Excerpt from DEATHWALKER -Journeys of Life, Death & Beyond
Excerpt from “DEATHWALKER-Journeys of Life, Death & Beyond”
by Theresa Dominguez-Weiss, Family Nurse Practitioner, retired
(copyright 2020)
“Near-Death on the Nile”
Surrounded by desert, smack in the middle of nowhere, Jackie was suffocating to death. Lying on a table, her knees bent, legs spread wide, I wondered, “Why does this remind me of all the women in the delivery room I’ve seen, and the one too many pelvic exams I’ve done?” The answer to that question boggles my mind to this day.
I clearly remember that narrow exam table and her legs and feet repeatedly slipping off it, shaking her body and making it impossible to start an IV. It was imperative she immediately received intravenous medication to allow her to breathe. After years of my working in the ER and ICU it was crystal clear she was already in anaphylactic shock, within minutes of dying.
Earlier that morning, our group was to experience the magnificent Temple of Horus at Edfu, about a mile from the Nile River and the cruise ship the group was on. Jackie started passing out at the entrance. Someone yelled for me, I grabbed Mohamed, and we ran to the commotion. Mohamed scooped her up just as she fainted. A taxi suddenly appeared. We hightailed it to the little clinic a few blocks away. The clinic was spotless but rudimentary. The nurse suddenly appeared. On my questioning her where the oxygen equipment and emergency medication were, through Mohamed’s interpreting, she pointed to the equipment to start an IV. However, no oxygen or IV medications or solution were evident. Unfortunately, it had been a long time since I had started an IV in a collapsed vein. I desperately needed Benadryl and/or epinephrine to relax her bronchi, which were spasming thus squeezing the life out of Jackie by the second.
Purple face, purple tongue, black lips, mottled purple hands, the weird color creeping up her arms … eyes rolled back. Standing on her left side, I quickly went through the ER drill for checking how conscious someone is before instituting CPR. However, if the bronchi are swollen and closing, the amount of oxygen flow is minimal at best.
No response to deep painful stimuli. I knew she was going; we were losing her. She was about to die. Repeatedly, I said in as calm a voice as I could muster, “Let me know if you can hear me.” The purple blackness of her extremities steadily got worse. There was no response, no movement from her.
Suddenly, I noticed a stream of wispy light going out the top of her head. It’s hard to explain the rush sensation emanating from that wispy light. But I knew what the “rush” was. I knew she was about to go out to the point of no return, and die.
I yelled to Mohamed, “We’re losing her! Stand at the bottom of the table and say, ‘KA come back.’ Get her KA back!” Of course, Mohamed had no idea what I was referring to when I instructed him to “Bring her KA back.” Neither did I! I repeated, “Get her KA back.” I wondered, “What am I saying? Where did that come from?”
With my will and thoughts focused, I fought to get Jackie’s KA back to her body. Every bone and ounce of strength in me knew that this was not the time for her to die.
Acutely aware of her increasingly black and purple skin, it seemed like hours that I stood there in this slow motion tug of war. I felt more than saw the thread of light at the top of her head start to become thicker, reverse direction, and begin to flow back into her body. Her black purple color slowly started to disappear.
The doctor arrived with the drugs and the oxygen. We managed to start an IV and poured in the medications as fast as possible to continue reversing the anaphylactic shock and breathing difficulties.
Slowly she came to, the purple blue gone yet her face drained of color. Her eyes glazed. I continued speaking to her in a reassuring tone, repeatedly telling her she was alright. Everything was going to be fine. Then she asked to sit up on the table. “What the f_ _ _ is going on?” she managed to blurt out before throwing up.
With feet dangling and hands gripping the edge of the table, the full impact of what had just happened seemed to start to seep through her. Looking around, appearing confused yet very calm, her wide eyes conveyed the struggle to make sense of what she had just experienced.
The stark bare room of the clinic, the kindly Egyptian doctor, the helpful nurse and the IV pole dangling the plastic threads pumping the healing electrolyte saline and dextrose solution into her arm made no sense with her last memory. And that was standing outside the temple, a full-blown asthma attack gripping her, a great difficulty in breathing, members of the group coming to assistance, then feeling herself slipping away, about to die. She was thinking this, at least that is what I thought. As I was to find out later that evening, she was remembering what she had just experienced while she was dying, and it was beyond imagination.
