The night my heart stopped and I flat-lined

Hello everyone please read this updated version of what really happened that night my heart stopped beating five years ago.

I had taken nap on that Thursday night, and a dear friend of mine, Tony Martin was somehow moved to phoned late at night, a thing he had never done before,

I woke up with heart going crazy almost stopping, my wife immediately called the for the ambulance and they got to my home in ten minutes flat, the hospital is less than a half kilometre from my home and I was there in five minutes and went I got attention immediately.

On the 18th, August 2011  my heart stopped beating numerous times, at home and then in the Sunninghill Hospital (clinically death). On resuscitation table due to third stage or total, AV heart block.

I went through the whole drama of my heart stopping, flat- lining over and over again, adrenaline, atropine were injected directly into my heart and the shock paddles and chest depressions, used over and over again in a desperate effort to get my heart to beat again during this life and death struggle.

Note! If my Christian friend of some thirty-five years, Tony Martin, had not phoned, from the town of George in South Africa, to where I live in Johannesburg some thousand miles away, at the exact moment he did, I would never have woken up and would have died in my sleep.

I am sure God moved Tony that night to  phone me that Thursday night, at the very unusual hour for him to phone at about 9 pm. Tony never phones me so late at night and maybe he can explain what made him call me why he was moved to call me at that moment in  time.

His phone call woke me up from a deep sleep from which I would have died. I was unaware in my sleeping state that my heart was going wild in my chest, stopping and starting in a life and death struggle.

Tony could hear over the phone that there was something really wrong going on which me.

He said over the phone “Alan McDougall you don’t sound right, are you OK?" I replied “No”!! “Tony something is very wrong” “you phone back a little later”.

I put down the phone and could feel my heart actually starting and stopping in a most frightening way and I became ghastly pale and started to sweat profusely.

I did not realise at this stage know how very close to dying I was that night. It is very scary when I looked at wife or daughter and saw them actually see them becoming dimmer and dimmer in my eyes because my brain was being deprived of oxygen. It was then that I began then to move in and out of consciousness on the very edge of death.

I saw my daughter Desiree in the passage and called out weakly for her to tell my wife Denise, that I was having a heart attack. I don’t think she believed me, but after looking at me with my face pale and sweating body, she called the ambulance, which reached our flat in some ten minutes.

I now entered a life-threatening desperate state of AV heart block (stopping and starting) I recall very little of what happened to me that night, because I had begun to go in and out of consciousness, until I finally became fully conscious the next morning with a temporary heart pacemaker installed in my heart to keep me alive.

I had to wait a day or two in the hospital for Doctor Rodney King Cardiologist, to get my medical aid to agree to the fitting of a permanent heart pacemaker, under my skin in my chest wall. This pacemaker cost about sixty thousand South African Rand or about nine thousand American (USA) dollars.

I only remembered a little of what went on in those three hours of life and death struggle but lately have begun to remember more and more about the strange things I saw.  Over the period of three hours, each time my heart stopped and I went flat-line

I went somewhere, not of this world and each time the emergency team of doctors in Sunninghill Hospital got my heart to beat I came back. I remember being vaguely aware and conscious of what was going on around me. But kept going in and out of consciousness during the attempts at resuscitation.

The team of doctors and nursing assistants were desperately trying to get a needle into one of my veins. I have very poor veins and they are fairly deep under my skin and difficult to locate. Later back in the emergency care ward after I finally became fully conscious I noticed that both my arms and hands were full of needle pricks.

After three hours the on the resuscitation table, the doctors installed a temporary pacemaker to maintain my pulse between 65/110 beats per/minute instead of the 5 to zero it had been beating/not beating most of the time on the resuscitation table.

I heard them call for atropine and adrenaline, which they injected directly into my heart. When even this did not keep my heart beating as it should, the electric paddles were used to shock my heart and get it beating as it should. On return to the emergency ward for special care, I noticed both sides of my chest, ribs, or torso were very painful to touch as it hurt to breath for a day or two after the event

The doctor said if I had arrived hospital even five minutes later it would have been impossible to revive me. I am 72 years of age now and would not have minded if I had died then, but I suppose there must be some things left for me to do because a whole lot of favourable coincidences made it possible for me to survive.

I was told by one of the doctors doctor Rodney King, that I had been “really really dead”. He stressed that if I had arrived at the hospital even five minutes later it would have been impossible to revive me. I am 75 years of age now and would not have minded if I had died then, but I suppose there must be some things left for me to do because a whole lot of favourable coincidences made it possible for me to survive.

I really came as close to death that night as possible, without actually dying, and yet brought back by a great team of doctors, to live again and be with my family and friends a little longer I hope.

In fact, since the heart pacemaker was fitted I have felt much more healthy and maybe the heart irregularity was a long-standing problem of which I was unaware.

Then each time doctors got my heart to beat I was drawn back to the earthly world and vaguely remember being on the table with people pricking me with needles all over, my arms and hands

I because I was continually being resuscitated by the medical team, I floated in and out of consciousness, into the Other-World and back to This-World until I was finally medically stabilised.

If I had any doubts about life after death I have none now, each time my heart stopped my soul or consciousness left my body and went into other dimensions of existence.

When I was elsewhere on the other side of in some heavenly Heaven, I saw a tree with a lot of books all around its trunk.

Trying to reading what was on the covers I somehow knew that they contained all the answers to my questions I had posed in my life on earth as well as all the knowledge and mysteries of existence. “Was it the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil”?

There was only one very large book which I think consolidated all that was in all the smaller books. When I tried to lift the large book, it was too heavy to carry and I decided to leave it there under the tree and return later for it. Maybe when I finally die and go to heaven, I will go back to that beautiful tree and retrieve this book which I think might the "The book of Knowledge"

During the moments that I flat-lined, I went somewhere outside of this earthly Heaven of time and space. I saw numerous people all gathered to welcome me into the afterlife I think that some of my beloved passed over people were there. It seemed like a welcome home party or a sort of wedding reception.

Although not in this particulates event, I thought about my beloved Dog Bully who had died fifty years prior and remembered the many dreams I had when I felt his loving doggy presence.

When on the other side of life I one saw a beautiful pulsating sphere of golden light that I took for the essence of the Lord Jesus because he emanated perfect peace and love.

I had no tunnel and meeting of a being of light. Another moment I came to a large dark cave, with countless people sitting in the dark gloom. There was some enormous evil entity, so pitch black that it seemed like tar and did not reflect any light. When the Golden Light that was Jesus, approached it, it shrank away from him. Was this dark entity Satan the Devil?

I now have a permanent pacemaker in my chest which should last ten years and despite the great shock, I got that night, I am feeling much better and very alive and well.

Note; the medical term for what happened to me is Total AV heat block.

Alan McDougall