When I was 5 years old, in the mid-1950s, I had to have my tonsils and adenoids removed. I was told we were going to the hospital to take my tonsils out, but no one explained to me what that really meant.

When the staff came to get me for the procedure, someone said something to me that made me realize they were going to put me to sleep and cut parts of me out and that my mother could not go in the operating room with me. I became hysterical and screamed at the top of my lungs all the way into the operating room (OR). My doctor, who I liked and recognized, met me at the OR doors and tried to calm me, to no avail. Then I heard them say, “Let’s go ahead and get her under as quickly as possible.” To this day, I have claustrophobia and problems with anything over my face as a result of what came next.

They wheeled me in and transferred me to the operating table and held me down while they strapped me there. Unable to move, I continued screaming as loudly as I could and struggled to get free. I do remember seeing the OR staff standing around the table and around the room and a very bright surgical light directly above my head. They then put a cloth over my eyes, followed quickly by some sort of mask over my nose and mouth. They told me to breathe deeply so I would go to sleep quickly. Convinced I was never going to wake up, I tried to hold my breath, but because I was screaming, I breathed in the ether anyway. In about two seconds, I went unconscious – or, as I thought then, I died.

Then, almost as quickly, I suddenly was conscious and hearing and seeing again. What I saw was that I was floating up from the operating table, past the people who were around it, toward the bright surgical light I had seen. I was so relieved and happy that I wasn’t dead that I didn’t even think anything about the fact that I was floating.

I rose up past the light, to the ceiling of the OR and stopped, then turned around in the air to look down, where I could see the entire room, the operating table with my body on it, and the movements of the people around it. I realized that it was my body still on the table, but it didn’t frighten me because it no longer had anything to do with the “real” me, who was floating above it all.

Glad to be out of danger, I then turned away again and floated up through the ceiling. Once outside the hospital, I looked around and saw the roof of the building, the building’s shape, and all the parking lots and trees around it. Never having been in that hospital since my birth, I had no idea what the full shape of the building was, but I could see it all very clearly.

I began floating upward again, but as soon as I got about 30 or 40 feet above the roof, I was stopped in mid-air by what seemed to be a person floating there with me. The being seemed to be male and dressed in a long, white robe of some sort, and I remember he seemed to have white light all around him. When I stopped, he floated just off and behind my right shoulder and told me that I couldn’t go any further this time. He told me he was there to help me and that he had always been with me. Strangely, I wasn’t at all afraid of him. I don’t remember everything he said, but I do remember that he told me I was safe and that the doctors and nurses were trying to make me better, that they weren’t going to kill me or do anything bad to me. He asked me if I understood and whether I was okay with that, and I told him I did and I was.

The next part of our conversation is the part I don’t remember specifics from, but I believe that he told me about some things that would happen in my life in the years to come. The one thing I now do remember very clearly was his saying, “Just remember, no matter what happens, you will always be okay.”

He asked me if I was ready to go back down to my body so they could finish the surgery, and I told him I was. He took me by the hand, and we descended through the roof of the building, back into the OR. We floated for a minute above the surgical light, from where I could see the back of the light in detail and from where I watched what the staff was doing. He explained the tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy procedures to me. I remember seeing everything that was being done and even what the instrument used to remove my tonsils looked like.

Finally, he asked if it was okay for him to leave and for me to go back into my body. I told him it was, and in that same second, I was unconscious again. My next memory was of waking up in my hospital bed, with my mother and a nurse there. I was no longer afraid or even upset but was happy to play with the new Betsy McCall doll I was given as a surprise.

And I had no memory of what had happened when I left my body in the OR. 

It wasn’t until more than 35 years later that I remembered. My daughter and I were watching the Surgery Channel on TV, where they were doing a tonsillectomy. The camera angle was from directly above the child patient and showed very clearly how the procedure was being done, including the instruments being used. I realized in that moment that I had seen these same images somewhere before, and then, in the next few seconds, the memory of my own tonsillectomy and the associated experience came rushing back, all of a piece.

I was stunned. After spending some hours trying to process the memories, I still couldn’t remember what the being told me about events in my life to come. But thought I finally understood why, whenever I was facing some life challenge, there was a voice in my head that said, repeatedly, “It will all be okay. It will all be okay.”