HARD TO EXPLAIN TALES
Kaleidoscope Eyes
I live in Illinois south of
Chicago. I January of 1999 I took a trip to California, just my dog Heidi and I.
I have two brothers who live there so a visit was going to be good. I wear
contacts and my eyes got very irritated. They would turn red and burn. I
thought maybe the sand of New Mexico had caused it. I got to my brother's on
Jan. 24th his birthday. During my visit there I had occasion to lay on Th. sofa
a place a cool washrag on my eyes and forehead. My brother Lane was
concerned. He told me he had not seen me do that since I was sixteen. I did
not think a lot about it just it relieved them.
I had promised my niece I
would be home for her wedding on February 6, 1999. I got to Illinois with a
few days to spare. In the meantime I went to my family doctor. He referred me
to an eye specialist. I went to the same one I had seen ten years earlier. He
gave me steroid drops because of an unusual pressure. I returned on Friday the
26th for a recheck, and was advised to continue the drops. He was not sure why
I had a pressure.
Saturday evening came I had
a slight headache. I took some Tylenol and watched TV finally falling asleep.
Throughout the night I became
violently ill, thinking
it was a migraine and would go away later vomiting I returned to bed. Not
wanting to wake my spouse I moved to the extra bedroom, I made a few more rip
in the dark. I knew the way without needing to turn on lights. At 8 o'clock am
I went to the emergency room, my vision was so blurred I could hardly see. The
doctor at the ER thought I had an aneurysm so tests were ordered. My eye
sockets swelled so bad I felt I had a mask on. My vision went from color to
black and white. Time went by so fast as I was passing out and only waking for
short times. My vision started turning again and looked like
X-ray vision until
finally going black. I awoke in intensive care, I looked up and could see
slightly. One of the containers of IV looked very sinister. My blood pressure
had gotten to 250/200. My nurse was fabulous she talked to me and we really
connected, I think she helped me to hang on. It was March 2, 1999. My neurosurgeon was making arrangements to send me to Chicago for surgery.
I was sent by ambulance to
Northwestern Memorial in Chicago. I was terrified of falling asleep again, I
had lost three days.
I stayed awake by talking all
the way in the ambulance. At the Hospital I was prepped for surgery and left in
the surgical bay. At some point my heart stopped. My husband said they
inserted a needle to restart it. The day following surgery I remembered being
in a darkened place that had beams of light traveling by. The colors were
beautiful orange fizz, fuscia, brilliant blue, all neon shades. I was able to
walk on these beams from one to another but never coming to an end. The
sensation was like walking on the traveling walkway at the airport. The beams
were at various heights and numerous numbers of them. I just stepped from one
to another, suddenly I was awake and in recovery. The tumor had exploded,
and bled out into my optic nerve and front area of the brain. I
survived a non-cancerous pituitary adenoma that had exploded. The surgeon
said when they explode death is the norm or severe problems. Does this
sound like a near death experience to you?
-Unsigned.