A man whose heart stopped for a lengthy 90-minutes after suffering a cardiac arrest has told of his dramatic experience during the “life-changing” event.
Alistair Blake, a 61-year-old man from Victoria in Australia, says he went to the "other side," and back, in 2019 after experiencing a medical episode as he was sleeping next to his wife, Melinda.
He described the terrifying experience while speaking on news.com.au’s ‘I’ve Got News For You’ podcast and explained that his wife woke up to him making noises at around 3:00 am.
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He said: "She’s a light sleeper and woke to me gurgling. She grabbed her mobile phone and dialled triple-0 to get a hold of the ambulance and they instructed her to take me off the bed to be able to do CPR.
"She did CPR for 20 minutes … then the paramedics turned up. They did CPR and hit me with the defib. Apparently, it was something in excess of 10 to 12 times."
The police arrived at the scene in the meantime and took Melinda into another room and told her that her husband was probably not going to survive. For 90 minutes, paramedics worked to restart Alistair’s heart, and just when they were about to call time, they miraculously found a pulse.
Nearly a week after this happened, Alistair woke up at Frankston Hospital, and thankfully there were no signs of a brain injury. As a result, his medical team nicknamed him ‘Lazarus’ – the man who was raised from the dead.
Alistair told ‘I’ve Got News For You’ that he doesn’t remember too much from the medical episode and his time in the hospital and said he didn’t “see anything.”
“I remember going to bed on the Saturday night – and the next thing I remember was waking up Thursday morning on a trolley going from ICU to coronary care. The human brain has totally blocked out what happened in between.
"A lot of people ask me if I saw anything, and no, I did not see anything,” he said. “No bright lights, nothing like that whatsoever."
Alistair is one of the many people who have opened up about their near-death experiences, and although he didn’t see any evidence of “the other side,” there have been others who have.
Patrick Steele, who is a Palliative Care Consultant from Palliative Care South East, explained to the podcast hosts the scientific and spiritual reasons behind a mysterious 'white light' other people have said to have witnessed.
He said: "From a spiritual perspective, some people believe that the bright light is a glimpse into the afterlife or a sign that consciousness is leaving the brain. From a psychologist’s perspective, some say it’s more of a defensive mechanism or some say it’s a flashback to earlier memories.
"From a medical perspective – and the one that I adhere to most – is that it’s more of a change in how our body is functioning, particularly the brain. The brain, as you know, needs a lot of oxygen and blood supply to do its job effectively. Whenever that oxygenation is cut off, the brain doesn’t act normally."
Mr. Steele compared the bright light to an experience that many people have when they faint: "The change of blood supply that occurs in the brain due to low blood pressure results in a sort of tunnelled vision, so the darkness comes in from the outside before you pass out. For me, this (white light) is a more exaggerated version of fainting."
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