I received a call from the magazine Today’s Chicago Woman, which wanted to include me in its “100 Women of Inspiration” issue. It was an honor to be among truly inspirational women, even if I felt like I paled in comparison. All I did was die and come back to life. These women were helping to save lives. That’s truly inspirational. I needed to take what I had learned from my experience and do the same.
MY AFE EXPERIENCE changed me and the way I relate to people. But I wasn’t the only one affected by it.
My doctors say that my AFE experience has changed the way they deal with patients. Nicole says she now realizes that her interaction with patients, albeit brief, is not inconsequential. “If a patient voices certain concerns, I never discount them now.”
Julie told me that her eyes and ears were opened especially after watching my regression tapes. She was saddened by just how alone I felt. Now, she says, she won’t lose sight of the “soul,” even in an emergency or code situation. She believes the soul is watching, the soul has feeling, and the soul can be talked to. She wishes she’d had that insight when I coded, but she knows now and says she won’t ever forget it.
My AFE has become part of me. Even if I never learn why it happened in the first place, I have accepted what happened and how I got back.
Chapter 17
I WAS NOW STRONG ENOUGH to look through my medical records. I wanted to review them and send them to Baylor researchers so they could add me to the registry. I thought maybe something would jump out at me, something that I had considered insignificant at the time but could be important.
I read how the “patient is intubated, not responding, given Halcion because patient is agitated.” I read how the doctors would “see how patient does over the next few hours and if patient will be stable enough to continue with another surgery.” I read the details of how my body was hemorrhaging and the details about how many doctors and nurses clocked in to keep me ticking.
I was okay. I wasn’t getting sick from reading it, so I kept going.
I read about the clamps used to pull my abdomen apart and the drainage tubes and some things I didn’t know, like the fact that my bladder had collapsed. I looked at my cousin Sari, who was reading the records with me, and said, “What? How did I not know that?”
There were pages and pages listing so many medicines and updates it made my head spin. There were more than 600 pages in the stack of papers. We made bets on how much the entire hospital stay had cost, and I was closest at $900,000. The records showed my ICU bill broken down by meds, staff, and room charges.
I was happy to realize that the therapy must have been working: I could finally read my files not as though it had happened to someone else but as it happened to me. And I could no longer feel it. There was only one statement from a doctor that crippled me, bringing me to my knees with heart-wrenching tears: “Patient’s husband has been made aware of the grim outlook.” More than any pain I had felt for myself, the thought of what Jonathan had gone through cut me wide open. It’s hard to explain, but we had been spiritually connected from the first time we met. I could feel his pain as if it were my own.
I wondered whether I should go back to Linda for another regression session to see whether I could alleviate his pain now that mine seemed to be under control. It sounded logical, so I called her and set up the appointment.
What I thought would be another regression session turned into more of an analysis of what I’d been through with regression and why I needed Jonathan to be on board with what I saw. Linda started out the session telling me that in all the years of doing this type of therapy, my case was very unusual.
Typically, Linda said what people see during an out-of-body experience is the lifeless body from up above. My experience was different in a number of ways. Under hypnosis I was able to experience what my physical body felt as well as what my spiritual body experienced. I also created a safe space to help heal the part of me that was helpless and about to die.
ME: Does that mean that it was inaccurate? Do you question it?
LINDA: Not at all. There are so many things we don’t understand. In doing this work, I’ve heard people’s experiences that are unbelievable. But it’s the healing that happens afterward that speaks very loudly. Something happened. In your case, we were able to verify it. In most cases, I try to verify what the person has felt or seen, but usually, [the most important] verification is the patient heals.
ME: As this has gone on, we have done a lot of sessions. At any point did you say, “This isn’t real. I’ll let her take me down this path. Maybe this is in the back of her mind.” Was there any time that you felt that way?
LINDA: I don’t judge, but it was really important for me that you told me you had verified it with two of your physicians who were present in the OR. And I heard their comments. They were very detailed comments, not only of what you heard but of what you saw.
ME: What does that do for you as a therapist, coming out the other side of this with me and seeing how I am getting better?
LINDA: It’s verification that people have abilities that we really haven’t studied completely. And that if you are at least able to be open-minded, even though it may be something different for the therapist, or for me, sometimes amazing things come out of it that are almost miracles. [For instance], releasing, relieving the person of pain, sometimes of physical symptoms. Yeah, so when you do this kind of work, it never ceases to amaze you. At least it doesn’t for me.
I told Linda I was 100 percent sure that the premonitions came from the spiritual beings who had been surrounding me. They were one and the same. I explained to her that I desperately wanted Jonathan to understand what I had seen and felt. He looked at everything that had happened as evidence of my own good instincts, even though I kept telling him the premonitions came from someplace else. Linda told me that I really didn’t need him to understand it, only that it was more important for him to be there for me. I didn’t agree.
