My NDE occurred while I was hospitalized with a post-surgical staph infection that went septic. Antibiotics had not been effective to that point, and I was in considerable pain. My vital signs were erratic, and I'd experienced some hallucinations. I was conscious and able to converse with caregivers and family members.

My thoughts immediately before my NDE were about the incongruity of the intense pain I was feeling and the ability to live. In a logical way I determined that it was not possible to live with such pain because it was so overwhelming as to negate life. I can't remember deciding that it was time to die, but that was my mindset when I entered my NDE.

My first sensation of an NDE was an awareness of leaving my body, of the absence of gravity or other physical constraints. I recall looking down and seeing my body on my hospital bed. It appeared clay-like and very dead. I remember having a thought that it was really like people had described.

My next memory was arriving at a kind of staging area. There was a bright light emanating from a hidden source to my right. On my left was an immense wall of darkness, like the surface of a lake. Multitudes of small, dark shell-shaped entities were rising from the staging area and through the dark surface.

In the staging area itself were what I perceived to be recent arrivals, each coming to a stop between the light and the dark. Around each fell a cloud of dust-like material. It was as if they were shedding anything they'd brought with them.

My attention then turned to the right, toward the light. Unconsciously I wondered what was generating the light. A response came into my consciousness that the light was love and that it was love that kept the light alive.

I wasn't scared, but I wondered if I was really dead. Again, an answer came into my consciousness that I had to make a decision, that either I was going back right away, or I wasn't going back. An image came to me of a light switch: it was either on or off.

I decided to go back, but I was seeking guidance. A human figure appeared to me: a woman in a white lab coat, holding a clipboard. Without speaking, I asked her what I was to do. With some slight exasperation and impatience, she answered me very clearly, "Just go do good." 

I then returned to my body and eventually regained my health.

Those words – “Just go do good” – have resonated with me and guided my life every day since my NDE.