Almost a Near-Death Experience (or, How I Nearly Got Rich)

[mr blur]

Hi folks,

Haven't been around these parts for a few weeks - in fact, I've spent a lot of them flat on my back. A couple of months ago, I started feeling nauseous and shivery and at first we thought it was another little gift from the MS but when my leg started turning red my wife got the doctor who diagnosed Cellulitis and the two of them got me off to hospital. By the time I got there my temperature was up to 39°C and I was beginning with the raving and drooling. Although I was burning up I was convinced that I was freezing to death and begging them to turn the A/C and fans off.

By this time the infection was spreading over my body and I looked like Hellboy - though not in a good way. Then the skin on my legs started splitting and this...stuff started oozing out. So there I was helpless in bed because of the MS - I can't walk or stand these days and for some reason I just couldn't quite grasp they were refusing to let me (a poor, raving, feverish man) back into my motorised wheelchair to cruise the local wards to dispense words of wisdom to whomever I might encounter. At first I had no idea how ill I actually was until mrs blur (an ex-nurse) came in and told me, "You really are seriously ill!" (This was after I phoned her up in the middle of the night and begged, "Get me out of this fucking place, they're freezing me to death!&quot .

I spent two days and most of two nights in a fever and I've never felt so ill in my life.

I was having constant visual and auditory hallucinations; before the infection I'd been putting a lot of time in on tweaking and redesigning a couple of websites so that was fresh in my mind. I began to see things in those terms. Eyes closed or open all I could see was a giant screen - like being at am IMax screening. Anything that came into my mind - a name, a person, a piece of music, a book - instantly appeared as a click-able link on this screen and looking at them activated them which led onto other links appearing until it was just Information Overload and I was trying to not think of anything - impossible, of course.

I thought that I was dying and that this was my life flashing before my eyes.

Suddenly, it all seemed to make sense. There was a controlling force behind everything! Someone/thing knew where everything fitted and how it all worked together! Someone was designing everything and in control and everything was part of a complete picture!

I just knew suddenly that I wouldn't be going home again. And it was all happening to the sound of this song by the wonderful English folk singer June Tabor (who we'd seen live last year) which was repeating in my head over the 'video':

...a great song about saying farewell and going "to everlasting joy and fountains flowing!"

Bear with me, I'm getting to the point, honest! And it's this:
If that fever hadn't broken when it did, leaving me with tears flowing down my face, then there's a pretty good chance that I'd have eventually come out of it speaking in tongues/babbling incoherently and smiling at the prospect of a lucrative contract to write a book in which I would reveal to children and credulous idiots (Christians) the exact shape, design, colour and location of my own personal 'mansion' in Zombie Jesus Land. It was that close.

It took me a couple of weeks after I got home to push these feelings out of my head. DU just no longer seemed very interesting; GD seemed full of people about as far to the Left as David Cameron (which I guess is about where Obama is most of the time); there was no longer any fun in arguing with the sad cases over in the Religion loony bin so I wrote them a goodbye post which, naturally, got alerted on and hidden.

So, I urge you all to be careful. Anyone, if they get sick enough, can invent the most ridiculous but seductive nonsense - look at the RCC!

Shame about the money though.

[trotsky]

1. Well I for one am really glad you pulled through.

Thought maybe you had taken a break based on how the usual crowd pulled a dirty trick on you!

Yeah, sorry about snapping out of it too soon. There's a lot of money to be taken from suckers. Perhaps your fever and delirium symptoms were just Sylvia Browne trying to reincarnate into you?

[onager]

2. Wow! Glad you survived!

Being completely selfish because we need you here. And now that you've enjoyed that nice celestial vacation, get back to work, dammit.

I would have enjoyed reading that book, though. And all of us here in the A/A loonybin could have said, "We knew him when." And written our own books, about how your NDE convinced all of us to convert.

Trotsky thought this was Sylvia Browne trying to reincarnate thru you? Does that mean your medical treatment, at some point, involved anal suppositories?

[Warpy]

3. Sepsis has a "window" of time when you can be treated and survive

and even if you make it in during the window, it's 50% fatal. You're lucky and so was I in 2009.

I don't remember a lot of it, I was a "tweener" for 4 days, able to be aroused somewhat but not fully. It wouldn't have been a bad way to go, sepsis. Well, except for the vomiting. I didn't like that part.

I'm glad we both survived. I'm not quite ready to say to hell with it and go and I guess you aren't, either.

ETA: If you love this woman's stuff, check out old recordings of Jean Redpath from the late 70s-early 80s. She was truly wonderful and funny onstage. Amazon has quite a few of them for sale.

[skepticscott]

4. Welcome back and congratulations on your "experience"

Glad you came back on this side of the Great Doorway to…Wherever

I may be about to join you in exile from Religionistaville…but there is little there to regret any more.

[mr blur]

7. Thanks. I certainly don't regret leaving that nasty group.

I just had a glance in there to see what the smug were driveling on about now. It's even worse! I just don't have the patience that you and Heddi and the others seem to have.

[Curmudgeoness]

5. Jesus! That is quite a story!

Since that "mental conversion" you almost had is so vivid in your mind, you might just be able to pull that book off anyways. You wouldn't be the first to take money for faking it.

Glad that you made it. And made it without seeing the light.

[PassingFair]

6. The brain has so many escape hatches!

I'm glad that you were able to back away from the doors for now.