Tell me what you live was like before you died.

I was born and raised Catholic.

I remember making my first communion and that was like a big celebration with family and friends.

The first communion, I was able to talk at the church and read on one of the readings, and that was so exciting for me.

I loved that kind of thing.

And then my confirmation.

I always have loved the Holy Spirit.

I've always had such a connection I felt to the Holy Spirit because it's a living spirit, and so I've always.

Felt really connected to that.

I was living a shopping mall.

I just got home from a trip with a girlfriend, Cantcoon.

We had a really nice time and I got home the day before Sunday, and then Monday I went to work.

I don't even any memory of day time at work, but after work, I went to get some moisturizer for my son that had gotten down at Campoon.

And I was leaving the shopping mall and a young man who recently had gotten his license was speeding, going over fifty miles an hour in a thirty five million hour zone, and he was distracted and ran the red light and nailed me right in my driver's store I was a little sports car and he was in a bigger, older car, and at fifty miles an hour he hit me in the force of his car hitting mine at fifty miles an hour twisted my head around on the brain stem and last right had suffered most of it, but there was an up due to paramedic who was at the scene.

He was from another town the next time over getting a tire fixed.

But I guess they all have radios they communicate with each other.

And there was another fire station right down the street, and so he called them and he told them to bring the jaws of life because my car was so Christian saved time to be able to get me out.

And he got to my car first and he broke the back window and got behind me and lifted my head to start an airway so I didn't lose accident going into.

My brain and that really was so helpful.

And then the paramedics were there, you know, again right down the show.

He called them right away, so three minutes they were falling on me.

I mean they were quick, fourteen minutes door to door from the hospital from getting the call.

Yeah, I mean, amazing first responder is amazing and they when they got to me paramedic wagon, I already did not have a blood pressure.

And so my body like depleted.

Loo's on control of all your body bodily functions in the mambelance and everything.

And because I didn't have any blood pressure, they knew that there was They needed to have any EG test one in my brain to determine life or dust stay at us.

And so they call ahead always to the hospitals to let them know what they're getting.

And so they called to have a neurosurgeon waiting, and he was waiting and he did meet EG on my brain and it was shown that I did not have enough brain activity to keep me alive.

So on most days I could have been legally declared dead, but in Illinois there's a law that you're next to ken your family member and caregiver or someone he has to be contacted before you can be legally to they're dead.

So they were forced to put me on life support, and they called my mom and dad to come in and make the decision to keep me out or take me off.

And we recently lost my DA to cancer and his acologists said, I know this diagnosis was the worst day of your life, and my dad said, no, getting the call about her crash was the worst day of my life.

I mean could make me cry right now.

It's just you know, I'm not a parent.

I know you are, and I just can't imagine anything more devastating than to get that.

And then they got pulled aside by a chapel.

When they went into the hospital, a doctor and a nurse, they were told that ninety six percent of people with my injury die within the first twenty four hours, and the four percent of people who live lives.

Some of it sitatively like in a nursing home.

But my parents were going to give me care for home.

They had made that decision.

If I had made it pissed the person night, I guess all of a sudden, a priest came to give me last rites and my parents stayed and called our parish and so they just really did that thing.

That's when they I think they was they knew that it was that serious.

I don't think it really hits people initially.

It's too much information coming at them.

And that's why when they say that most people die, ninety six percent of people die with my injury in the first twenty four hours.

I did die in those first twenty four hours, but I remained in a coma for six weeks, and my parents kept me in life support and kept fighting for they you know, my dad said, I kept seeing they wanted to put me into a nursing home after a month, and they were giving them the hole because it was brainstem was mostly my injuries.

So you know, that's her involuntary functions in your body.

And so my dad said, no, we're not going to put her in a nursing home.

We're going to put her in a coma stimulation program to give her a chance to wake up, and we're just going to give her every chance to try and get better.

Last thing I remember when I got home.

It was Mother's Day.

When I got home from my tripp to King Kun and my girlfriend's husband, I dropped us off at my parents' house because it was Mother's Day, and my brother drove me home and we were talking about my trip, and that's last memory I had when he dropped me off the night before, so that it was Sunday night.

So so what my neurosurgeon has told me, you remember in sleep wake cycles.

So the last thing I would remember is before I went to sleep, and you won't remember Monday at work, and I don't.

