Our minds stay wit us when we die
A Welsh nurse believes she is close to answering the age-old question of what happens to us once we die. For the past five years, Penny Sartori, from Swansea, has been researching near-death experiences among critically ill patients in the city's Morriston Hospital Intensive Care Unit. And at the end of the five- year study, the most comprehensive of its type ever done, the 32-year-old says she has evidence to show that when people are declared clinically dead, their minds remain active. She has 15 accounts from people that suggest there could be some kind of life after death. Now the findings will be used by Dr Peter Fenwick, an internationally renowned neuro-psychiatrist and Fellow of the Royal Collegeof Psychiatrists, who isconducting research into the subject across the UK.
Nearly all of the accounts she gathered said they floated above the resuscitation room and many gave details about procedures, nurses, porters or doctors they could not have seen from the positions they were lying in.
Many described floating towards a calming, bright light, where they saw relatives beckoning them at first, then eventually telling them to "go back".
But one woman, who has since died, reported a "hell" experience of falling downwards and being surrounded by dark, frightening shapes and noises??? ( i wonder where she went )
A part-time doctoral student at the University of Wales, Lampeter, Mrs Sartori was granted ethical approval to carry out the research, which she used as a thesis for a Phd in near death experiences. An earlier study at a Southampton hospital of 63 severe heart-attack survivors, found seven had "classic" near- death experiences, talking of a tunnel of light.
More research was called for and Mrs Sartori was ideally placed at the intensive care unit in Morriston, where many accident victims or other gravely ill people "clinically die" but are revived by resuscitation techniques.
She said, "What I found is incredible. One man, whose life signs completely went, said he floated above his body and saw everything.
"He described our attempts to revive him in perfect detail, even talking about a doctor who came in while off-duty then left. "The patient's eyes were not even open when this happened and he was not only unconscious he was clinically dead.
"The man described seeing a Jesus-like, bearded figure standing next to his dead father. "He said the figure touched him on the hand and told him to return as it was not his time.
"The amazing thing was that this patient, in his 50s, had suffered a life-long contracture of the hand from birth. "Afterwards the movement returned to his hand."
She said many of the patients she asked about near-death experiences said they would not have volunteered the information if they had not asked.
"This suggests the phenomenon could be more widespread." Mrs Sartori added that near death experiences (NDEs) are mostly positive.
"Nearly all those who have had NDEs tell me that they no longer fear death. In fact, because of what happened to them while clinically dead, they say they are happy to go.
"Of those who have had NDEs, some have been quite religious while others were at best agnostics."
Although it is easy to be sceptical about strange phenomena such as near-death experiences, the world is littered with examples very difficult to explain away...