What does it feel like to die? No one has an exact answer, but for some it may feel like a surreal feeling of dizziness, drifting into an otherworldly world, an out-of-body experience, seeing a bright light, or hearing loved ones talk. Lauren CanadyDeath was felt to be “peaceful.” Death is a special experience only known by those who have experienced it. Unfortunately, they usually do not survive long enough to tell the tale. But Lauren survived. She briefly emerged from the dark abyss of death and told her story. Nearly a year later, she is reported to be a changed person. Newsweek.
In early 2023, a Virginia woman named Lauren suffered sudden cardiac arrest. Her heart stopped functioning and blood stopped flowing through her body. She was declared “clinically dead” for 24 minutes before she began breathing again. On the day of the attack, she suffered a “grand mal seizure,” characterized by violent muscle contractions and loss of consciousness.
“My husband was across the hall and heard me say, ‘Oh my God, I’m dead,'” Lauren recalls. “He ran over and found me on the floor, unconscious. I wasn’t breathing and I was blue.” When he found her lying there unconscious, he called 911 and performed CPR for four minutes until paramedics arrived. CPR, also known as “cardiopulmonary resuscitation,” is the act of pushing on the chest to restore oxygen flow in the body. If her husband hadn’t performed CPR in time, she would have had no chance of survival. University of Michigan Transplant CenterIt must be administered to the patient within 8-10 minutes: brain cells begin to die within one minute of cardiac arrest, and after 15 minutes recovery is impossible.
Twenty-four minutes and four shocks from a defibrillator later, her heart started beating again, and Lauren was rushed to hospital and admitted to the intensive care unit, where she tested positive for COVID-19 and myocarditis. Mayo ClinicMyocarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle called the myocardium. This disease can decrease the heart’s ability to pump blood.
Nine days later, Lauren was released from the intensive care unit. Having survived the otherworldly experience of death, she began speaking out to others about her experience. She was forced to quit her job, but will be releasing a memoir, “Independence Avenue: How Individualism Killed Me and Community Revived Me” In it, she reflects on living a fulfilling life while dealing with a chronic illness. In December 2023, Lauren shared her journey through life and death in a Reddit group. translation:.
“I can’t report any appearances or personalities or visions, but I have a gut feeling that it was friendly and peaceful,” Lauren told Newsweek. “I felt like I was melting, which was really nice. There was a strong sense of peace that I felt when I was unconscious.”
A few days after returning home, she reported that she also experienced memory loss. “For the first few days I had no short-term memory and I didn’t know what was going on and it was very frustrating. I was just very restless,” she said. However, she took this in a positive way and started enjoying life’s small moments, like taking a shower or eating a cheeseburger. “I remember a lot of really calm moments in and after the hospital where none of the worries I had before mattered and I got really excited about things like cheeseburgers. Things just felt so simple,” she said. Lauren said it felt like a “second life,” adding: “In my first life, I was a very individualistic, strong person. In this life, I have a totally different worldview and I’m comfortable relying on others most of the time.”
She said that in her new life, status and professional success are less important than the necessities of life, comfort and helping others, and that she is here to live her own life. She has also started paying closer attention to her overall health. “I try to walk 10,000 steps a day and hike as much as I can once a week,” she said. “I also spend a lot of time in silence, including quiet prayer and meditation, and I go to bed around 8 p.m. most nights.”
“When people say death is a part of life, I take that literally,” Lauren waxed poetic about her near-death experience, which she described as nothing short of miraculous.
