Synchronicity and a Near-Death Experience

Respectfully dedicated to the noble medical practitioners...

There is a mystery at work in our lives. We are watched over in ways we don’t suspect… As a frequent recipient of that goodness, I share this story…

I remember going to work in my bookstore that morning feeling better than I had in months…

“I must finally be doing something right!” I thought to myself.

For several months, I had been suffering with various stomach problems…or at least that was the diagnosis. A bit of post-menstrual spotting, as well, though that was ruled out as a problem soon after my first visits. Many treatments were tried along the way…with no improvement. By this time, I was getting by on a bit of baby food.

It was a quiet morning at the store. I sat down gingerly, thinking with welcome relief that I might actually make it through the day…

I scanned the bookshelves for something new to read. I was surrounded by hundreds of desirable titles (there is nothing quite so wonderful as having your own book store!)

A book on an upper shelf caught my eye…a missionary story. I thought ‘that could be exciting’. I shuffled over and reached for it through the pain in my midsection.

Once settled in, I was soon engrossed in the story of a young woman whose life had paralleled my own…

This, according to an RCMP officer who had defended me against deportation in a complaint brought by the Catholic clergy…for the dubious crime of teaching bible studies to troubled youth in my home on Cape Breton.

The officer told me privately afterward that I reminded him of a young woman that he had known from his time working in the Inuit communities…

The young woman in this story was serving as a missionary in a far-northern Inuit community in Canada, where, as the RCMP officer described himself, they ‘served more as social workers than police'. These communities were rife with poverty, alcoholism and violence.

Their rights to hunt, trap and fish were curtailed, leaving them in poverty. The government also took terrible advantage of their knowledge that people of Native blood lack an enzyme to metabolize alcohol.

Subsequently, alcohol acts as a literal poison to the brain, leading to uncontrollable drinking, black-outs, psychotic and violent behavior, as well as addiction (if you’ll notice, reservations are always ringed by liquor stores). This has broad-reaching implications…

Certain Balkan populations also lack the enzyme. Our government used this knowledge to foment discord in the ‘balkanization’ of the former Yugoslavia.

https://debra152.substack.com/p/balkan-trilogy-f18

This young woman was able to accomplish things that no one else could. One story stood out in particular…

One of the most violent and dangerous people in the village was a woman in her thirties. More dangerous than a grizzly on a bad night…

Somehow, over time, the missionary brought her to Christ…and sobriety. It was a remarkable conversion that astonished and impacted the entire community!

And then tragedy struck. In the next scene, she was being life-flighted out by helicopter to the nearest city hospital due to an ectopic pregnancy. She bled out enroute and died.

The word-ECTOPIC-fairly lept off the page at me! It galvanized something in me!

I thought to myself, “That’s a medical term I’m not familiar with! I must look that up when I get home tonight!”

I forgot…

The next morning, I took a look at myself in the mirror. I was white as a sheet and I looked as though I had dropped 10 pounds overnight! Alarm bells went off inside…

But I’d had NO PAIN that morning…for the first time in all these months!

Then, suddenly the violent pain erupted again! I was in my small tiled bathroom. The burning pain dropped me to the floor in agony.

Then the most unexpected and amazing thing happened…

It was as if a bell jar descended over me. Inside that ‘jar’ there was NO pain. The capsule was the perfect temperature. The Light inside it sparkled in millions of bits.

And then, I encountered myself in a way that was hitherto unimaginable.

I was still ‘me’, but I was this tender sweet lamb version of myself…

Perfectly at peace and made of Love.

No rough edges, no judgement or difficult history…

I experienced myself as who I was before life and this world got to me…the true essence….my True Self.

It changed everything that I ever thought I knew about myself. I don’t think any amount of living could have brought me to this.

Then the ‘bell jar’ lifted away…

I calculated my next moves. I was young and uninsured. Methodist Hospital was a block and a half away. I could walk there.

