Blog Post by Nancy Aarsvold, May 14, 2018
It’s now two months since I experienced a V-Tach Storm, which caused my ICD to fire 52 times over 12 hours. Afterwards, I was intubated twice, staying in the ICU for six days. I was lightly sedated during the first intubation and then heavily medicated during the second one.
The sedation caused an extreme case of ICU delirium, filled with some positive visions but mostly dark and frightening dreams of death. When I first woke up, I was incredibly paranoid, worrying that the nursing staff was not working in my best interest and that even my own family might be blocking my medications by moving their chairs onto my IV lines. Gradually, I began to come back to myself and regained the ability to differentiate between what actually happened in the hospital and what I had dreamed. Yet even then, I felt as if there was a black cloud of hallucinations hovering over me. As a person who is normally positive and upbeat, I was disturbed by these dreams, especially by how persistent and large they loomed in my memory.
In fact, even now seven weeks later, I still haven’t managed to shake off this delirium and its accompanying darkness completely, perhaps because it forced me to confront my own mortality and consider existential questions such as what has been the purpose of my life and what will happen when I die. In the paragraphs below, I will try to reconstruct these dreams as a way of working through my own trauma and preparing myself for that time, hopefully many years from now, when I actually do face my own death.
My dreams
My dreams of death were episodic in nature, and at the end of each one, I expected death to be imminent. In some, I thought the medical staff was trying to kill me through their incompetence. In others, I thought my family was trying to help me die with dignity. In yet more, I felt as if I was on the edge of death, seeing visions of angels, God, and heaven. When I actually didn’t die but instead moved on to the next episode of my dream, I recall reflecting on the process mid-dream and thinking that it was inhumane because the process of dying was taking so much time.
People are trying to kill me through incompetence or ill will:
- In an often recurring episode, I thought the lab techs were trying to kill me by zapping my heart somehow. Apparently, there were regular scans and tests taken of my heart and chest while I was intubated, so there were lab techs in and out of the room and noises from the scanning equipment. In my dreams, I thought the techs were moving my body to just the correct position and then aiming an x-ray or laser beam at my heart in order to kill me. I couldn’t move, so I couldn’t fight back, and I was sure that my heart would just stop beating.
- In another recurring episode, I thought the nurses were putting incorrect types or amounts of drugs into my IV lines. I could also see that they sometimes stood on my IV lines or put a piece of furniture on them so that I couldn’t receive the drugs I needed. As I started to wake up more, I was aware of my family being in the room with me, yet even then I couldn’t shake this dream. I often said to Stephanie, “You’re scaring me” and asked her to move her chair away from the bed and off my IV lines.
- In between the many episodes, I would see geometrical patterns unfolding across the screen in my mind, and I would metaphorically try to close my eyes because the scenes were so frenetic, rapidly changing with bright colors and loud music. It was a little like watching a fast version of some screen savers on the computer. I remember thinking that surely they are giving me the wrong type of drugs since these seemed to be uppers and not downers. I have obviously never taken speed, ecstasy, or LSD, but I thought, “Wow, this is what it must be like to be on a drug-induced trip.”
People are trying to comfort me and help me die with dignity:
- Several dream episodes centered on doctors and nurses who were risking their own careers in order to help me and other patients die with dignity, even though Arizona isn’t a right-to-die state. These doctors and nurses traveled from hospital to hospital, using fake ID badges to come in and help patients die a more humane and dignified death. I remember feeling so grateful to them that they would go to such lengths to help me even though they risked being caught and put in jail. When they would come into my room to give me medicine or do a test or change my IV, I admired how thorough they were about throwing away medical supplies and wiping down the room afterwards so that their work would not be discovered.
- In one episode, I heard the nurses talking about one doctor who was willing to let a patient die as long as the entire family agreed and would help with the process. The doctor had my whole family — Stephanie, Tina, Jessica, Andreas, and Greta — come into the room and stand around my bed. Each of them held an electronic device with a button on it, and they all had to press their buttons at the same time in order to cause me to die. They were gathered in a circle around my bed and tried several times to help me, but apparently they couldn’t manage to push the buttons at the same time. I remember being upset that my process of dying was going to take even longer because they couldn’t get it together.
