2004.

UC Davis Medical Center

Sacramento, CA.

As the anesthetic creeps through my veins, I take one last look around before I drift off.  

A bank of machines beeps and hisses and hums.

Wires and tubes coil from my body and disappear into the bright lights overhead.  

Masked and gowned giants loom over me.

But I’m not worried.

I feel warm and tingly and happy.

I’m in pediatric surgery having a potentially life-changing procedure called a cardiac ablation.

And as my eyes close, I picture the life I’ll wake up to…

A life of carefree baseball, volleyball, and soccer like the other kids my age.

But though I’m just 14, in less than an hour, I’ll be dead.
*****

The threat of death has hung over my life since before I can remember.

In fact, I was born dead.

See, I was born with… ready to wrap your eyeballs around this?

Wolff-Parkinson White Supraventricular Tachycardias (or SVT for short.)

Mine is a rare case of a rare disease, so I have two extra electrical pathways in my heart.

And sometimes the electrical signal which regulates my heart runs down one of those two extra pathways, which causes my heart rate to go way above normal.

So whereas a typical person’s rate resting heart rate is 40 to 60 beats per minute, mine is over 100.

And during an acute episode, mine can reach 200 bpm.

Sometimes I get a sense when it’s about to happen, and then I have to get to the hospital real fast.

The medical staff have to strap me down and shock me to restabilize my heart rate.

Sometimes they inject a drug called adenosine.

That feels like a ton of bricks crushing my chest.

It cuts off the power to my heart, stopping it dead…

Seconds later it cranks it back up again.

And that ton of bricks explodes, and I gasp for air so violently that the medical team has to hold me down.

Now all this breaking down and jumpstarting gets pretty wearing, let me tell you.

So they gave me medication for a while, but my case was so severe that the large dose I had to take for it to be effective made me fall asleep in class.
I was a smart and active student, and that didn’t wash with me.

So I nixed the meds.

Being at school was becoming real tough, because I never knew when I would drop like a stone and need to be rushed to hospital.

So after a lot of consultations with the doctors, me and my Mom & Dad decided this cardiac ablation procedure was the best thing for me. 

They will insert a catheter in my groin and run a cable up through that to my heart.

They’ll use that cable to cauterize the areas on the heart which will block the irregular electrical signal and return my heart rate to normal.

A routine but risky procedure in exchange for a normal kid’s life.

Seems worth it, right?

*****

“Mr. and Mrs. Bright, Madeline’s heart stopped during surgery and we couldn’t restart it. I’m really sorry, but your daughter is dead,” says the Surgeon to my stunned parents.

My father drops to his knees just as suddenly as I used to when I had an attack.

And as my parents come to terms with my death in the waiting room, I’m coming to terms with my own death myself.

*****

Floating to heaven feels great.

I’m happy and warm.

And I see my own lifeless body below, abandoned by everyone on the medical team except for the electrical cord specialist and the guy who shaved me for the procedure.

Those guys pump my chest and shock me with paddles long after the Surgeon pronounced me dead.

They work so hard to revive me, bless them.

But I’m so happy in my spiritual body above them, that I want to tell them this: “It’s okay, you’ve done your best.

Don’t worry about me, I’m happy now.

You can let me go.”

But still these two guys keep pumping and shocking my lifeless 14-year-old body.

They just won’t take “no” for an answer.

From high above I smile at how lucky the people in their lives are, knowing they have someone who’ll fight for them even when everyone else has given up on them.

So there I am, floating above my own dead body, feeling pretty happy, given the circumstances.

And I look back on my short life, and I remember the constant struggle I had just to stay alive.

So much pain, uncertainty, and a constant running from death.

And now that it’s come, I learn there’s nothing to be afraid of.

I feel warm, safe, and loved.

In those dreamy moments, I learn that every moment of life is important.

You can be living your best life and then BOOM…

Your card is pulled and you drop like a stone.

As I float higher, I promise that wherever I go next, I will impact people’s lives for the better.

I’ll give hope to the despairing…

Light to the lost…

Love to the wretched.

I’ll show them that there will be moments of crushing pain and ecstatic joy and that it’s vital to embrace them both.

Nothing is given to us that we can’t learn to handle.

When we handle it long enough, we forge that pain into a tool to help others who struggle with the same affliction.

I know my death will be a crushing loss for my family.

And yet, in time, it will teach them a strength they never knew possible.

If even one person’s life is improved by my living and losing mine, I know it will have had a purpose.

And I realize that our purpose here on earth is not to benefit ourselves…

It’s to benefit others.

That’s the key to a successful life.

And now as I look down on those guys still fighting for the mortal life I’ve let go of, I see a new figure in the room.

A girl about my age sits in the corner, watching me.

I’m not afraid.

Hers is a spiritual presence.

A beautiful, calming, warm presence.

She’s dead too.
Takes one to know one, I guess.

We smile at each other and then she speaks to me.

“It’s not your time,” she says. “You have to go back.”

“Are you sure?” I reply with ease as if I’m talking to a lifelong friend.

“I’m sure. It’s not your time. You still have a life to live,” she replies.

“Okay, if you’re sure. So how does it work?”

“Close your eyes and let yourself drift back down. Then reach out and touch your body. And you’ll be back home in no time.”

“Okay, I will,” I say as I close my eyes and drift down toward the two determined men still trying to bring life to my body 20 minutes after my spirit had left it.

“Remember what you learned while you were dead,” says the girl.

“I will, thank you,” I say, as my spirit reaches for my body on the operating table.

And soon, I’m home.

Coming back into my body is a shocking experience.

It’s like a rough landing after a peaceful parachute flight.

I take a huge gulp of air, and life rushes through my body.

My eyes twitch open, and I see the shocked look on my saviors’ faces.

Suddenly there’s a flurry of activity as the medical team runs around to deal with the return of the girl they discarded as a lost cause.

I close my eyes and leave them to it.

It took me leaving the present to understand the power of being present in every moment.

As I drift off to sleep again - dying is a tiring business - I dream of all the things I’ll do when I awake.

This 14-year-old girl will make the world a better place.

One smile at a time.