bit disoriented. Also, maybe sharing this with you will give me peace and help me to process and understand.

Please, to my few work friends on this list, do not share this at work. 

Happy Memories by Jenn Serene

Chapter 63

Heart CT and Merging with the Big Oneness 

March 1, 2023

On February 27, 2023 I went in for a CT scan of my heart with contrast. I have been having some health challenges, including shortness of breath since January 2022 and chest pain that comes when I exert myself or am stressed. The final test to rule out heart problems as the source of my chest pain was this CT scan of my heart. When I asked whether I should get the test, my PCP (primary care physician) wrote that if the heart specialist said so, I should do it. Spoiler: The heart CT showed that my heart had no blockages! Hurray!

At the CT scan the staff person told me that my heart rate had to be as low as 75 to start the test. Since my heart rate was 90-something they needed to give me some metoprolol pill/s 40 minutes prior to the test to slow my heart, then during the test if my heart rate went up they'd give me more metoprolol via IV to keep my heart rate under 65. Then they said they'd spray nitroglycerin under my tongue at the end for the final CT scan with contrast. That's a lot of heart slowing and blood thinning for a person who is already short of breath. Hmmm. 

I told the staff person that I had shortness of breath and asthma. She said that sometimes people get COVID and afterward think that they have asthma but they don't. I told her that I did get my first and only diagnosis of asthma in early 2022 after I had a "respiratory infection" in late 2021. That my doctor had said my asthma might resolve someday; but that I feel short of breath since I began coughing in early January 2022. That I was having chest pain earlier today. She said that they could admit me to the ER where I could do the test in the ER. Or I could call my doctor and confirm. I said that I'd already gotten permission to do the tests via MyChart from my PCP. She tested me for wheezing by listening to my breathing, and said I wasn't wheezing now. When I breathed too deeply and demonstrated that I had a wheezing cough she said that the cough was different from what she heard in my chest (no wheezing). She said that I could either do the CT by taking metoprolol tablets now, or did I want to try to calm my pulse for 10 minutes? So I tried to calm my pulse. She said sometimes meditation and drinking water lowers the pulse. I drank my 8oz. container of water, meditated, and called my husband. I told him to come to the test and wait outside in case anything happened. 10 minutes later, since I'd calmed myself, my pulse had gone down from 90 to 84 so they said I needed only one pink tablet of metoprolol (not 2). I took it with a cup of water. She put in a port. It hurt. As I waited the 40 minutes for my heart to slow, my husband got there. I went in for the CT.

When they put on the chest electrodes and hooked me up to the CT machine I could see my heart rate. The metoprolol had decreased my heart rate to the low 50s, but with concentration (I meditate!) prior to the test beginning, I noticed that I could lower my pulse to 40 before going into the CT tube. Wow! 40 beats per minute! 

I knew they were not going to need the second dose of metoprolol via IV, and I was glad. The CT started. I think they might have given me a second dose of metoprolol during the CT, like she said they would. At the end they sprayed nitroglycerine under my tongue.

When they put the final contrast in, like contrast tests prior, I felt hot like I was peeing myself (I wasn't) and like before, I felt it going into my head, just as hot as other times, from back to front, bottom to top. I do not like the feeling of the hot contrast up my spine then in my brain.

But this time it felt like my brain was going to explode. The front of my head and two sides hurt like crazy. I got the worst headache ever. Spoiler: the splitting headache stayed with me for a few hours then with O2 and 2 liters of saline it dissipated. But even now I still have remnants. It hasn't fully gone away?!

After the test they unhooked me from the IV, removed the port and wrapped my arm; I don't remember that at all. I remember a guy saying that the test was done and that he'd already removed the port and how it hadn't hurt at all. They left me. I sat up. I stood up, then my legs gave out and I found myself sitting down on the CT bench. I willed myself to walk out. I got to the door and collapsed against the door frame. I fell to the ground against the wall and began shaking. I tried to talk but could not get words out. After huge struggle I managed to yell out one word at a time. The first letter was prolonged and then I forced the entire word out. My voice was guttural and low. Like an animal trying to speak. My legs were akimbo and I could not move them. My body was jerking. It seemed like I was having an epileptic seizure or a seizure of some kind. My head was splitting.

They put a pillow behind my head and leaned me on one of them. There was a kind nurse whose warm leg I was leaning on who had moved me kind of onto my side. One of the 3 nurses was not wearing a mask so I didn't let them take my mask off. The ER staff got there and asked me questions. I managed to get "HHHHHHHH-uuusband" out of my mouth and pointed to the lobby with shaky arm. 

They tried to have me walk to a chair, but I fell down. They put me in the chair. They asked a lot of questions I couldn't answer. One of them tried to move me from chair to ER gurney but I fell again, so 2 of them carried me to it and put me on it. They secured me down with straps because I was shaking and jerking so much, both large whole body, arm, leg, and small motor. I felt glad to have the straps hugging me safe. They took me to ER, 1st floor blue. I was able to get out "HHHHHHhh-uuuusband" because he was not fast, could not keep up, and they sent someone back for him. Put me in room 4 of ER. Asked questions. I tried but couldn’t answer with anything but first letter then, if it worked, I yelled one word. 

I realized my hand could sign (I had learned basic ASL and fingerspelling to communicate with deaf coworkers at my workplace) so I jerkily fingerspelled and signed. But nobody understood me. One of the doctors said, "She's fingerspelling!" Nobody knew ASL (American Sign Language). 

