Back from the Dead?

Debunkers and pseudo-skeptics claim that the phenomenon known as the near-death experience (NDE) is nothing more than an hallucination or some misfiring of the brain caused by chemicals or a lack of oxygen. However, to those with an open mind, the NDE appears to be one type of out-of-body experience (OBE) — an experience that suggests we have a spirit body or etheric body in addition to our physical body. The case of “Pam Reynolds” is often cited as one of the best, but skeptics have attempted to pick holes in that case. Now, the “Sarah Gideon” case seems to plug those holes. In The Scalpel and The Soul, a new release, Dr. Allan J. Hamilton, a Tucson, Arizona brain surgeon, tells about the Gideon case.

But back briefly to the Pam Reynolds case. During August 1991, Reynolds was operated on for a giant basilar artery aneurysm. Her body temperature was lowered to 60 degrees, her brain waves flattened, her heart stopped, her breathing stopped and the blood drained from her. By medical standards, she was “dead.” And yet, she later recalled watching parts of the surgery from above. She recalled seeing a particular kind of surgical instrument and hearing a comment that certain vessels were too small to handle the flow of blood. She further remembered being met by some deceased relatives after going down a dark shaft. An uncle took her back through the tunnel as it was not yet her time to cross over.

The skeptics and debunkers argue that she must have been hallucinating before or after she was clinically “dead.” As for seeing the surgical instrument (she had surgical patches over her eyes) she may have noticed it before the procedure started or have seen a similar one on a television program involving a surgical procedure on the brain and that picture was buried in her subconscious. The comment about her blood vessels may have been overhead before she was clinically “dead.”

Like Reynolds, Gideon also underwent surgery at the Barrows Neurological Institute in Phoenix. According to Hamilton, Gideon was “as a corpse” for 17 minutes while a titanium aneurysm clip was positioned. Some trivial conversations took place during this 17-minute period, including one of the nurses announcing that she had just gotten engaged, mentioning her one-and-a-half carat square cut-yellow diamond ring that her boyfriend had purchased at Johnston Fellows. She also mentioned that the proposal came at Morton’s, a restaurant, and that when her boyfriend got down on his knees and proposed, one of the waiters tripped over him and fell on the wine case.

After Gideon awoke in the intensive care unit, the surgeon, Dr. Thomas Reed, stopped into visit her. Gideon told him that she remembered hearing something about a one-and-a-half carat yellow diamond from Johnston Fellows. She also remembered something about Morton’s restaurant and that someone fell into a wine case. Reed was shocked and called the case to the attention of others, including Hamilton.

Hamilton says there was no question that Gideon was brain dead at the time the conversation took place. “…we also had here unequivocal, scientific evidence that not only was her brain not working, it specifically demonstrated the absence of all cortical electrical activity when these conversations actually took place,” he writes, going on to say that ‘the notion that conscious awareness – something generated by and of each brain – could have a life (so to speak) independent from the brain itself is a baffling idea.”

When Sarah Gideon was later questioned about what she might have seen while she was hearing, she was able to describe the nurse who talked about her engagement, including the color of her eyes and her hair. Since the nurse had a surgical cap on, she was asked how she could know the color of her hair. She recalled a curl of blonde hair sticking out of the cap on her forehead. She also described other surgical personnel in the room.

Hamilton tells of a debate between Sir Newton Pitcairn, a British anesthesiologist and an authority in the field of the application of quantum physics to the science of consciousness, and a neurophysiologist from the University of Arizona. Sir Newton was certain that this was a case of the consciousness being separate and independent from the brain, while the neurosurgeon questioned whether Gideon’s brain had been totally asleep during the surgery. Hamilton then showed the EEG printouts to two colleagues who routinely read such printouts, not telling them whose printout it was, and both agreed that she was “brain dead” at the time the comments were made by the nurse.

Hamilton asks what those in the field of medicine are to make of such “unsettling disturbances” and then goes on to wonder: “Can we not, as doctors, allow ourselves to entertain the possibility that the supernatural, the divine, and the magical may all underlie our imaginations?”

Addendum (added March 28): After posting this entry several days ago, I attempted contact with Dr. Hamilton in hopes of obtaining more information on the “Sarah Gideon” case. I just heard from Dr. Hamilton and he explained that some of the stories in the book, including this one, are amalgams, or blended stories. I had suspected that the names were pseudonyms for privacy reasons and recalled Dr. Hamilton mentioning this in the Introduction. However, I had overlooked the fact that he also mentioned that some of the stories are amalgams. It appears that the “Pam Reynolds” case is part of the amalgam. I infer from Dr. Hamilton’s comments that there is a case or two that actually “plugs the holes” in the Pam Reynolds case, but for patient privacy reasons the name(s) cannot be given.