Here's what I remember: Before I had the heart attack, I was in a train station in Tokyo with two friends on a business trip. They were ahead of me, and I tried to catch up. I'd had some chest pains before, but my doctor said not to worry about them. Then these pains got so bad that I couldn't stand up. So I sat down, threw up, and blacked out. And then I was dead. Briefly. I have no conscious memory of slipping away. I had no sensation of time or where I was, but at some point I started hallucinating that I was swimming under ice.
It's a memory to me now -- not like a dream at all. On the other side of the ice was a bright light. There was also something dark on the other side of the ice, like sticks. My chest started to really hurt, and I associated this pain with the sticks. I swam toward them, putting my chest against the sticks on the other side of the ice. Then I thrust my arms through the ice to push away the sticks ... and I woke up, having just pushed away the arms of the guy giving me CPR.
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Or possibly the guy taking the opportunity to grope my moobs.
I had been out for about 10 minutes, and they even used a defibrillator on me. Damn. I missed that. That would have been awesome (or maybe not -- if you've ever been conscious during a defibrillation, feel free to share your story). A couple of days after my heart attack, the surgeon said I needed an operation and mentioned for the first time that I had briefly departed the world of mortals.