I have had three near death experiences in my life.

The first was when I was a year old and had a severe case of influenza. After prolonged dehydration I slipped into a coma. I don't remember much from when I was unconscious, but I do remember it being white, not black or dark as some of us would imagine nothingness to be. When I awoke in the hospital some three days later, I remember feeling lighter and more ethereal.

The second time was when I had malaria and dysentery at the same time, when I was in Nepal. I was alone and in my hotel. I had 48 hours of diarrhea and my rule was that after two days of diarrhea I would always take antibiotics, but the 2 day point happened at night time, so I had to wait until morning. I had diarrhea throughout the entire night but because there was no light, I didn't realize it was mostly blood. In the morning when I awoke, everything had a halo around it, and everything was enveloped in bright lights. I felt completely apathetic about the state of my body, and my mind felt somewhat blissful. I could hear faint voices... actually, they weren't voices exactly. I don't know how to describe it. I must have been surrounded by beings of some kind. Everything felt peaceful and still. I was dying.

I laid there, content to die... but eventually something forced me out of bed. I crawled across the floor to the bathroom, turned on the cold shower, and laid beneath it. This rejuvenated me enough to agonizingly walk down the street to a clinic around the corner (and I was lucky there was one). Nepalese people who saw me walking down the street looked horrified... they ran to me and helped me walk to the clinic. My eyes were sunken, I was pale and emaciated, and my ribs were visible (under my clothes). In the clinic they gave me an antibiotic IV for the dehydration and dysentery, and malaria medication.

The third time was here in Canada, just this past summer. I contracted severe salmonella food poisoning from eating meat at a Safeway. It took less than 10 hours for me to go from normal to so dehydrated that I entered hypovolemic shock. My roommate found me unconscious and called an ambulance. I had the same experience again of being surrounded by halos, light, and lovely beings. Even though my body was in intense physical pain, I wanted to quietly slip away and be with these beings.

My experiences are not the true essence of the NDEs we read about, where people feel disembodiment, or see tunnels of light... but their descriptions of feeling love, peace, and assurance that everything will be alright, are all things I have had in mine.