- In several other episodes, I thought the kids and other family members were sneaking in drugs in order to provide me with comfort and lessen my anxiety. In one version, they had brought in aromatherapy diffusers and were humidifying the room with drugs. In another, they would all chew a special kind of licorice or candy that created gas or bubbles in their mouths, which they would then blow towards me in order to lessen my pain. I remember feeling so happy when I saw the colorful bubbles of drugs coming toward me and I could feel them break against my face. In both instances, however, I was so afraid that they would get caught by the medical staff. At one point, I heard a doctor with a loud voice say, “Where is that kid in the baseball cap (my son)? I know he is bringing drugs into her room or doing something suspicious. I heard people running down the hall, and I thought, “Oh no, they are going to catch him.” I remember thinking how sad and unfair it would be that not only would I die, but my kids would have to be in jail for the rest of their lives.
- In other recurring episodes, I thought my kids were showing me slides from our life as a family. The impetus for this dream likely comes from the fact that we have electronic photo frames at home that have a running a slideshow of photos. In addition, I also created and ran a slideshow of about 300 photos at my sister-in-law’s memorial service in November 2017. Anyway, the slides were beautiful and funny, and I felt so comforted by seeing the pictures, yet also very sad since I realized that there would be so much of their lives that I was going to miss in the future.
- In a related and funny episode, I thought I was watching the HGTV show “Fixer Upper.” My daughter and her wife especially like this show, and so does my sister-in-law and her husband. Anyway, as I was watching, I suddenly realized that the home being renovated was my house in St. Peter where I lived with my kids when they were in junior high and high school. I was excited and happy because I thought it was so nice that the kids had arranged for my house to be on the program as a way of showing their love for me and making me feel better about dying.
- However, as I kept seeing this episode of HGTV and as I was trying to figure out what I needed to do in order to die, I realized that the doctors were waiting for me to give my consent to dying with dignity. In the HGTV show, the designers often ask people whether they would like this feature or that feature better. And I thought to myself, “Oh, they are showing me this program and waiting for me to say “Yes” to the questions on the show as a way of giving my consent.” So, I started giving a thumbs up and answering “yes” enthusiastically to the questions posed by the designer. Apparently, I actually was doing that in my sleep.
Positive visions of accepting death and seeing spiritual beings:
- In between many of the scary episodes, I had other, more positive dreams. In one recurring episode, I was standing up in a big vat of rich, black earth, which sounds scary but it felt comforting and all-encompassing. I remember thinking in a calm way, accepting my fate, “Oh, this is what it is like to die. Of course, dust to dust. “There was a statue of a big, shirtless African-American man next to me in the center of this earth. Every once in a while, the statue would start to rotate, and I would rotate with it. I could hear some light music or ticking as we moved — a little like a life-and-death type of musical chairs — which would suddenly stop. I would think to myself, “Am I alive or am I dead?” Then I would test myself by trying to wiggle my fingers and toes. In the beginning, I could easily move, but as time went on I could only just barely wiggle my fingers, so I knew I was getting close to death, and I could accept that.
- In between many of the episodes, I would see a white light and a flock of birds flying in a cylinder formation up towards the light. As I looked closer, I noticed that it wasn’t birds, but angels flying up toward the light. Sometimes the angels were in white robes and other times in blue robes. Sometimes they sang and sometimes they were quiet. Usually they were up in the sky away from me, but several times they flew down and were touching my face with their wings. At those moments, I thought, “Oh, they are coming to get me,” and again I felt accepting of that and safe in their presence.
- I also had many dreams of what I thought was heaven. It seemed as if I was a little ways up in the sky looking down on beautiful green meadows filled with large numbers of families and groups of friends sitting on blankets, eating picnic lunches, throwing the frisbee, and running through the fields. Everyone was happy, laughing and smiling and occasionally waving to me. In one area there was a big circle of people, and in the middle I could see God standing there talking and Jesus was sitting on a white horse beside him. Apparently, my inner critic was alive and well even in the midst of these dreams. In my mind, I thought, “Really, Jesus is on a white horse? Such a cliche.”