I was present but I could not coordinate my mouth's speech or body's movement. Somehow the issues that kept me from speaking with my mouth did not impact my ability to sign (other than the shaking). 

They hooked me up to a heart monitor attached to the bed. They put a port with a really thick needle into my elbow's middle arm vein. They took me on my gurney to get a brain scan to see if I'd had a stroke. There were a lot of them. They moved me using the sheet onto the CT machine. Spoiler: I did not have a stroke. My physical brain looked fine. A doctor later said I had some type of reaction encephalitis that he'd "read about but never seen until today."

I was slowing down. In the brain CT machine I was slowing so much that I left my body. 

Left my body

I was floating and gone. I was seeing a tunnel of bright light but I also from above, not just inside of the bright light tunnel. From overhead of the tunnel I could see that, from above, my own path led to a central hub from which there were a bunch of paths branching away from me and from the hub. Some of those paths seemed infinite. Other paths led to definite new nodes of beginning. There were some new nodes nearby, within my range of perception. Like a brighter ball of light down at the end of a long hallway. These new nodes at the ends of some tunnels were like golden glowing seeds at the end of a path of light. I got the feeling that each new node was a new life. I had a choice about which way I wanted to go and how. I gave a thought to my life and looked back at the silver bubble ocean on the sea that was earth and this life that my own silver bubble was floating amongst. I thought about how my son and husband would be able to survive without me and how I'd done all I could in this place. I love them and all of you but was moving on now. It felt incredibly good to move on. Ecstatic, peaceful, joyful was how it felt to me. 

I realized that other people might perceive this differently.

Choices

I realized that I had choices. Not just the path directly in front of me. There were multiple paths. I began to go onto my path toward the light (center was like a very light tennis-ball green, pale yellowish). The path was like an umbilical cord or tube connected to my life here now (behind me). The edges of the tunnel or outside of the tunnel of light (to sides of me) were like the deep, comforting, beautiful blue-purple-blackness of space, like the inside of a womb at night. I flowed into the tunnel and saw it was like a conduit or path leading to the (shifting to the broader, birds-eye view again) huge network of branching filaments stretching everywhere, overlapped, interconnected, in all directions, all at once, into the farthest horizon I could perceive from "above."

Umbilical cord kind of thingy

I saw that the umbilical cord that connected me to this big network of light (by my own path) was ever-present and had been there my whole life. 

Note: That sense of being extrusions of the world reflecting upon itself was certainly part of the reality I was perceiving, but there was a broader networked, filamentary, interconnected and overlapping framework within which we exist and to which we are also connected right now. 

Others

I noticed that every one of the other silver glowing bubbles in this place also was connected, each in our own way, both above and to one another, via the same metaphoric silver around all of us, as we floated around like individual bubbles together in this big silvery, shining quicksilver ocean. 

Note: I felt that every one of those other bubbles would have their own perception of this framework and that my perspective and path was one of many possible. Please contextualize this in your own way. My experience used imagery from space, the natural world, networks, chaotic/fractal systems. I loved it, but you may have different preferences/ perspective. No offense intended.

My choice

I realized I could disperse my being throughout everything in that network rather than go down one single path. At the first junction I came to, I would let myself disperse in all directions into infinite pieces. I made that joyful decision. I was ecstatically aware that this being would soon be merged back into the big oneness from whence I emerged. I was starting on the path (that umbilical cord connecting me to the big oneness, toward the light/along the path toward the hub where I would let go in all directions) with the indigo and space black-blue on the edges but also keeping the perspective of the totality (the branching framework) so I could diffuse into all of it, not just go on one new path to a golden seed (birth into new form) or myriad other possible choices like reuniting with others/ancestors, flowing along a new path to unknown ends that were beyond my horizon of perception, etc. I was moving forward to disperse this wildly, vividly energetic being who loves you and always will, whatever bits I become, whenever.

Yelling 

Then suddenly some people were yelling my name and asking if I could breathe. I did not say no I can't. I did not say I'm gone, leave me alone. I could not say anything. I looked back from the light path to broader perspective on infinite branches and I saw my body as a silvery webbed bubble, one among many, as far as I could perceive below me, shining. Inside my silver bubble was the connected umbilical cord. I was going back into my body. Ripe and full like fruit on a vine. Connected by that internally lit, shining umbilical cord to both the big oneness and to this silver grey web of bubbles on the surface of an ocean that was each of us, all of us on earth, all life, and everything. I tried to talk and tell them that I was slowing down. That I was SLOW. I wanted them to let me slow down and that they should please let me go. All my body said was S-s-s-s-SSSSS. . . LOW. They put oxygen in my nose and it was like I was suddenly dropped into my body again. 

Return

It took a lot of oxygen from that tank plus 2 liters of saline IV and a lot of pushing and my husband purposely making me mad to restore my vocal communication and ability to direct my own movement. They did not keep me overnight. As of this moment I'm able to talk and move myself around (weak, still shaking, communication deliberate but choppy). My head still hurts. I am not fully over this. I am going to work today. I am sending this to a beloved coworker so my friend will know what is going on with me right now.

You matter to me and I love you

I'm sending this out because life is short and I want you to know what is going on. I love you as family, friend, mentor, and other being here, now. I am so glad our lives have intersected and want you to know what I experienced when I left my body.

Please excuse the length but I'm not as clear as usual. 

Please write to me and share your own experiences and feelings. 

Love to you and yours!

Jenn Serene