(a bit of back story: From the time I was very young, I knew I was not to have children. My husband and I agreed and had used the rhythm method. But soon after the wedding, he changed his stance, and following his Italian heritage, wanted me barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen! He impregnated me during ovulation. I felt it. But finally my period arrived…10 days late…and I breathed a sigh of relief. But it never quite stopped.)

Then the pains came… A blast of burning pain in my stomach that dropped me to the floor, panting and in a cold sweat. My stomach bloated terribly. The symptoms would slowly subside over the next 10 days…and then it would hit again…hence the treatment for stomach problems. This had gone on for 4 months)

I reached the hospital entrance and asked for directions to the financial office. Whether by design or error, I entered the Emergency Room.

Once I realized my mistake, I backed away, asking again for directions to the financial office. The ER staff took one look at me and said “You’re not going anywhere!”

“Oh yes I am! Just tell me which way to go…”

As I backed out, I collapsed into waiting arms and the gurney they had prepared.

Once on the table, I was surrounded by doctors doing preliminary exams. They wanted to take me in for emergency surgery, but they realized I would not survive it. My blood count was too low. They would have to build me up and stabilize me for 3 days before they could go in for exploratory surgery. There were a lot of arguments about what might be wrong.

For my part, this could not have happened at a worse time! The following day was the start of a weekend festival that I had been waitlisted for for 3 years. Thirty thousand people would be walking past my store! How could this be happening to me!?

In retrospect, I was in for a very big lesson…

My youthful self-importance was about to take a hit…

I was about to learn that the world would go on just fine without me…and it did.

(We think we know what matters and how life should go, but we can be way off the mark. I certainly was…)

In the midst of all the turbulent debates in the ER, with all the painful probing going on, another doctor elbowed her way in amongst the 8 or 10 men. A slight East Indian woman performed the last painful physical exams. By this time, I was spent…at my limit.

When she weighed in, she said, ”Gentlemen, I know that the tests indicate otherwise, but my sense of things is that we are dealing with an ectopic pregnancy here.”

There was that word again! Ectopic!

I had been slipping in and out of consciousness by this time, but I was wide-awake now!

At that point, all the other doctors erupted and shouted her down…rather harshly. They ridiculed her line of thinking.

For my part, I knew that I had to affirm her stance. I truly didn’t want to, but I knew I had to. The puzzle pieces were fitting together.

Still unsure of what an ectopic pregnancy was, I knew from the story that it was life-threatening.

I had been led once again…

I tried to speak, but I was too weak to be heard above the tumult, so with difficulty, I raised an arm into the air and waved it feebly until someone finally noticed me.

I said simply “Don’t ask me how I know, but I know. You have to listen to her.” And then I faded out.

(This is in the embarassing human foibles category…The last thing that I remember before surgery was the oxygen mask coming toward my face as I looked up at my surgeon…the man who was about to save my life...and said with a silly grin and with all sincerity “You look just like Porky Pig!” My poor Jewish doctor!)

At my post-surgery consultation, I sat across from him once more. He was a little cool toward me initially…as one might understand.

But he warmed up as he described the surgery… My little Indian woman doctor had been right after all.

The remarkable confluence of events became apparent…

In defense of the doctors who had treated me along the way, I had been pregnant so briefly that none of the tests available at that time picked up the pregnancy. They had done their best and had acted in good faith.

He also explained why I was not in any pain on that last morning. “You were so close to death that your body was shutting down…hence, no pain. You were within an hour of dying, In fact you broke all NYC records for having survived an ectopic pregnancy (the hemorrhaging of a ruptured fallopian tube).

In the end, I did finally make it to the financial office…

I went three times…with three requests for a bill for all they had done..

Methodist Hospital never gave me a bill...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I know we are living in an era of distrust and disdain for the medical profession and its related components. While some of it is deserved, we should not make the error of poisoning the well (and our own minds, for that matter) with prejudice. It only makes things harder…

Be observant, educate yourself, involve your intuition, and work toward good outcomes.

There is much unheralded good in this world…

Much good came from this experience as life continued to unfold…I’ll add a sequel shortly!

Thanks for reading! Feel free to like, comment, DM, subscribe (free) share, and restack…

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