I’m not sure if it was a near-death experience …?

I had a significant birthday coming up and I had planned to do it in style.  Rhoda and I love Italy, and so we planned a trip to Rome followed by Portofino, Lake Como, Milan and then back to Rome.  We stayed in fine hotels in either the center of the action or water front.  Shopping for the whole family.  Lunch and dinner out every night.  

It was great – until half way through, one of my kids became seriously ill and was admitted to hospital by ambulance.  So, here’s me, driving the black BMW we had hired, chasing the ambulance from Lapagna to Genova along an Italian autostrade at high speed through tunnels and over very high bridges.  It was a rush … anyway.

A week later, and I’m still sitting in a hospital room – next to the bed – listening the sound of a sick child, having the intravenous pump get blocked waaaay to often and start that beeping sound – calling the nurse – trying to communicate with my poor Italian and her poor English.

It’d be much harder if I didn’t have a medical background.

With all this time on my hands, I’d have thought that I’d be productive with ‘work’.  But I haven’t been inspired to do anything much.  I’ve mostly done just what a parent should do – and that is to do whatever their sick kid wants them to do.  Play cards?  Sure.  Play the nintendo DS?  Sure.  Watch that movie again and again.  No problem.  Record funny voices on my iPhone and play them back at double speed? Ha! Let’s do it!

It’s just that right now it’s really dragging on.  And I can’t sleep.  And I feel like writing for the first time.  I’m in the mood to write something significant, honest and succinct.

it’s a message to myself and to you, and it goes like this (with profanity removed for those who might choose to be offended):

For *&^#’s sake, will you just do what it is that you want to do.  Don’t just try it, do it.  Get in and make it happen – whatever it is that you want to make happen.

It will never, never happen unless you make it happen.  If you’ve been working on something and it’s going nowhere, then get help or move on to something else.  If you’ve been contemplating something but you’ve never taken action, then just do something – anything, to make it happen.

And if you’ve got no idea – don’t know where to start – then just start something.  It doesn’t matter if it’s ‘wrong’ or ‘right’, just start.

And if you’re too scared to take action – then grow the $%^* up and do it anyway.  Too scared – don’t be lame …

And if you’re “too young” then get over yourself – you’re not too young.  And if you’re “too old” then get over yourself – you can’t afford to waste time.

It doesn’t matter what your goal is – maybe it’s to start a business and retire young.  Maybe it’s to become an internationally recognised researcher.  Maybe it’s peruse a professional career.  Maybe it’s to become a billionaire (and I did meet a guy recently who’s on his way).  Maybe it’s just to have awesome coffee at home every morning before work.

Will ya just stop wishing and start doing.  

And it doesn’t matter to me if you’re a habitual failure or a superstar success – both groups of people are missing amazing opportunities RIGHT NOW because they’re not looking.

What I’m talking about is taking your idea – no matter what it is and no matter who you are – and turning it into a reality while having a party doing it.  This is my public health message – and I feel it strongly.

The near-death thing

In 2005, I had acute appendicitis.  It developed on the night before my mothers funeral – my mothers funeral for crying out loud.  Instead of going to hospital as I knew I ‘should’, I stayed for the entire day and then rushed 1hr to a city hospital (thanks for the lift JB).

It turns out that this was rather life threatening.  My appendix was wrapped around my ureter (the tube coming out of my kidney).  I had emergency surgery and then developed a secondary abdominal infection.  Apparently, I was on endone for the pain – which is also a respiratory suppressant.

During that period of hospitalisation, I stopped breathing a couple of times.  And it felt great.  I’d never felt so peaceful and I’ve never felt so peaceful since.

I had zero air hunger. Zero.  I experimented with this.  I’d have to force myself to start breathing again – but then without me knowing, I’d have stopped breathing again and find myself experiencing this incredible peace.

Now – I don’t really go in for all that ‘after-life’ stuff – spirits leaving and minds persisting outside the body.  I’ve got too much neuroscience knowledge to believe in that.  And I’ve got no proof that near-death experiences are anything other than a neurophysiological event.  And I don’t even know if what I had was a near-death experience.  So, I wont label it as anything other than what it was – I stopped breathing, had no air hunger, was incredibly peaceful and needed a damn good reason to force myself to start breathing again.

When you’ve had something like this happen to you – and this is the first time I’ve made this information public – you can develop a fairly brazen approach to things.  It’s like, you’re alive, so act the part.  Don’t join the league of the walking dead and move through life being subjected to:

1. fear
2. a job or life role that you hate
3. people who harm you
4. bad coffee, bad hair, bad breath … I could go on

Now, when I start on like this, I start to sound all ‘motivation-ey’.  Like a shiny-toothed, slick personal development guru offering cheap advice that turns out to be expensive. I could try and write a deep and meaningful post about how I chose to breathe and how I chose ‘life’ – and oooohh how wonderful (puke). But I’m not going to write that sort of post.  

Look, you’re not my responsibility.  I’m not fussed if you decide to live in a grotty box for the rest of your life so long as you don’t try and bring the rest of us down.  

But – I am excited by people who ‘give a stuff’ and who want to get stuff done.  I’m an imagination hunter – and I dig it when peoples’ imagination grabs hold of them and makes them do things that are out of the ordinary – for them.

Anyway, keeping to my goal to be succinct:

You’re here.  Don’t be boring.  Do cool stuff.  That’s it.

Tagged as: nic-lucas near-death-experience personal-development