Amazing Near Death Experience

To: You
From: Me
Date: March 21, the last day of Spring Break

Hi, my name is Dwight, but you can call me “Blessed” for that is what I am. I earn a living as a teacher. Today is Sunday, the last day of spring break. This morning, when I decided to write this letter, I realized that I was surrounded by God’s underserved blessing, standing in the midst of miracles. And now I am going to stop and cry, again.

I’m back now. I may have to stop many times. You see, I should be dead—or at least incapacitated. It is hard to admit, but from what I can tell, I suffered a severe stroke just a week ago. And somehow, tomorrow I will go back to school and try to pretend that nothing happened. The students know, of course: Because ten days ago my semi-conscious body was taken out of the school on a stretcher, placed in an ambulance, and rushed to the hospital a mile from school. And even today, I still I don’t know when or if it will ever end. Looking ahead I see: more medical tests, more doctors, more tears, more prayers—and hopefully: more miracles.

This morning I went to the morning prayer meeting, church and communion. When I explained what happened to my pastors, they said I should write this down—today—before I forget what happened. It is hard, so very hard. Many tears: tears of thanksgiving and gratitude to God. How can I ever thank Him? Perhaps with is letter.

I will begin with the biggest question of all: Why is this happening?

From God’s perspective there may be hundreds of reasons. I will suggest two: 1) In a few years I may choose early retirement. If I do, I am thinking of spending some of my time in a hospital prayer ministry. This experience will radically change my perspective on the relationship between crisis, prayer, and miracles. 2) Because of this experience, I am writing this letter to you. No experience, no letter. Perhaps you or one of your relatives/friends is the reason why I am going through this experience. I hope this letter will help you, I suspect that writing it will help me a lot. For now, I am tired and so I will stop, rest and pray a while.

Call me Blessed, "Dwight" D. Allen

TO: My Doctors
FROM: Dwight D. Allen
DATE: March 28, 2010 (2 weeks after my stroke and near death.)

Greetings,

As I begin this description of my stroke and near-death experience, I will first describe my basic views about religion.

My view is that God is an unfathomable mystery. No man can see God and live. In the normal course of human events, God does not speak directly to humans. If God did speak with a human, it would probably be through the subconscious imagination—which means that the human would not be able to distinguish between God and his/her own imagination, thereby maintaining God’s cloak of mystery.

I have never seen an angel or a spirit, I will stipulate that they probably exist. Communication with an angel would probably also be through a person’s subconscious imagination. In the secular world, an angel is anything that behaves abnormally good. For example, my dog is an angel when it prevents me from being hit by a car. My wife “Angelica” is my guardian angel.

Other important tenants of my faith include: (a) God is the source of all wisdom, perfection and blessings, (b) humanness is the source of our folly and imperfection, (c) a person should acknowledge God in everything he does.

With those tenants established, I will begin this account of my stroke and near death.

BACKGROUND & HISTORY:

Last fall I believe I had a small stroke. People say that I have an unusually high level of self-awareness. I noticed that I was not pronouncing words as clearly as normal. (I did doctoral work in vocal diction, so I quickly noticed the change in my diction.) In addition, part of the back-right side of my tongue did not operate normally. On several occasions I unconsciously bit the center of the back of my tongue—a bad deep bleeding bite. Ultimately I had to re-train my diction and re-train my chewing habits. I told my wife the symptoms, and I told her if she ever heard me slurring my speech to call the hospital immediately—because I don’t want to have serious stroke that might impair or end my earthly life.

Some of my students have told me: “during the weeks before you went to the hospital, you acted just like my grandmother acted before she had her stroke,” and “you acted just like my uncle acted before he had his stroke.” (I thought I was simply absent-minded, but sometimes kids pick up on subtleties that we often miss.)

My office mate said “when I walked into our office, you looked exactly like I imagined a stroke victim would look.”

Others, who have only had experience with seizure victims, said I looked like I was having a seizure.

THE STROKE-LIKE EPISODE:

The Thursday before spring break began quite normally. I donned my pen-stripe pants, dress shirt and bow tie and drove to the college where I teach high school physics, chemistry and math. I felt tired and was glad Spring Break was only a few days away.

My first class went reasonably well. My students say I was very distracted, and so were they. Everyone was in pre-spring break mode. At the end of class, I felt very tired and decided to go back to my office for a nap.

About 9:30 I arrived at my office and a student stopped in to ask me a trig question. I mentioned that I was tired and she promised to come back later. I have often told people: next I heard a whooshing sound, and then time seemed to go backwards. (But, what would cause a whooshing sound? If you purse your lips, and blow air, it makes a whooshing sound. If you crimp or uncrimp a water hose, it makes a whooshing sound. When you knock over a bucket the water whooshes out. When a damn bursts, the water whooshes out. A whooshing sound inside your head is not a good thing.)

After the whoosh, I desperately wanted to keep remembering things. I picked up my glasses and thought: glasses, remember glasses, this is very important, these are glasses. Then I stood and walked to the open door. Door, I thought, this is a door, remember it is important, this is a door. I looked at the secretary and just stared.

Why was it so important? Simple terms, simple definitions, yet it seemed vitally important to remember what words meant. Obviously, after the whoosh, words and meanings became important because in my mind, many meanings and their words were disconnecting. Ideas were separating from meanings, antonyms were separating from synonyms, and my verbal/linguistic facility was rapidly disappearing. By the time I reached the doorway my reasoning abilities had dropped to 10% or less and was quickly declining to minimal status. No words, no functioning thoughts. No fear, little feeling, like going to sleep, like an invitation to enter dreamland.

My boss came in and guided me to a chair. A nearby nurse stepped in, EMS was called, my wife was called, and EMS arrived. I did not understand their questions, and was unable to give responses. The nurse says that I was singing soflty.

Eventually they asked me to walk to the stretcher. I tried to stand, and then they gently laid me on the floor. My office mate says that when he arrived at the room I lay twitching uncontrollably--like a seizure or stroke.

I felt them lift me to the stretcher, and I watched the ceiling roll by and the cloudy sky pass by the trees as they rolled me to the ambulance. I closed my eyes so that I would not accidentally stare at the sun, and listened to the wheels rolling on the concrete.

Inside, I saw them close the ambulance door. I don’t remember many details. I saw a report from the emergency room that says I was awake when I came in. I don’t remember it. They said something about my giving strange answers to their questions. That would be consistent with my impression that I was unable to understand what many of the words meant. My reasoning abilities were so poor that I gave rote answers to common questions that may not have had anything to do with what they were asking.

MY NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE:

At some point, I felt my spirit pull away from my body. I was flying out of the room, and into space—rising higher and higher until I could see the entire galaxy.