Kathy's death at Jefferson Davis Hospital
On the morning of June 15th 1968 it was my birthday. I was 27. I was mother to a seven year old son and a five year old son and a little daughter who was three years old. I was full term with my forth baby and I was overdue a week with the birth. My husband had just gone back to work after taking a week's vacation off waiting the birth of the baby.
My younger sister was spending the night over and was asleep on the couch in the living room. I got up and began to make my bed when I felt something pop way up inside of me. I put my hand between my legs and blood came streaming down my hand, down my pj's and house shoes and began to stream across the floor. I called out to my sister and she came running and when she saw the blood she was terrified. I had no pain. She asked me to lay down and get off my feet and she stuffed towels under me. She called my husband back home and an ambulance.
I hemmoraged all the way to the Jefferson Davis hospital so bad that I remember I couldn't even bend my big toes or I would feel it gush. I wasn't afraid, just bewildered as to what could have gone wrong. The wait at the hospital seemed to take forever. I was examined over and over and was told that my child was not alive, that I was bleeding pretty bad and that if the child had been alive they would have to opt to save my live over the child's. I was preped for a C section and left waiting again. I was over come with emotion. It was an awful thought that after all these months my child was dead.
The doctors came back in and told me that there were going to take me into an operating room and do an exam to see if they could find out if I was bleeding or the child. They said they would be putting me to sleep but one doctor said I needed a transfusion, that I was way too pale from blood loss. I started to shake. My teeth were chattering but I was not cold. I was going into shock.
They ploped me on the table and started strapping me down and placed a gas mask on me and WHAM! I started dying. I felt real weird. My ears started ringing and I felt like I was smothering. I knew I was dying and I called out to God and I said "Lord please dont take me now my children need me." But the process continued. I began to see flashes of picture-like views of my life. I could hear a clicking sound and they would flash and I saw myself as a child, my own children, my family and so on. Then I felt every nerve in my body quiver and I was out of my body zooming as fast as a jet into space. I could hear strange, undiscribable sounds with the fast speed I was traveling. Then I was thrust into the blackest void I ever seen and was suspended in space floating.
There was fear every where. I started screaming and crying I knew I was in hell. Now I had not been a bad person I had given my life to god at 18 and was baptized. I knew the bible. I went to church and prayed. I would say I was a good person. Yet here I was. I had my six senses. My emotions and fear is what I felt the most. Then I heard him from out of the void, the devil himself, and he started laughing. It was so powerful and hatefully loud it filled the still black void completely. Surround sound had totaly nothing on this sound.
I called out to God and a male voice mocked me saying, "Where is your god?" He said, "All your life you have been told there's a God. Wellll, where is he?"
There was more laughter. I didn't give up. I kept calling out to god and there was blackness and then total silence. I was all alone in this hell. I remember thinking to myself, "I have got to come up from here or I will be here forever." I looked up and I could see what seemed to be a tiny light it was so far away that it was about the size of a pin head and it looked red. I thought to myself, "I have to will myself toward that light. It's my only chance," and I remember forcing myself toward the light with all my power and will.
I began to move toward the light and the more I moved the harder I forced my will to keep going, and I started going faster and faster towards the light. I could see it getting bigger and then all of a sudden I hit something like a peice of glass and I couldn't make it through. I could see the light on the other side but it was like I was in water and looking through a glass barrier.
I felt a hard jolt and I was suddenly on the table. My eyes flashed back in my head. I saw, for just a mini second, the frightned eyes of a young doctor with a green mask and a cap standing at the head at the table looking down at someone. Then I was back on the other side of the barrier and I couldn't get through again. This happened two more times and then I heard someone having a seizure and it sounded like growling and I was so afraid.
The next thing I knew there was a nurse there and she was whiping my mouth of foam and I took my first deep breath of air. I looked down and there were two doctors holding my legs down by my ankles. I took in a sort of screaming breath and said "Oh my God!" One of the doctors who was holding my ankles said, "What's the matter, honey?" I said, "I Died!I died!" They were silent. They just looked at each other and walked out of the room. I cried like a baby and I was so afraid I might die again. Then a doctor came into the room and listened to my tummy and said we have a heart beat from your baby. Then others came in and they listened too. Then they came with an injection to my hip and said, "This is to bring on your labor pains." By this time I was totaly freaked out I just took it moment by moment.
They sat a nurse in a chair beside my bed she never opened her mouth she was dressed in pink she was a black nurse with a pink mask. She sat there with folded arms and just watched me, not answering me or saying a word. I cried and begged her not to let them put me to sleep again. I told her that I had died and that if they put me back to sleep I would not ever come back again. It did no good she wouldn't respond to me. Then after a long while I felt labor pains and the nurse got up and came over and felt my tummy. Then they came and wheeled me out to the labor room with some other women. I had quick labor and delivered my daughter which was born crying. The delivery doctor said it was a miracle that she was alive. He had to reach in and pull the sac the baby had been in out with his hands it was all apart like a hair net. That's where my body was bleeding from.
It's been 35 years ago, and I remember that experience like it was yesterday. It has changed my life. I realize now that you can't be too good to go to heaven, that you have to put forth effort daily to stay in God's graces. He did a miracle with my life and my daughter's that day and I will forever be greatful to God for his miracles.
Kathy Rachel - [email protected]