Jonathan witnessed everything—he saw reactions and heard testimony that contradicted what he said he believed. He heard me relay messages from the “other” world that were accurate. He went back and read my Facebook postings and good-bye letters describing ahead of time everything that would happen to me. He heard scientists admit that they had no explanation for what happened. And through it all, he had remained skeptical. He was the single most important person in my life. His opinion was the only one that mattered to me. I knew Jonathan better than that. I knew he believed, I just needed to hear him say it.
I left the session understanding more about regression therapy but, sadly, not having figured out a way to alleviate Jonathan’s pain, which I knew he was suppressing.
A few weeks later, I was cleaning out our office and came upon a small prayer book. Inside was a sign that Jonathan had made while I was in the hospital and affixed to the door of my room: CANDY FOR MEDICAL ATTENTION. I smiled. On another sheet of paper he had calculated the probabilities of my being diagnosed with this rare condition. And inside the back cover was a third piece of paper. I opened it and tears welled up in my eyes as I read it.
May 31, 2013
My only love of my life, I am sitting here in the still of the night listening to the machines beep around you. You look like an angel, which devastates me. What am I to do if you are gone? How will I ever reconcile this to our children, to myself? I should have listened more, I should have been here, if for nothing else, but to hold your hand. I should have prayed, for you. Rabbi told me this is a test of my faith. If I was being tested, why isn’t this happening directly to me? Why to you? What did all of this mean? How did you know? I can’t lose you. I would be a shell of a man if you die. Please don’t die. I don’t
He never finished this letter.
That night I explained to Jonathan that I understood his pain and how he was protecting himself from feeling it. I showed him the letter he had written, as a reminder of his vulnerability, and I told him I needed him to watch a portion of one r
egression tape. Once again he pushed back. Then I told him I needed him to watch it not only for him but for me too.
I set the computer down in front of him and cued up the portion of the regression session where my spirit was watching him in the ICU. On the tape, I said I saw him holding my hand, whispering in my ear, and wondering how to heal me. He watched until the end without saying a word. When it was done, one single tear fell down his face. I said nothing. Instead, I picked up my phone and texted him some questions.
“Do you believe I saw your father?”
“Do you believe my premonitions came from somewhere outside of science?”
“Do you believe I saw others?”
His phone lit up, he read my questions, and he started to type. I thought I was going to get another long-winded answer, questioning the probabilities and looking for answers with no conclusions. I was wrong.
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
Then he added three very impactful words as the tears streamed down his face:
“I believe you.”
Chapter 18
A FEW MONTHS AGO, I had a dream about my Uncle Marvin. I remember waking up and thinking he was in the room. And even before I got out of bed, I smelled it. Cigarettes. I no longer had a craving for one, as I did throughout my entire pregnancy. I now believe that craving was a connection to my uncle. It was his way of letting me know that he had been with me the entire time.
When I started this book, I knew I wanted to have 18 chapters. The number is significant in the Jewish religion, as it means “life” (or, in Hebrew, chai). Interestingly, my husband took only three pictures of me at the hospital during my entire stay there. One in particular stands out. I am in the coma, in my bed, hooked up to 10 IVs and many machines with tubes running everywhere. In the lower right-hand corner is the machine that kept my heart and lungs going. On the side of that machine, emblazoned in big, black numbers, was the number 18. Chai. Life. The numbers were already telling the story. I was going to live.
I am not the same person I was before all of this happened. I love more deeply than I did before. I care more about the little things. I celebrate my new insight and believe that everyone should listen to themselves no matter how crazy they think they may sound. If you sense something, say something. The forces that saved my life have blessed me. I no longer wonder whether my premonitions were the work of divine intervention. I know they were. I no longer question my faith in the spiritual world. From my firsthand experience, I can say that it unquestionably exists.
My therapy is far from over, but each time I go back I go forward in life. I wholeheartedly believe that we can foresee the future and that we can travel back to see the past. My journey took me to places I never thought I would visit and helped me come to a different perspective on what happens when this life is over.
I was recently at a funeral for someone who was beloved by my beloved. She was the mom of my husband’s childhood friend, and she had treated Jonathan like a son. She was well respected, loved, and admired by many people, including high-profile politicians and celebrities. I hadn’t known her well, but I knew her enough to like her and to know that she cared about our family.
I had been to funerals before. It is an unfortunate part of life. It usually marks the end of a person’s life and the beginning of the pain for the family left behind. There’s great sadness surrounding death, and this funeral was no different. I felt great sympathy for the family, but I had no tears. Instead, I found myself smiling for this body we had just lost. I say “body” because that is all it was. It wasn’t her spirit, or her life, that had died. Only her body had died, and we were saying good-bye to what had been her physical representation.
I smiled because throughout my regression I had seen places and people I had never thought I would be able to see when I had my near-death experience. I hadn’t really known this sort of place existed. I had seen those places through my spirit’s eyes, and I knew that day that this friend would be with the others I had seen in that airy, beautiful, open space. I could visualize where she was and how fabulous and young she looked. So while her family and friends in the physical world said good-bye, I knew that her late husband and son were welcoming her on the “other side” with open arms.
