I am freakin Jon Snow

I was dangling 120 feet in the air when the flashback hit me.  My guide, Ronald, had told me when we were still near the ground that I could lean back and trust the ropes when I began to get tired. “Stretch out your legs,” he said.

The climb into the jungle canopy had been my chief goal for my trip this year – my fifth visit to Costa Rica’s southern Pacific zone. I had wanted to do this for years ever since I saw David Attenborough, the great naturalist, make the climb in a documentary about the rain forest.

I won’t say that I’m the most adventurous traveler out there, but I generally try to be open to any new experiences that come along. Once, in Guatemala, a guide plucked a tarantula from a tree and asked if I wanted to let it climb up my arm. He said a bite would feel like a hit from a staple gun. I did a quick cost/benefit analysis and decided I could survive a hit with a staple gun. I said yes. His body was heavy and his hairy legs felt like pipe cleaners as it crawled across my skin.

But this climbing excursion had become more important to me in the past months. For me, it would be proof that I was healthy enough again to throw myself back into living.

I’ve always trusted my body to be tough enough to withstand whatever my brain throws its way. But six months ago, my body let me down.

Yes, I know. Eventually, all our bodies will let us down. And I try to remember that my experience isn’t unique. As a matter of fact, it will happen to all of us. But very few of us get to come back and talk about it. In that respect, I am rare. So, indulge me, accidental reader. 2016 will always be remembered as a shitty year for many Americans. But as much as I fear for the future, 2016 will always hold a special place in my heart.

The rope climb up to the canopy was harder than I expected. My inch-worm technique was poor, which forced me to rely more on my shoulders than I should have. I was breathing heavy and I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. I tipped my head back and thrust out my legs just like Ronald told me to - when the vertigo washed over me and my memory took me back to a life-changing event six months ago.

On June 15, I had just finished a four-mile run that felt terrific. Shortly after, I began to feel a twinge in my chest. Within an hour, unable to speak due to the pain in the center of my chest, my husband was racing me to the hospital. 

I walked into the emergency rooms and was quickly hooked up to an EKG. A doctor looked at the results and said, “You’re having a heart attack.”

To which I responded, “That’s not possible.”

About 10 minutes later, my clothes ripped off, and hospital staff running around like ants, I felt my arm go numb and the light fading. Someone said, “She’s going under,” as someone else rushed in and led my husband out of the room. I remember with clarity my head rolling back and the arms of people who I could only see through a grey haze catching me as I fell back onto the hospital bed.

My husband left the room without turning around and I realized he didn’t know what was happening. That I was dying.

I learned later that my heart had stopped. Clinically, I was already dead. The odds of surviving cardiac arrest are only about one in four. Had I not made it to the hospital in time, my survival rate would have been only about 6 percent. My husband and mother, sitting just outside the room, heard a voice shout, “Clear,” as the medical team shocked me with a defibrillator and broke my sternum with CPR. My heart stopped two more times that night. Each time, they were able to bring me back.    

Thankfully, I was unaware of the drama going on to save my life. What came next I can only describe as what is called a Near-Death Experience. 

While I didn’t experience the light, nor the dead relatives, I did have a sense of soaring, bodiless, over a vast lush green landscape. It was so beautiful. And I can recall that sense of movement. Of looking down and seeing the landscape rushing by below me.

The moment I came back, I awoke to feels of euphoria and well-being washing over me. I don’t know if I have ever been so blissfully happy. I tried to describe these experiences to my doctor and the nurses. I asked them, “Where am I?” And the doctor said, “Your heart stopped and we brought you back.” In that moment, I was annoyed. I wanted to go back to finish whatever it was that I had been experiencing. “I had the most awesome dream,” I told them. I tried to talk about it. Thankfully, they were preoccupied with other things, like keeping me alive. Because my heart stopped two more times in surgery.

So many details I can’t recall, even though I struggled to remember them before the pain came rushing back and I was overwhelmed by the whirl of activity around me, as people rushed to their tasks to keep me alive.

This is what the science says may have caused my Near-Death Experience.

Noradrenaline is a stress hormone produced in a section of the mid-brain that is highly connected with other brain regions that mediate emotion and memory, such as the amygdala.

Also, a lot of drugs like ketamine can mirror the euphoria often described in Near-Death Experiences. Ketamine triggers the opioid systems in the brain and cause hallucinations and “out-of-body” sensations. The same systems can be triggered naturally in animals when under attack.

As I leaned back at the top of the canopy, I was struck with this same feeling of falling that I had when my heart stopped. Instead of arms catching me this time, it was the ropes. I closed my eyes. For a moment, I panicked.

When I opened my eyes again, I was surrounded by green. It wasn’t the same view as what I saw before. But the intensity of being surrounded by such lushness was familiar. In the distance, I could see waves of the Pacific Ocean crashing onto the beach. Vultures soared overhead. Below, the platform from which I had climbed looked the size of a postage stamp.

That same feeling of happiness and gratitude came over me. Whatever synapses were firing in my brain at the moment were the same ones from six months ago.

And I remembered. I am freakin Jon Snow. Despite dying three times in one night, I got to see the world from the top of a jungle canopy.

Winter is here, but I am still alive.