Early in the trip, Jackie had already figured out that being exposed to all the horses and camels along the way had triggered her chronic asthma. She’d already experienced an asthma attack when we were in Cairo. Knowing of the horses at Edfu, I had mentioned to her not to go that day. Upon arrival in Edfu, I had announced that the group would be taking “caleshes” (horses and buggies) from the cruise ship to the temple site. I was going to take the morning off, however as the last person took off for the site, I suddenly changed my mind, called for a caleshe and headed for Edfu.
Why did Jackie take a horse and buggy and not a taxi, when she already knew that her recent exposure to camels and horses in Egypt was escalating her asthma to alarming levels? Why do we all make choices like that in life, when the evidence clearly points to a different path?
I can only speak for myself when I answer that for me, it is because I am avoiding the real origin of the pain. And I am avoiding it so powerfully that I will make a choice to cause “another” discomfort or pain as a distraction, whether that “distraction” be emotional, mental, or physical.
Mohamed and I helped Jackie from the table onto her feet. She swayed, unsteady as a newborn lamb. Mohamed and the doctor had a quick exchange in Arabic. I glanced at the doctor and he nodded toward a hallway. Mohamed told me there was a room with a bed where she’d be more comfortable.
We were all silent as we slowly walked down the hallway; the only sounds were our feet shuffling and the rattling of the bottles and tubes hanging on the IV pole I dragged behind her. That sound bouncing off the bare walls seemed to come crashing back at us. This surrealistic scene all seemed to take place in timeless slow motion, walking down the hallway, taking her into the small room, whispering to ask if she wished to change her soiled clothes. One moment this woman was dying, appearing to have only one toe left in this life. The next, she’s walking, struggling to talk, and we are changing her galabeya to a clean one.
We took a taxi back to the ship and rode in silence. Mohamed carried Jackie into the boat and up to her room. Everyone was waiting for news on Jackie and started applauding when they saw her. Apparently, they all thought Jackie had died. Jackie’s friends were waiting in her room for news, crying when they saw her and scolding her to never do that again!
Jackie immediately wanted to tell us of this most amazing experience she had when she was dying. I was thinking I already knew, and asked Jackie if she would wait to share until after I went down to the group gathering for dinner.
At dinner, I was telling everyone what had happened to Jackie that day and how she was doing, but I mistakenly kept referring to “Jackie” by the name of “Joyce.” Jackie’s roommates and friends huddled their heads together at their table, giving me strange looks, and whispering. I glanced over at them and could not figure out what the stir was about. When my announcement was finished, I went over and asked what was wrong. It seems I inadvertently called Jackie by her sister’s name, Joyce, during the announcement. Kate, Jackie’s roommate, explained to me that Joyce was Jackie’s sister, and had died ten years earlier. The two sisters had been extremely close, Jackie helping raise Joyce’s children after her death. I had not known about Jackie’s sister, her name, nor had ever discussed Joyce with Jackie previously.
I returned to Jackie’s room to check up on her after my announcements. Jackie told this amazing story: As she was trying to breath and not able to, she remembered seeing my face and my telling her not to close her eyes, to keep looking at me. She knew that she was in real trouble, she was leaving this life, and that her children were going to be mad at her since she would be coming home in a box. She now knew why it was so important to come on this trip to Egypt. She had come here to die.
Suddenly, she lost all fear of dying and just let go. Jackie could feel herself falling and then floating, no longer having trouble breathing. She felt complete “Bliss” (her quotes.) She floated into a place that looked like an outdoor temple. She lay on a long, flat stone surface, and at one point felt as if she was having contractions. I said to myself, “What? Like in labor?” Which is what Jackie looked like when she was on the table with her legs spread as she was dying.
Her friend Kate stopped Jackie right then. Kate said that after Mohamed and I took Jackie away, her friends went into the Edfu temple. There was a long, flat stone. They encircled the stone and started meditating and doing healing chantings for Jackie’s recovery.
Jackie on a flat stone in a temple in her near-death experience, having labor contractions. I see her with her legs bent and spread as if she is about to deliver a child. Simultaneously, people encircling a flat stone inside the temple meditating for Jackie’s recovery.
I find it incredibly fascinating that the conference/tour theme was “Life, Death, and Beyond.” And that a flat stone, nothing like it seen or experienced at all the previous ancient sites, figured in both Jackie’s experience and the ladies at the temple meditating for Jackie. And that Jackie’s almost dying occurred next to a 2,500-year-old ancient Egyptian temple at Edfu, dedicated to the primal aspects of life, death, resurrection, and the beyond.
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Theresa Dominguez-Weiss is the author of Deathwalker, Journeys of Life, Death & Beyond, for more information visit
http://
Category: On Writing
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