MY EXPERIENCE IN COMA
Eben
Alexander MD
At 4:30 a.m. on Nov. 10, 2008, I
suddenly became very ill with acute bacterial meningoencephalitis.
Within four hours, I was deep in coma; I spent the next seven days comatose,
on a ventilator. Bacterial meningitis with such a rapid decline in neurologic
function conferred a 90 percent mortality rate, as assessed at the time of my
initial ER evaluation, but my prospects for survival rapidly worsened. My
physicians at Lynchburg General Hospital in Virginia were shocked
to find that I had acquired spontaneous E. coli meningitis, which has
less than a one in 10,000,000 annual incidence1. They were aided by experts at the University of Virginia, Duke,
Massachusetts General Hospital and beyond in their efforts to find a cause
and force a turnaround in what at first seemed to be an irreversible
death-spiral as I failed to respond to triple antibiotics.
My medical history of recent travel to Israel (as
part of my work coordinating global research in focused ultrasound surgery)
raised great concern among my doctors. Around the time of my visit,
physicians at The Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center had reported the
world’s first well-documented case of spontaneous plasmid transfer of
the Klebsiella Pneumonia carbapenemase (KPC) gene from a deadly gram-negative
organism into a patient’s previously uninfected intestinal E. coli,
conferring total antibiotic resistance on the latter. The terrifying
implications for a disastrous pandemic if such an E. coli ever escaped the
strict isolation of a hospital ICU were obvious, and my doctors considered
that I might represent such a case.
My neurological examinations were consistent with
diffuse cortical damage plus extraocular motor dysfunction (brainstem
damage). My CT scans revealed global neocortical involvement, and, on
the third day, my cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) protein was 1,340 mg/dl, my CSF
white blood cell count 4,300 per mm3, and my CSF glucose level was down
to 1 mg/dl (compared with the normal value of 60-80 mg/dl). I was extremely
ill, with diminishing chances for survival and virtually no chance for
recovery. My physicians never found a cause for my mysterious malady.
Fortunately, my E. coli finally started to
respond. On the seventh day of my coma, to everyone’s surprise, I opened my
eyes and started to come back. I was rapidly extubated by the shocked
intensivist. A family friend who was there could not get over how my amazed
expression looked more like the astonished gaze of an infant, not like what
one would expect from an adult returning from an unconscious state.
A recent objective medical review of my records
coordinated by Dr Bruce Greyson came to the following conclusions:
“Three physicians not associated with Lynchburg
General Hospital completed an independent review of the complete medical
record of Dr. Alexander’s hospitalization, and spoke with the hospital’s two
consulting neurologists to gather additional information. The records
indicated that Dr. Alexander was brought to the emergency department
unresponsive, with evidence of a bacterial infection, and he was assessed to
have moderate brain injury, which rapidly progressed to severe brain injury
over the next few hours. Brain scans showed that the membranes covering
the brain as well as the grooves in his cerebral cortex were swollen with
pus-filled liquid, compressing the cortical tissue. Laboratory
examination showed evidence of a bacterial infection in his cerebrospinal
fluid, due to an organism that very rarely causes meningitis in adults, and,
when it does, is almost always fatal or resulting in permanent neurological
deficits. Nevertheless, after a profound near-death experience, Dr.
Alexander eventually awoke from his coma, and within a few months had made
what his surprised neurologists called a ‘complete and remarkable recovery’
from an illness they agreed might well have been fatal, without any residual
neurological deficit.”
If one had asked me before my coma how much a
patient would remember after such severe meningitis, I would have answered
“nothing” and been thinking in the back of my mind that no one would recover
from such an illness, at least not to the point of being able to discuss
their memories. Thus, you can imagine my surprise at remembering an elaborate
and rich odyssey from deep within coma that comprised more than 20,000 words
by the time I had written it all down during the six weeks following my
return from the hospital. My older son, Eben Alexander IV, who was majoring
in neuroscience at the University of Delaware at the time, advised me to
record everything I could remember before I read anything
about near-death experiences (NDEs), physics or cosmology. I
dutifully did so, in spite of an intense yearning to read everything I could
about those subjects, based on the stunning character of my coma experience.
My meningoencephalitis had been so severe that my
original memories from within coma did not include any recollections
whatsoever from my life before coma, including language and any knowledge of
humans or this universe. That “scorched earth” intensity was the setting for
a profound spiritual experience that took me beyond space and time to what
seemed like the origin of all existence.
Those memories began in a primitive, coarse,
unresponsive realm (the “Earthworm’s Eye View” or EEV) from which I was
rescued by a slowly spinning clear white light associated with a musical
melody, that served as a portal up into rich and ultrareal realms. The
Gateway Valley was filled with many earth-like and spiritual features:
vibrant and dynamic plant life, with flowers and buds blossoming richly and
no signs of death or decay, waterfalls into sparkling crystal pools,
thousands of beings dancing below with great joy and festivity, all fueled by
swooping golden orbs in the sky above, angelic choirs emanating chants and
anthems that thundered through my awareness, and a lovely girl on a butterfly
wing who proved months later to be central to my understanding of the reality
of the experience (as reported in detail towards the end of my book Proof of
Heaven). The chants and hymns thundering down from those angelic choirs
provided yet another portal to higher realms, eventually ushering my
awareness into the Core, an unending inky blackness filled to overflowing
with the infinite healing power of the all-loving deity at the source, whom
many might label as God (or Allah, Vishnu, Jehovah, Yahweh – the names get in
the way, and the conflicting details of orthodox religions obscure the
reality of such an infinitely loving and creative source).
While writing it all up weeks later, God seemed too
puny a little human word with much baggage, clearly failing to describe the
power, majesty and awe I had witnessed. I originally referred to that deity
as Om, the sound that I recalled from that realm as the resonance within
infinity and eternity. Many lessons were taught in that core realm, with all
of the higher dimensional multiverse collapsed down into a complex
“oversphere” that served as a tool in advancing some of the deeper lessons.
All of my understanding of space, time, mass, energy, information, soul
journeys, causality, the afterlife, reincarnation, meaning and purpose took
on extraordinary relationships that I am even now just beginning to unravel.
I cycled through those spiritual realms from the lowest EEV all the way back
to the Core multiple times, offering a rich spiritual odyssey that completely
defies any conventional scientific understanding, given the duration and
severity of my meningoencephalitis. Given those medical facts, my brain was
incapable of providing any hallucination, dream or psychic drug effect, due
to the global damage of my neocortex so apparent from my neurologic exams,
scans and laboratory values.
My coma taught me many things. First and foremost,
near-death experiences, and related mystical states of awareness, reveal
crucial truths about the nature of existence. Simply dismissing them as
hallucinations is convenient for many in the conventional scientific
community, but only continues to lead them away from the deeper truth these
experiences are revealing to us. The conventional reductive materialist
(physicalist) model embraced by many in the scientific community, including
its assumption that the physical brain creates consciousness and that our
human existence is birth-to-death and nothing more, is fundamentally flawed.
At its core, that physicalist model intentionally ignores what I believe is
the fundament of all existence — consciousness itself.
NDEs such as mine then represent the tip of the
spear in a rapidly progressing enlightenment of the scientific community
around the mind-brain relationship, and our understanding of the very nature
of reality. The world will never be the same.
http://ebenalexander.com/about/my-experience-in-coma/
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