Near-death experiences (NDEs) have been highly debated by people who have been brought back and others who are more sceptical. However, one man described a feeling of detachment as he saw his apparently lifeless body on an operating table.
Lorry driver Al Sullivan said the vivid scene showed him with his eyes taped shut, his chest cut open and his heart exposed in an operating facility.
He said he felt confused upon seeing a man dressed as a surgeon pacing around the room mimicking a chicken with his arm movement.
Mr Sullivan underwent a quadruple coronary bypass surgery.
Days after the procedure Mr Sullivan visited his surgeon and questioned him about the arm flapping.
He recalled the doctor, in a moody manner, asking him how he had found out about that. The doctor said: “Who told you about that?
“I must have done something right, because you’re still here, aren’t you?”
Bruce Greyson, professor emeritus of psychiatry and neurobehavioural sciences at the University of Virginia, who was told the story by Mr Sullivan, got in touch with the surgeon to find out whether the patient had actually seen something.
Surprisingly, the surgeon admitted he was moving his elbows in such a motion after sterilising his hands in order to instruct his assistants in the operating room.
The account was revealed in Dr Greyson’s book After: A Skeptical Scientist’s Journey to Understand Life and Beyond, and shared by The Daily Mail.
Near-death experiences (NDEs) continue to be researched by experts, in a bid to find a scientific reason for the phenomenon.
