Report From the Edge: Reflections On A 'Near Death' Experience
I apologise for the radio silence and lack of blogs for the last few weeks, but I have been living through the truth of Proverbs 16: 9 ‘The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.’
On October 5th, I went into hospital for a ‘simple’ mastectomy – an operation now considered so routine that it is treated as day case. The NHS performs 18,000 mastectomies per year (a sobering statistic) and the majority pass without incident and patients generally recover well at home, many being able to return to work within a few weeks.
I am not a stranger to surgery, and previous operations have gone smoothly, so I felt no great sense of trepidation (other than the usual as I went under the knife. When I came to in the recovery room I was told the operation was a success, and within an hour I was sitting up drinking tea and hoovering down custard creams. Then a couple of hours later my darling husband picked me up and brought me home, battered and bruised but relieved that the cancer had been cut from my body. So far so good.
Four days later, however, I was fighting for my life, having suffered a massive internal haemorrhage and a peri-cardiac arrest due to loss of blood. The night of the surgery I had ended up in A&E (yet again) with pain in my right leg and had been prescribed blood thinning injections for a suspected DVT. But over the next couple of days I began to bleed from the wound in my side and to suffer from intense dizziness – symptoms I reported but were told were normal. By Friday morning however I was so weak I could no longer stand, so my darling John phoned an ambulance.
Just under an hour later I was in resuscitation, my heart having nearly stopped from loss of blood (I had a blood pressure of 50/30) and after multiple blood transfusions I was taken for emergency surgery to stop an internal haemorrhage. The experience was truly surreal. I remember being surrounded by an unfeasible number of doctors and being rushed along corridors – the strip lights on the ceiling blurring as I sped towards my salvation – and thinking ‘I feel like an extra in the TV series ER’.
As the pre-med entered my system and the room receded, I realised with appalling clarity that that I may not wake again. And as I slipped towards oblivion, the faces most beloved to me passed before me my mind’s eye and I sent them my everlasting love. Then finally unbidden from somewhere deep within me, a presence and a single word rose up - Jesus.
Apparently when I woke up in the recovery room I said very loudly ‘Thank you Lord,’ closely followed by ‘F**k that hurts.’!
A subsequent CT scan then revealed that I also had multiple blood clots in my lungs and the next twenty four hours my life once again hung in the balance as the doctors administered blood thinners to stop the clots (also potentially lethal) while also trying to stem any further internal bleeding. Over 24 hours I was given several pints of kindly donated blood, but slowly and surely I began to stabilise. My life had been saved, thanks be to God and the wonderful NHS.
I am now back at home and slowly recovering, and today I felt able to write for the first time which must be a good sign. The whole experience has however left its scars – I keep having flash backs to the resuscitation room and the heart breaking moment before they closed the ambulance doors on my husband who stood crying in the middle of the road. I thought it might be the last time that we would see each other (Covid restrictions meant he could not come to the hospital), and I keep being haunted by the thought that if we had waited another hour to ring the ambulance that my children would have lost their mother and my husband his wife.
But I know that is some strange, indefinable way that God was with me through this whole experience. I have wondered why on earth I had to go through this and may never know the full answer, but I was stunned to realise that if my blood pressure had not dropped so dramatically because of the internal bleeding that the blood clots in my lungs may not have been found until too late. I could have walked around oblivious of the danger until one the time bombs in my chest went off and ended my life. God really does work in mysterious ways.
I have also gone back so many times to that incredible sense of Jesus’s presence that I experienced before going ‘under’ for surgery. I didn’t consciously call on him, but I didn’t’ need to. Rather he rose up unbidden from somewhere deep within me – a unconscious connection to the divine healer which rose to consciousness in my hour of greatest need.
I know that the physical scars and the symptoms of PTS will eventually fade, but the knowledge and gratitude that Jesus is such an integral part of who I am as a human being will stay with me the rest of my days.
Kate Nicholas is a preacher, Christian author, broadcaster and consultant. Her best-selling memoir Sea Changed (shortlisted as Christian Biography of the Year 2017) is an account of her unconventional journey of faith and previous healing from advanced cancer.
Kate has gone on to share her message of hope through her TV series on premiere Christian TV channel TBN L iving a Transformed Life , speaking events, online courses and bible studies including Sea Changed: A Companion Guide for individuals and groups which helps people to see how God uses all the circumstances of their lives to transform them.
Her latest book, Soul’s Scribe: Connecting Your Story With God’s Narrative , draws on scripture, philosophy, psychology and over 20 years’ of reflection as a Christian communicator to take you on a journey through the various chapters of your soul story, providing you with the tools to share that story in a way that will inspire and encourage others.
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