I was on the emergency room stretcher. Maybe it was 10 or 11 pm. I was cold and I had a nausea that was soaking me, unceasingly. I was intensely tingling in my whole body. Then I felt as if a fluid was going out from my whole skin, as if it had been under pressure and now was leaking as in a steamer. At the same time together with that feeling as if a valve was failing, I heard sounds DIMINISHING, as if I had cotton in my ears. All sounds took to seem ‘booming’ and getting fainter at once. I was very weak and my nausea and tingling were vanishing with the volume of sounds.
‘So, now I am TRULY dying’ I thought. I thought also: ‘Be as alert as you can Flavio, don’t let Oblivion overcome you. Stay connected as hard as you can with all you can perceive’
I was very puzzled by that sound perception that was getting fainter and more booming at once, thudded, just like sometimes it happens in movies and TV series. I thought it was something that could happen only there, instead it seems it is real.
I was nearly recumbent when those sensations begun. In about 6-7 seconds, I was lying down completely. In those seconds I felt fainter and fainter but at the same time those awful sensations given by nausea and tingling were leaving my bones.
As soon as I was fully lying down, perception of sound stopped. My eyes closed and I could not open them again. I could still hear sounds internal to my body for about 5 seconds upon which neither those any longer. The sound of my beating heart ceased too.
Yet I was awake. In the following 2 seconds also my tactile perception of the bed and my body left me.
The last sensation I had was of being in some kind of ‘space’ connecting my body to the apex of my cranium. I thought: ‘This is death indeed! I am going to exit from my fontanel!’.
Then I could feel nothing anymore yet I was awake, conscious, vigil.
All was dark and the sensation of darkness was NOT the one my closed eyes were used to give with the neon lights above my face. It was an authentic
ABSENCE OF COLOR. It was ‘black’ neither it felt like it was an ‘absence of visual perception’.
This lasted a second. Whereupon I felt I was something formless, something plunged into a fog whose color was that of nothingness, that colorless color I mentioned earlier. I felt brave but also a bit scared.
I was ready to defend myself against hostile being, shooting at them with ‘fireballs’. I knew I could do it, that the fact I could think it would have made me capable of doing it too. This bolstered my confidence.
I stood in that fog a few more seconds. The after 5 seconds I could FEEL MY BODY AGAIN. This feeling came back very slowly and gradually just as it went.
Also hearing came back gradually. My last ability to be back was that of moving. Also unpleasant sensations came back. Though they were diminished the lasted the whole night until the next morning, until 8.