Near the end
of his surgical career, neurosurgeon Allan J. Hamilton had an experience that
convinced him near-death experiences were real and the patient’s conscious mind
can exist when the patient is ‘brain dead.’
A
thirty-four-year-old woman had suffered an aneurysm in her brain stem. “The
swollen, ballooned portion of the aneurysm had actually engulfed and surrounded
two important arteries that could simply not be injured or sacrificed. The
aneurysm had swelled, like a rising loaf of bread, and would have to be teased
off both blood vessels before it could be definitively repaired. But how to do
this? Almost for certain, dissecting the aneurysm in this fashion would cause
it to rupture — in which case she was dead for sure. But what if there was no
blood to spill out when it did rupture? What if there was no flow at all?
“The surgical
team decided to address the repair by cooling the patient’s body temperature
down low enough to put her into a state of suspended animation. To make her
core temperature cold enough to stop her heart so all blood flow would cease —
maybe for as long as twenty minutes. To accomplish this goal, the young woman’s
body would have to be slowly cooled on a heart-lung bypass machine, a device
that oxygenates and then pumps the blood back into the patient’s body.
Eventually, as the body’s temperature dropped below 90 degrees Fahrenheit, her
heart would stop beating altogether. Once it stopped, the bypass machine would
also be shut down. All blood flow to her body and brain would then cease
entirely.
“At that
point, all her brain wave activity on an EEG monitor would fall to zero. Then
the aneurysm could be approached without being obscured by bleeding. It would
be clipped under deep hypothermia. No more than twenty minutes could be allowed
to complete this task. By then, if all went well, Dr. Tom Reed would have the
aneurysm successfully clipped so it would be completely excluded from the
circulating blood flow. When the deadline was reached, the bypass machine would
be turned back on. Her blood could then be slowly and progressively rewarmed.
We hoped that as her body temperature returned closer to normal, the young
woman’s heart would resume beating.
“From a
technical point of view, everything required for this daring surgical
undertaking went well. There’s a video and audio track documenting the
operation through the microscope. The audio portion is simply a recording of
whatever ambient noise is picked up on a small boom microphone. As the
operation began to wind down, several trivial conversations were picked up. One
involved a conversation between Tom Reed and the perfusionist, the technician
who overseas the heart-lung bypass pump.
We’re going to
need to start the pump back up in a minute or two. Everything ready to go? Tom asked.
We’ve got to
blow first,
the perfusionist answered.
“To ‘blow’ is
vernacular for firing up the pump and letting it circulate for a few seconds to
ensure any bubbles in the system are cleared before reestablishing blood flow
in the patient. While the pump was readied, there was a second important
conversation picked up by the microphone. One of the nurses in the operating
room, a certain Rita Hightower, announced she had just gotten engaged. A couple
of the other nurses shrieked in excitement. Because Rita was scrubbed in,
wearing surgical gloves, she wore no engagement ring.
“But she said,
Oh, wait till you see it. It’s a one-and-a-half-carat square-cut yellow
diamond. And he proposed to me right there at Morton’s. John got down on his
knees and proposed. In fact, one of the waiters didn’t see him and tripped and
fell into the wine case. Nothing broken, but it was funny.
“Someone in
the background asked where the ring was from. Johnston Fellows. This was
one of the most exclusive shops in the Phoenix area. John had it custom-made
for me.
“The pump was
cleared. Thar she blows, captain, came the answer.
Okay, then.
Let’s pump this baby up, shall we?
“The bypass
machine churned and red blood began to flow again through the patient’s tissue.
The patient’s body was gently rewarmed. Her heart started beating again. A few
minutes later a normal, healthy brain wave pattern reappeared on the EEG. The
operation by Dr. Reed went flawlessly. But there was one matter than troubled
everyone. That was why I felt compelled to go see things for myself.
“As the
patient awoke in the intensive care unit, she emerged gradually from the
grogginess left by all the anesthetic agents. After several hours, her head
cleared. She sat up to greet Dr. Reed and his team of residents when they
stopped in to see her in the evening.
How did
everything go today? The patient asked.
Textbook-perfect, Tom said
with a smile. He quickly examined her. All of it was recorded on the video
camera in her room.
Well, I
thought I remembered hearing something ‘blow’ during the case,” she said.
“Did the aneurysm blow?
No. Tom must have
gone sheet-white. I could not see, as his back was toward the stationary camera
in the corner.
I thought
someone said, ‘Thar she blows.’ Like in Moby-Dick.
Yes, well that
. . . what you might have heard . . . was the tech telling me all the air
bubbles were blown clear out of the lines. That’s all.
Oh. I’m glad.
I was just remembering what a disaster you said it would be the aneurysm leaked
or ruptured.
No. Everything
went fine with the aneurysm. Tom leaned in closer to the young
patient. Is there anything else you recall?
Yes,
a ring. A one-and-a-half-carat yellow diamond from Johnston Fellows . . . and
Morton’s restaurant where someone fell into a wine case.
“Tom just kept
staring at her. You remember all that?
Yes. Why? What
does it mean?
Well, those
were just conversations we had in the operating room. Nothing special.
“Tom left the
room and immediately paged the anesthesiologist. She remembers
what happened in the OR!
No. No way! the
anesthesiologist responded. No, it’s impossible.
Well, you come
here and ask her what she remembers!
The
anesthesiologist came up a minute later and charged into the room and made her
repeat word for word everything she could remember. He scratched his head and
muttered, How the hell could this happen?
“What shook
everyone up who watched the video between Tom and his young patient was we all
knew that this woman’s brain had been dead — without discernible electrical
activity whatsoever. This meant that no brain cells were active, working, or
emitting electrical signals. Yet somehow the patient managed to recall the
conversation in the operating room while her EEG was flat. In other words,
while she was, for all intents and purposes, clinically dead — with no ability
for her brain to function — she somehow managed to make or ‘encode’ specific
memories of that conversation in the OR. And this was no hazy recollection. The
patient was reproducing practically word for word what had been said. Right
down to the jewelry store and the waiter stumbling. No, she clearly recalled
what had been said. There was no doubt about that.
“From
everything we currently know about how the brain works, it would be utterly
impossible, from a biochemical, metabolic, and physiologic point of view, for
this woman’s brain to create a memory. To do so would require neurons to be
activated and then capable of encoding incoming electrical signals. This
electrical activity would cause them to convert the voltage signals across the
cell’s surface membrane into specific changes in the transcription of messenger
RNA — or mRNA — in each neuron. These changes in mRNA produce precise molecular
changes, altering amino acid and peptide production within thousands of cells
to make a lasting memory the brain can recall. In order to create a ‘Kodak
moment of recollection,’ the brain must be very much alive and bristling with
electrical activation, and intracellular metabolism must be ‘revved up’ to the
maximum of each cell’s capacity.
“Yet we also
had here unequivocal, scientific evidence that not only was her brain not
working, it specifically demonstrated the absence of all cortical electrical
activity when these conversations actually took place. So where could these
brand-new memories have been created? Where had these memories gone? And where
could such a place exist? Certainly, wherever it was, it would have been beyond
the confines of her brain and mind, as we currently understand them. But
wherever these memories existed while her brain ceased to function, how could
they be accessed later from such a location? And how could such memories
survive intact ‘out in the ether,’ a place accessible to her brain for later
storage only after it revived and awoke? One thing was clear: Explanation or
not, she had stored and recalled accurate memories of what had happened.”
Allan
J. Hamilton, The Scalpel and the Soul: Encounters with Surgery, the
Supernatural, and the Healing Power of Hope (Penguin, 2009).