In 1998, my Mum had a severe brain aneurysm at age 63. She was comatose and on life support for several weeks in the ICU at Vancouver General Hospital. Her left internal carotid artery, in her brain, had ruptured and the doctors told us the chances of her surviving this were next to nothing. They suggested we each say our last good-byes to her.
She had aspirated at the time of her aneurysm and had developed a life-threatening pneumonia. They could not perform brain surgery to clip the aneurysm that had burst, and she also had a second one that was ready to go, because her lungs were too bad to take the anesthesia for a 12 hour operation. She was on a respirator and had what seemed like a 100 IV pumps attached to her. Every day I visited, and each time I went to the "chapel," rubbed water over my head and chest, and recited Psalm 23, "The Lord is my shepherd..."
She lost her blood pressure several times and had irregular heart beats, etc; but, each time they were able to save her. Eventually her pneumonia had improved enough to allow her to have the surgery. They told us afterwards that 99% of the people who don't get their aneurysms clipped right away, re-bleed and die. She survived several weeks like that. She made a complete recovery, without rehab, though she did suffer some vision impairment due to an infection on her optic nerve, which made her unable to cry anymore.
She told us that during this time in a coma she had very vivid dreams, as she called them, and the same one all the time. It went like this: She would be walking in a green meadow and would get to a river's edge. On the other side of the river, she could see silhouettes of people holding their arms to her, beckoning to her. The only people she could make out were two young girls, very fair, blond twins that seemed to be illuminated and smiling at her. She said she felt such a peace from the other side. She kept wanting to go to them, but then she would turn around to where she came from, because she just felt like she had to go back. The last time she visited the river, she told them she wouldn't be coming to see them anymore. They smiled at her and said, "It's OK. We'll see you again someday."
My Mum passed away September 2007, nine years after this ordeal, and I like to think that she went into the arms of those "angels." I thought it quite ironic that at the time I recited that Psalm with the words "green pastures" and "still waters;" and those were two main components in her (what I think was a near death) experience.
- Janice Dent, BC, Canada