The state of Arizona and a film of my death
- In my dreams, I thought I overheard Stephanie talking to the nurses about Arizona’s particularly inhumane practice of forcing dying patients to view their own death certificates in the moments before death. I imagined then that it was extremely important to avert my eyes anytime anything resembling a death certificate appeared on the screen in my head. In fact, I was sure that just fixing my eyes on the death certificate might even cause my death. Consequently, a common theme during and between all of my dream episodes was the sight of my death certificate sliding into my field of vision. At first, it was very easy to see it and just look away or shut my eyes to avoid it, but over time it became more and more difficult. I thought that someone was disguising the death certificate so that it would be hidden behind the other images on the screen of my dreams and then suddenly appear before my eyes. Other times, I would see an entire screen of small certificates, but only one would be the real Arizona death certificate. The others would have the name of a different state, or the state seal would have the wrong image on it, or the governor’s name would be spelled incorrectly. It became more and more confusing to know what to look at and what to look away from. Once my eyes locked on the image of the certificate, I thought I had just a few seconds before the image would burn into my brain and cause my death. In fact, I could even hear the sound of the image burning into the screen, which would be my last warning to look away.
- As time went on and I was still not dead, I created an overarching theme for why the dying process was taking so long. I thought that my kids had decided to make a film about my death in order to raise awareness about death with dignity and about Arizona’s unfair practice of prolonging the dying process for terminally ill patients and forcing them to view their death certificates when they finally did die. I think this part of my dream started while I was still sedated, but it pervaded the first few days after I was awake and conscious.
During part of that time, Stephanie’s sister was staying with me at the hospital, and I had several conversations with her about this film. While I appreciated the sentiment of the kids creating this film, I thought that it was taking just too long and that the director they had hired was just horrible. After a nurse had been in to visit, I would think to myself, “Well, that was a terrible scene for the film. The characters were bad, and the dialog was cheesy.” I was a little comforted by the fact that the film could be edited, so perhaps some of that bad dialog would be cut out. At the same time, it bothered me to think how my experience of dying would be shaped by another person because the director could show short clips of scenes at the hospital and then intersperse them with scenes of my family members talking about what had occurred or with someone reading aloud comments left on my CaringBridge site.
As time passed, I thought that the director started releasing short clips from the film on YouTube and other social media, and there was a big response from people viewing the clips. They started writing comments on Facebook and Twitter, and some people wanted to become part of the show so they began sneaking into the hospital and filming some of their own clips. Then they would release them on YouTube, and soon it became difficult to know which clips were real and which were fake. When I viewed the clips, I could see comments popping up all over the place and then new clips appearing. It felt overwhelming as I could see we were losing control of the whole narrative. While the kids started the film with good intentions, it was being taken over and crowdsourced through social media.
In addition to being overwhelmed, I was also getting more and more tired of almost dying in these dream episodes, but never completing the process. Finally, I thought that I needed to help the process along, and this is where my dreams intersected even more with the reality of my hospital experience. I started running in place in bed, thinking that if I raised my heart rate it might kill me. Later that day, the nurse came in and said that I had passed the swallowing test and could thus start eating solid food. Here again, I thought well maybe if I have a really big meal, it would help me to die. I ordered two puddings, mashed potatoes, and macaroni and cheese, managing to finish most of it even though I hadn’t eaten real food for 8 days or so. As one might expect, later in the evening when I had a roomful of visitors, I got sick and threw up violently.
After these real experiences, I was back to dreaming again, and then I was sure that the final death scene was coming. Several other dying patients and I were sent in wheelchairs to the roof, where we were loaded onto a big helicopter. The idea was that the pilot would crash the helicopter on the grounds of the Arizona state capitol, thus bringing more media attention to our cause. But even this scene was being taken over by others as more and more amateur filmmakers were trying to get in on the action. On the roof, I could see other videographers filming us and then other characters jumping off the roof with parachutes, creating their own versions of our story. But right before our helicopter crashed, I woke up from this dream and for the first time realized that it was a dream and not reality.