Guys? This is nuts.

[altarflame]

Seriously crazy. Are you ready for this?

I got this book for Christmas, right, it's a current bestseller I didn't know much about - "Proof of Heaven," which is an embarrassingly cheesy title, but I wanted it because it was available cheap at BJ's of the subtitle - "A Neurosurgeon's Journey Into the Afterlife," which led me to the back cover. The synopsis there told me it was about some super skeptic scientist doctor who had his own near death experience that can't be explained away because of this and that imaging while he was out of commission.

Backtracking slightly: I have been fascinated by the topic of near death experiences in spite of myself, since I felt myself dying in 2007, and sensed absolutely nothing but my body being about to give out. It was a terrible time of nothing but blackness seeming to stretch out in front of me, during which I was in no way able to sense the presence of God, and it punched a lot of holes in my faith at the time. Anne Rice, who I follow on facebook and have a sort of long distance fan-friendship with, is also fascinated by near death experiences and is always sharing them, so links to news stories and books on them pop up in my facebook feed from time to time. Typically, when they do, I click on them with a kind of intellectual detachment stretched taut over heart-in-my-throat emotions I try to ignore. Generally they are either flimsy accounts or have links in the comments/reviews to debunkers, and I come away with a small amount of bitter relief masked by indifference, as I move on to the rest of my wall's offerings for the day. Anne Rice did mention this book briefly at some point, and I went, "Oh, I saw that at BJ's" and some part of my mind went, "OOooh, neurology and near death experiences mixed together, bring it."

So I got the book for Christmas and it's been sitting in my library in the weeks since. Yesterday I got it out and took it to PATH with us, after reading a bit more of the first pages/blurb quotes from critics. Kind of a resigned, "Alright, convince me" sort of thing that was half joke, half hope.

I had it sitting on the table in front of me when Mia noticed it and asked what I was reading. As I talked about it a bit I caught site of the guy's picture for the first time, at the bottom of the back, and laughed - I said something like, "does every neurologist go around in freaking bow ties? Is this a thing?" And then I read his mini-bio there.



He's spent 15 years AT BRIGHAM AND WOMEN'S AND BOSTON CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL IN BOSTON. I noted the name, and texted Grant, and looked up more on my phone, and dude. DUDE!

This is the fucking guy! This is the man who sat remote and seemed to lack people skills, who sat in a room with me sobbing my eyes out explaining Elise's prognosis; Mr. Everything That Makes a Person an Individual is Destroyed. The super brilliant eccentric person in polka dots and a bow tie who would only talk to me in jargon until I asked, "Yes, and what does that mean?" so many times that he was clearly uncomfortable (thus indirectly cementing my interest in becoming an armchair neurologist). He's wearing bow ties in every picture of him that exists, as far as I can tell, including while being interviewed by Oprah.

Apparently in 2008, while I developed a massive hernia from reparative surgery, struggled with PTSD, and collected a half million dollars in lawsuit settlement money, he caught some kind of super rare meningitis and slipped into a week long coma. And now he believes in God, Heaven, and so forth, strongly enough to come out saying it's his spiritual duty to tell everyone else all about it. His prologue says, "I am especially eager to tell my story to people who might have heard stories similar to mine before and wanted to believe them, but had not been able to fully do so. It is to these people, more than to any other, that I direct this book, and the message within it."

A lot of things go through my mind, like, "WELL HE HAS BEEN WRONG BEFORE :p" and, "...I wonder what he would think of my little's girl's wild story." I mean I'm willing to bet he'd remember us; the crazy family who had driven all the way from South Florida to attempt a HBA4C with the infamous Nancy (and later threatened with a massive lawsuit for retained surgical instrument)...I dunno.

I just do not even fucking know.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I feel like a jerk pointing this out but whenever I read you say you were "balling" it makes me cringe, because I know you actually mean "bawling" (to sob uncontrollably) and "balling" is a really crude way of saying you are having sex, or alternatively to say you are really wealthy in the fashion of a rich basketball player (as in "baller").

That said, I think this sounds really interesting, but I am really suspicious of people who use their subjective experience to try and convince everyone of the existence of afterlife/God etc. I have had several near-death experiences myself (I was in a coma for three weeks) and I saw and experienced some pretty wild things but it took only a small amount of research for me to understand this didn't actually HAPPEN, it was my consciousness gone haywire. I think it's ridiculous when people like this can readily dismiss the experiences of others as delusional but when it happens to THEM it means something. Nope, they were delusional too, but too much ego to admit it.

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

It's ok; that's one of (what I think of as) the last few consistent glaring typos I make. All the others have been weeded out through a combination of commenter corrections and Google Chrome underlining, over the years.

Your last two sentences there express ideas I've had about this particular case, too.

I'm not sure if I'd be able to allow the sort of research you mean to discount my own experiences, or not. On the one hand, yes, you can explain it...on the other hand, does that mean anything? Can't your consciousness going haywire be the biological side of your spirit getting a glimpse of what comes next? I mean, death, physical death is defined the same way for us all and is sort of irrelevant to whether or not a soul leaving the body is a part of the process... I don't know. We can boil love down to chemical secretions and what lights up on an MRI, we can trace it back to hormonal fluctuations, breeding instincts, and so on - but we don't say any of that means love isn't real. If I'm happy but I had sugar and caffeine today, is that really "happiness," or am I just being naive? (<-- That way lies madness)

For what it's worth, I am playing devil's advocate but I do understand your perspective and see it as a valid one.

