Patients recall death experiences after cardiac arrest | Hacker News Reader

Patients recall death experiences after cardiac arrest

nyulangone.org

34 pointsrntn13 comments

I'm one of those who don't remember a thing, although people ask about it.[0] I just woke up from surgery and it was painful to breathe -- my leg should have hurt, not my chest -- which is when they told me I was lucky they hadn't broken any ribs when administering CPR.

[0] - I tell them I didn't make it to the "white light" but, I saw the Taco Bell and McDonald's on the way there

I’ve almost went from severe hypoglycemia several times it’s awful and in the moment I automatically do whatever gives me the highest chance of survival immediately without thought or question. The one time it was exceptionally bad I cried out and someone else called 911. Just feels like body don’t work but that even includes the breathing and other very necessary things.

I didn’t have any revelations I just felt incredible amounts of I need to do what it takes to make this never happen again. When I would faint and what not I wouldn’t really be all there so hard to have much to even think about. My sugar was dropping into the 20s and low 30s and at 54 you already can’t really think anymore. I wonder if hypoglycemic coma death survivors universally just have no recollection of anything because no sugar to power the brain to make memories.

Well, whatever it means, and as far as one can extrapolate, it's nice to know that death itself is not traumatic or painful.

It is definitely nice to know and also nice to experience (at least after the fact, as the leading up to it can be terrifying)

You can have a death experience through meditation, breath work, hypnosis or psychedelics

It’s very liberating to go through it, as shown by studies in which they’ve given psilocybin to terminally ill patients

There is definitely a shut-down procedure that the body goes through and it appears to be peaceful. But in many cases I do think there is a terrible moment when your conscious brain is still alive and you realize you are dying. It looks when you see it exactly like a scared animal looks, if you’ve ever seen that.

I’ve only seen it twice but it doesn’t leave you.

As someone who has had both a physical death experience (flatlined, no heartbeat for several minutes) and psychedelic-induced death experiences, my experiences of the two were quite different.

Physical death for me involved no "white lights" or life-flashes. It was just pure, black nothing. Like a dreamless sleep -- you go to bed, and then next thing you know you're waking up. Everything in between was a blank, black nothing, with no sense of time.

Psychedelic death experiences were a thousand times more intense and I still retained some element of base level consciousness.

Eh, I’ve seen some deaths. Hospital setting. They can be really not great for sure. Maybe that’s just my interpretation, can’t ask them but did see them, but definitely made me readjust my attitude to that the two most important moments in your life are how/why you are born and how/why you die.

I’ve dabbled in various religious studies, now consider myself a FBI-most-wanted traditional Catholic. What I’ve found to be anxiety relieving is the practice of practicing for death. In Latin we have a phrase “memento Mori” which means remember death and there are lots of oddities that help us there, like chandeliers made from skulls and bones and songs and other traditions like “ash Wednesday” etc .

Anyways, my point is death can be and probably should be terrifying. It depends on how you harness that energy. You can practice for death. Seeing a number, I think it’s good practice. It shouldn’t be morbid, if you ask me. Everybody poops, everybody dies. Feel free to reflect on death to help yourself appreciate life.

Edit: I guess if you believe in no after life it doesn’t really matter right? But I still think it’s worth it to try and make my last few moments on earth less terrifying, even if I am sent into a nothingness afterwards.

> the two most important moments in your life are how/why you are born and how/why you die

everyone starts and ends the exact same way (a vague 'clicking in', and a bright light/tunnel), and some of us through ritual even experience momentous occasions similarly (confirmation, communion, holidays), but the only way we differentiate ourselves amongst other people is through the choices we make in the moments between the two bookends

ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and all that good stuff in between https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoKluzn07eQ

As I told the anesthesiologist shortly before one of my many general anesthesia experiences: The only way I'm going to know whether I died in this room is when I wake up. There is no difference between anesthesia and death.

Recent and related:

People experience ‘new dimensions of reality' when dying: study - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37725115 - Oct 2023 (52 comments)

Near death experiences are really interesting. It’s particularly striking that some people report a kind of conscious, albeit altered, experience with no measurable brain function occurring.

"Near-death" experiences. Obviously, they didn't actually die when their heart stopped. At least, it should be obvious.

It seems dangerous that some of this is tainted by mysticism. That sort of thing will make doctors less likely to take it seriously and some patients who could still have been revived will not be. Or there might be possibilities for new approaches that weren't considered before.

> ilaksh 11 minutes ago | next [–]

> "Near-death" experiences. Obviously, they didn't actually die when their heart stopped. At least, it should be obvious.

It's obvious framed that way because it's a tautology that removes the possibility of reviving (restore to life), by framing it as impossible.

Life, if truly and fully gone, cannot be restored; therefore any life that appears to have been restored must be an illusion.

E.g. Max in "A Princess Bride:" "He's only mostly dead."

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