I knew I was there because I was dead and no floors were ceilings just open, and the walls except as very narrow eyeway to the left hand side, and I remember.

Thinking, why did God make that ioways so narrow?

And so the next thing I knew, I was before my two deceased grandmothers.

And I feel like it really was not my deceased grandmother's.

I feel like it was God in the Holy.

Spirit, because my one grandmother did not speak, and my other grandmother, it was like her eyes were these.

Tunnels of blue light.

We all had blue eyes, and she.

Didn't actually speak word, but I couldn't take my eyes off her eyes and I was happy to see them.

And I said, okay, can I girls, let's go like down the aishway that we're going to go together.

And my grandmother said, you have to go back, you can't go with us, and I said, well, I can't go back because I'm not physically okay, And I was pointing to my left side it was paralyzed.

And how I knew that I was paralyzed, No idea.

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And with again these endless tunnels of blue light.

It was just like thoughts that were like conveyed to me, not words, but it was like said that your body will heal.

And then I just felt like I was wrapped in a big, warm blanket like by the Holy Spirit, and I felt like everything was going to be okay and I was protected.

And then she said go back and be happy.

And the next memory I had was waking up from the coma at the rehab us six weeks later, another gentleman was, Who's done a lot of work with your dust studies?

He said, he started laughing, and he said, I have never seen Dad or the Holy Spirit show up in grandmothers and other people that he's like, you know, And I said, it was just the add of thing.

It really wasn't like my grandmother's.

It was just the form of them, and it was perfect, because you know who more would I feel more comfortable with.

And I was so close to them, and it was wonderful to see them and for them to greet me, and I would have been happy to go with them, but for me, it was it just was so amazing that when I first got there and I knew I was dead, it's a perfect peace that you'll never be able to feel here on earth.

It's just such perfection.

I don't know how it could have been more perfect.

Because when I woke up from the coma, I was totally paralyzed on my left side, couldn't see, couldn't talk.

I mean, it was bad.

I was youah in diapers, fed through YouTube.

I mean, it was the whole nine and it was bad.

God, how can I remembered my experience in heaven?

And then I was like, how.

Could you leave me in a body like this that I can't do anything for myself?

Like I couldn't even communicate.

I figured out how to press like my right hand.

It wasn't paralyzed to my face to be able to say like yes and no.

It's just like my voice box was partially paralyzed, so I couldn't really speak like sent and says until.

I just some voice box surgeries.

And I never really had any idea how much your brain stump controls and what it all does.

I just felt like I couldn't believe that he left me.

You're in the body and the fact that after I woke up two weeks afterwards, I started I said to my dad, Okay, I think I want to start walking, and the nurses were like, oh, you're paralyzing, and I'm like, well, I want to try.

And we got in trouble, my dad and I from the nurses because he was like my dad's was a big man over six x and the big dude, and so he picked me up on the back.

Of my scrubs and he was like, Okay, she wants to try and walk.

I mean, he was really old in me, but he's like, you wanted me to feel like I was doing something and that I wanted to do.

And they were like, you can't be doing that kind of thing.

She has to be in a wheelchair, which he's here.

And I started getting better so quickly, and everybody kept saying to me, you know, he had people hadn't seen in the hospital system such a severe brainstem injury, and a person who had been deceased actually wake up and actually start to recover to the extent that I did, and then do a triathlon ten years ago, having good love and doing work that's meaningful and just help for my friends and family.

It's really nothing more than that.

It's pretty simplistic.

I just really I'm just so fortunate to live every day usually very healthy, and I swim and do triathlon and I still be able to do those kinds of things.

And I've met a wonderful man in my life, so that it's wonderful, and I have a wonderful family and good friends, and so I think all of that is so important.

Definition God, he's definitionent.

There's really like no definition.

You know.

I've said this to people before, so I notice when I speak to kids or to people who are very old.

So people who have either just.

Come from God or just going back or will be just going back to God are the people who really get this.

And I just really think that is what is so important.

Tell people that, you know, people who are just coming from God, and people are just going to get what they get.

I just want other people to be able to get and I want to give that understanding.

To other people who might not have that understanding through my story.

And I just to feel like there's a whole middle of population of us, and you know, myself included before I had my injury in that and we're all living our own lives, doing our own thing, and I think that we get away from that, and I think that to be able to bring that story to people who are all in the middle, I think is important.

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