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

I wasn't trying to prove the existence of souls (or afterlife) through correlation - I also don't think of love as a biological phenomenon. I guess that concept is something to ponder; I've only heard people use science to scoff at the idea of love being meaningful or profound, not to justify it.

Re: my original comment - I just don't think a possibly corresponding biological process inherently disproves external experiences or feelings.

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I also would TOTALLY go crazy not being able to trust/believe in an NDE if I had one right now. I mean I can't even let myself go and just have faith in general because I know how dissociative-ly good I am at making shit up and feeling it.

But I am also the kind of person who thinks there is some kind of disconnect, something missing, something unaccounted for - be it souls or something else - in what science is currently able to explain and prove of us as people.

[(Anonymous)]

This guy was on some talk show yesterday or the day before, with another woman who experienced the same thing. I think it was the Jeff Probst show. Maybe they have some video on their website.

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

I've never heard of Jeff Probst. I saw the links for the Oprah thing. I haven't watched anything thus far.

I really did not like this man, in what I'm sure was at least mostly a circumstantial way. It's funny to me how I am just not eager to seek out videos of him talking...

[(Anonymous)]

One line of the book description on Amazon-- "The part of the brain that controls thought and emotion—and in essence makes us human—shut down completely." Weird that so closely echoes what he said to you about Elise.

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's interesting...I find writers always have "voices" that they can't completely step out of. Even when they're writing wildly different things.

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

And I would like to say that just as parents of profoundly disabled children popped out of the woodwork to shout that their kids ARE STILL INDIVIDUALS - whether or not they can talk, move, eat, etc..... their kids are also still human. Even if those parts of their brains are shut down.

I feel like he is in a very powerful and sensitive position, delivering the sort of news that he does to parents on such a regular basis, and like he should really, seriously know better than to phrase things the way he does. I would get it if he was in totally private research mode, or if he was trying to come up with a delivery once, on the fly - but this is what he does. What he's done for 25 years, apparently, at one of the foremost children's hospitals in the world. One would think he could get it together and hone some more thought out sensitivity in there.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, I absolutely agree. I kind of randomly pop in and read your journal, and have for years, we've never met or talked, and I vividly remember reading that post, where you describe him saying that. It has stuck in my mind all these years because it was so freaking ice cold, It just shocked the shit out of me at the time.

[ariellejuliana.livejournal.com]

I just read that book! I can't believe he is that same doctor! So crazy.

I really want to believe his account. It was mostly very believable to me. But I have a hard time with a few things he says, and this seems like something I have to believe all of or nothing.

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

I really want to believe his account. It was mostly very believable to me. But I have a hard time with a few things he says, and this seems like something I have to believe all of or nothing.

This could refer to so many things, for me. I'm pretty sure it's an attitude that's caused me an enormous amount of strife ;)

In this instance - having not read the book yet, myself - I don't know. Is it like that? Or could it be that he had valid, real experiences but is still a fallible and imperfect human being recounting and interpreting them?

[walk0nthe0cean.livejournal.com]

Not that I would ever write a book about why I believe in ___________, but it would literally break my heart if I had a life-changing experience and someone [that I cared about] dismissed me with a "Well, you've been wrong before". (Anecdata would just annoy me)

According to my teenage daughters, I'm wrong on a daily basis. :P

While I want to believe that he wrote this book from an honest place, I'm on my own spiritual journey and I don't know if things like this happen. I can only judge by my own experiences and what convicts me.

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

Well, for what it's worth, I was half joking about that as one of several thoughts that naturally occurred to me - and, I don't think I'm someone he cares about on any level. Of course we're all wrong all the time - I had typos corrected up-thread ;) But he was pretty phenomenally wrong, in his field of expertise, about something very profound for me, and that is the only previous interaction I've had with him. Whether that's because of his inaccuracies or her being miraculous; that could potentially be up for debate (for some).

Aside, though, as someone who has had a public blog for a long time and has a pretty controversial book published, I feel like there's just no way you can even begin to CONTEMPLATE publishing something like this without bracing for the backlash. A neurologist putting out a near death experience? It's like throwing a sheep to the wolves! I doubt what I had to say here would rank in his top 10,000 criticisms...

I haven't really gotten to questioning his motives, yet - I mean I also haven't read the book. But...I don't know. You know he was raking in money already, and there were probably other ways to ensure a more sure windfall of more. He's shredding his credibility in a lot of circles, I'm sure. He was known for debunking NDEs, himself, and so probably scorned the whole idea... It's hard for me to imagine he ISN'T coming from an honest place. It's not hard for me to imagine him being wrong about the authenticity of his experiences (at this point, at least) but I would bet he believes they were authentic.

[walk0nthe0cean.livejournal.com]

I totally understand all of that. I was relating to it on a personal level.

Being in the medical field for my entire adult life and working in [the pharmaceutical end of] medical research for the past couple years, I cannot imagine any life experience - whether clinically "provable" or not - that would be so profound that I'd stake my income on it. That being said, he's made a name for himself and I suspect that those who already thought him a bit wu-wu wouldn't be any more convicted of that opinion. Even if he could prove himself within the smallest margin of error, there would be dozens itching to prove him or his methods wrong.

I'm just waiting to see if his Oprah bump catapults him into a Dr. Oz-like status. :P