The near-death experience of Nancy

Step 1

September 30, 1991, before dawn · She can see · Nancy’s and Leon’s account

Nancy goes into hospital for a simple test

Nancy was 41 and had a young son. Her eyesight was fine. A few months earlier her shoulder had started to hurt, and she thought she had hurt it roller skating. It was a large tumor in her chest.

She needed a biopsy. A biopsy means removing a small piece of the tumor for testing. It was supposed to take an hour. Afterward she planned to go back to work and start treatment.

Leon, her partner, picked her up at around 6 in the morning and drove her to a hospital in California. He waited in the waiting room.

Her case was studied by Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper. On the page about their study we explain how they worked and what the limits of their study are.

Step 2

In the morning · In the operating room · Nancy’s and Leon’s account

With the first cut, the surgeon tears a large vein in her chest

Nancy went into the operating room at 7:30. With the first cut, the surgeon accidentally tore the superior vena cava. It is the large vein that carries blood from the head and arms back to the heart.

In the rush, they sewed up the vein and left it shut. The surgeon didn’t realize what he had done. At around 11:30, Nancy came out of surgery and went to the recovery room.

Leon had been waiting for hours. At around one in the afternoon, the surgeon took him into another room. He told him something had happened and that they didn’t really know what.

With the vein closed, blood from her head and arms could no longer get back to the heart.

Step 4

That afternoon, by the elevator · Not breathing on her own · Nancy’s account

Nancy says that, with a jolt, she leaves her body

They were hurrying down the hallway. When they reached the elevator, the gurney slammed into it. With the jolt, Nancy left her body. She stepped off the gurney to one side and stood next to the elevator, watching.

• She saw herself on the gurney, with the black bag over her face, a surgical cap and a white sheet.
• She saw about six hospital staff, three on each side, in a panic. She couldn’t describe them.
• She felt like a person standing there, just as normal. But nobody could see her.

She saw everything very clearly. Years later, she said she remembered it as if it had happened five seconds earlier.

Then she stopped looking at herself and looked down the hallway.

Step 5

That afternoon, by the elevator · Nancy’s account

Nancy says she sees two men standing still down the hallway

Two men were standing in the hallway, about fifteen or twenty feet away. One was Leon, her partner. The other was Dick, the father of her son.

They were standing still. They weren’t talking to each other. They were looking at the gurney, but not making a move. They looked like they were in shock. Years later, Sharon Cooper asked her to describe in detail what she saw. This was her answer:

“And I thought to myself, ‘Why aren’t they coming up and doing something or saying something? You know, this is probably going to be the last chance they’re gonna have to see me.’ But they didn’t.”

This can be checked. We can find out whether Leon and Dick were really in that hallway.

Step 6

That afternoon and that night · Nancy’s account

Nancy says she moves toward a light and decides to come back

Then came a white light, very bright and very beautiful. The light fell on her body on the gurney, straight like a laser beam. Nancy started moving toward it.

Inside the light she was urged to return. In the end, she decided to come back. She remembers nothing else. She doesn’t remember the elevator doors opening or being wheeled in.

The scan showed what had happened to the vein. At 7:30 that evening they operated again. They put an artificial tube in her neck so the blood could flow again. She spent five days on a respirator, unconscious most of the time.

Nancy never got her sight back.

Step 7

1994 and 1995 · Kenneth Ring’s and Sharon Cooper’s account

Two researchers track down the two men in the hallway

Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper were looking for blind people who had had a near-death experience. Sharon Cooper interviewed Nancy about three and a half years after the operation.

Nancy gave them her medical records. The researchers also talked to the two men she says she saw. They talked to Dick once and to Leon twice. The main interview with Leon was on April 2, 1995.

By then, Nancy and Leon had been separated for years. They hadn’t spoken for at least a year.

Leon told them what he saw that afternoon from the hallway.

Step 8

That afternoon, in the hallway · Leon’s account

Leon says he was in the hallway and saw her go by

Leon was in the hallway by the operating rooms. He thinks it was 4 in the afternoon. He saw a gurney come out with four or five people. Nancy’s face and chest were so swollen that he could hardly recognize her.

• He called out to her: “Nancy, Nancy.” She didn’t react. “She was out of it,” Leon says.
• The gurney went right by him, within three to five feet.
• He thinks Dick was next to him, talking with him in the hallway. He isn’t completely sure.
• He walked around the corner to watch her go into the service elevator. He remembers it took some adjusting to get the gurney in, because someone was trying to get into the elevator at the same time.

Dick generally agreed with Leon. But he said several times that his memory of it was hazy.

One more question remained. Was Nancy already blind when she went down the hallway?

Step 9

The papers from those days · Kenneth Ring’s and Sharon Cooper’s account

The papers don’t say what time she went blind

Leon kept the notes he wrote in those days, with times. He sent them to the researchers. He also kept what Nancy tried to write when she couldn’t speak.

• The medical record confirms the biopsy and the second operation. It doesn’t mention her blindness until 8 a.m. on October 2.
• According to Leon’s notes, Nancy first tried to write that she had lost her sight that same day, the 30th, at 9:30 p.m. That is after the hallway.
• Another note of Leon’s, from the next day at 1:55 p.m., records what the anesthesiologist told him. According to the anesthesiologist, her eyesight was affected by the swelling and would come back when the swelling went down.

Leon didn’t know that Nancy was blind when they were taking her to the elevator. “Nobody knew,” he said. He doesn’t think the doctors knew either. They found out in intensive care.

The researchers checked two more things. An eye specialist told them that, if blood stops flowing like that, the optic nerve can be damaged in minutes. At least six hours went by between the cut and the hallway. They also tried out an ambu bag. A person lying on a gurney with the bag on can’t see to the sides.

With all this, the researchers reached their conclusion.

Step 10

1997 and 1999 · Kenneth Ring’s and Sharon Cooper’s account

The researchers believe Nancy really saw the two men

Ring and Cooper described the case in their 1997 article. They described it in more detail in their 1999 book Mindsight. They write that Leon’s account matches Nancy’s in every important respect. In their view, Nancy most probably couldn’t have seen the two men with her eyes, and yet she saw them.

The book leaves two things unclear. It doesn’t say when Nancy first said she had seen the two men, or whether anyone had told her before that they were there. And Leon called her by name as she went by. The book explains why Nancy couldn’t have seen them, but it doesn’t say whether she could have heard them.

What can be checked today about the two men Nancy says she saw in the hallway?