So yes, I smiled, hoping I wouldn’t be seen by Donald Rumsfeld, just one of the VIPs at her funeral. I smiled as I thought about this feisty woman who loved to hop on an airplane and fly somewhere at a moment’s notice. She had always been up for any adventure and couldn’t sit still because she needed to conquer the world—this world where we stood at her funeral was far too limiting for her with her physical pain and her tired body. But where she was headed, her spirit would soar and the boundaries would be limitless.
My journey back from death and the events that followed changed me. I guess T. S. Eliot said it best: “It is worth dying to find out what life is.”
Just a “normal” family: A year after our ordeal, Jonathan and I are very aware of how precious our time together as a family is.
LORI ALLEN PHOTOGRAPHY
About the Authors
STEPHANIE ARNOLD, in her “former life,” was a TV producer who spent twenty-seven years creating and directing TV shows, music videos, and documentaries. She left the “business” in 2008, after meeting the love of her life. From that point on, the only thing she wanted to produce was a family.
It was during the birth of her second child that Stephanie suffered a rare and often fatal condition called an amniotic fluid embolism (AFE) and died on the operating table for 37 Seconds. Everything she does now is a direct result of her survival.
Stephanie currently serves on the board of directors for the AFE Foundation, speaks on patient advocacy to organizations like the American Society of Anesthesiologists, and has raised money for Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s Prentice Women’s Hospital. Her experiences led her to be named one of Today’s Chicago Woman’s “100 Women of Inspiration.” She has created the website www.stephaniearnold.net, where she blogs and offers support to families who have been touched by AFEs. Stephanie seeks to instill her message wherever she can: If you SENSE something, SAY something.
Stephanie lives in Chicago with her husband, Jonathan, and is the loving mother of Adina, Jacob, and stepdaughter Valentina.
SARI PADORR is an award-winning journalist whose TV career has spanned 29 years as a reporter, anchor, host, producer, and news director. She is the recipient of two Emmy Awards and a Gracie Allen Award. Her articles have been published in The Denver Post and several magazines. She lives in Florida with her husband and daughter and is Stephanie Arnold’s cousin.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Acknowledgments
Many people have been instrumental in making this book a reality.
Mel Berger—This book exists because of you (couldn’t do it in five words). Besheret.
Mark Itkin—Thank you for your open heart, deep respect, and for connecting me to the man who changed my path.
Mickey Maudlin—It took a publisher with gut instinct to get that this book went far beyond 37 seconds of dying.
Dr. Elena Kamel—You are a rock star to some, but you are my rock. Thank you for the 2 A.M. visits each night in ICU, when no one knew you were there. Or so you thought. I have so much love for you.
Dr. Julie Levitt—“Thank you” doesn’t quite cut it when we go through something like this together. You are my hero, my savior, and you have been my entrée into understanding doctors are people too. Thank you for taking really great care of me. You will always be in my heart.
Dr. Nicole Higgins—I know you never want to hear me say “thank you” again, but I don’t care. Thank you. We are the same age. We could have grown up together, but we would have never met except under these circumstances. Without your quick thinking, this ending would have been quite different.
Dr. Grace Lim—You are an amazing doctor, human being, and spi
rit. Your residents are lucky to have you as their guide. Never lose the spiritual connectedness you have and NEVER change the way you practice medicine.
Dr. Hyo Park—You were “just” the resident. But somehow you appeared at all key points in the course of my medical care, conducted the key procedures, and played a crucial part in my recovery.
Linda—Without you I would not have come so far so fast. I am grateful for our journey together and this is not the last time you will be seeing me. You are a gift to this world and the world beyond that which most people see.
To my friends and family, Andras, Divya, Camille, Joy, Mark, Steve, Chen, Lori, Gina (Hope for Accreta Foundation), Rabbi Mentz, Andy and Michelle, David and Melissa, Gael, Jeremy, Alice, Catalina, Mindy, Jessica, Jodi, Rachael, BJ, Robyn, Sheila, and Rosalind—We all know it takes a village and there is no doubt that this village helped me heal faster, focus on the important things in life, and re-energize our lives. Thank you.
Northwestern Memorial Hospital—Kim Armour, Nick Rave, Dr. Kyle Mueller, Dr. Julius Few, Dr. Regina Stein, Carla, Jane, and all of the support staff from the different departments that heal the brain, body, and soul. Thank you for all your care and concern in helping me to survive. I will always look to your hospital as the best in the world. Thank you.
Mom—Your strength and your determination got me to where I am today. Thank you for picking up the pieces, cleaning up the mess, and making sure I would feel protected.
Papi—Thank you for your prayers and your love. You always told me I would know when I found love; that it would hit me over the head—and you were right. You have always been my rock and I am proud to be your daughter.
Michelle—You are an amazing sister. I know you would have moved mountains to come between me and “that moment.” You have your own amazing senses—and you act on them. Never doubt that connection you have inside of you. We are linked on more than one dimension and this proved it. I love you.
37 Seconds Page 12