2 Trips to the Afterlife and All I Got Was a Lousy Ruined T-Shirt
By: Ryan Dejonghe
Tags: Health, Writing, Creative Non Fiction, Self, Creativity

As far as last words go, I can think of better things to say than, “sure, I’ll have more fries.”

I was enjoying a Saturday afternoon with my family at Red Robin: eating burgers, drinking margaritas, and — of course — feasting on an endless stream of deep-fried, well-seasoned sliced potatoes.

While my last words were asking for more fries, my last thoughts were, “wow, this drink is stronger than I realized.”

In a blink of a moment, the lights of my life turned out.

I fell over, on top of my son. Thankfully, amongst the quickly ensuing chaos, a 9–11 firefighter from New York was there to see my blue-turning body and immediately began CPR.

74 shocks later

Needless to say, I’m an advocate for AEDs in public spaces. A few jolts from this portable device (provided by mall security) was enough to sustain me until the paramedics got me to the hospital.

Once there, I remember hearing two things in between a series of 74 shocks from the paddles:

“Ryan, we love you.”

“There he goes again.”

As far as I know, I’m the only one to have taken up the contents of two crash carts in that emergency room. I was a spectacle. The head doctor had to remind his staff that there were other patients needing help.

After (I don’t know how long), they had someone available to intubate me. I was scared of drifting off to sleep and never waking up again. They assured me: sleep was my best option.

I learned a new word

After waking from a few-days-long coma, I had many questions.

A quick side note: seeing a priest come into the room to “check on me” scared me shitless. His glad tidings felt more like a visit from the grim reaper.

Back to the story.

Besides me, the doctors also had questions, “did you take cocaine?” My reply was, “lots of stress, little sleep, and copious amounts of energy drinks? Yes. Cocaine? No.”

They proceeded to present the medical alphabet to me: EKGs, CATs, MRIs, and PETs. What did that spell? Nothing.

I had no blockages, good numbers, and excellent overall health.

That’s when they taught me a new word: idiopathic.

My parting gifts included: shrugged shoulders, an implanted battery pack (not unlike Iron Man), and a ruined t-shirt.

I loved that t-shirt. It was red with a picture of gnomes, and it said, “hanging with my gnomies.” They had to cut it off of me to attach the shocky thingies.

Fast forward to Yoda

After many years of changing diets and varying exercise routines, I thought I was past my annoying little habit of suddenly dropping dead.

Nope.

It happened in the middle of the night, while having a terrific dream of crushing Yoda in a game of tennis. I may have won against the Jedi master, but I had lost my life. Again.

A quick side note: it took my internal defibrillator 18 seconds to detect my heartbeat (or lack thereof), charge up, and shock me back into life.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to go through a mariachi performance of electric zaps, but, yeah. Still sucked.

Clap on. Clap off. The Clapper!

Nothing quite messes with your psyche than the feeling of God using the ClapperⓇ with your life. Turning on and off, and back on again, was not a trick that I wanted to include in my repertoire.

Now, the psychiatrists began introducing me to various letters: CBT, DBT, and PTSD.

After more white-shouldered shrugs, a new battery, increased medications, and a growing pile of medical bills, I was in the same place that I started: confused and scared.

Meditation as the best medication

I started to find true healing after reading a book by Jon Kabat-Zinn. He talked about imagining yourself dead.

A quick side note: WTF, Jon?

But it worked. By embracing what is, and allowing that thing, versus resisting it, I found my peace. Key word: allow.

Meditation brought me into a place similar to death, in that in nothingness, I find my everything.