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I'm Dr. Mike Milligan. I'm here with
Dr. Loyd Rudy, one of the famous cardiac surgeons.
Dr. Rudy, thanks so much for being with us
You're welcome.
You know, we don't get the opportunity to be
in the operating room, or even,
most people don't get the opportunity to visit
with the cardiac surgeon who has had experiences with
people's near death or someone who's been pronounced dead
and come back.
and, so, that is what we're gonna talk about here.
in particular one case and may touch on another one.
Dr. Rudy, why don't you tell us
a little bit about that.
- We had a very unfortunate individual who, on Christmas Day,
had, from an oral infection, - Okay.
infected his native valve.
If your native valve has the slightest defect,
whether you're born with it or develop it later,
it calcified a little and the valve leaflets don't move, whatever
the body recognises that as something abnormal
that it's got to take care of. - Okay.
So, that is what happened to this man and
one of my junior partners is on call
and he had to do an emergency
valve ressection.
Once we were able to accomplish the repair of the aneurism,
and the replacement of the valve,
we couldn't get the person off the by-pass.
Everytime the 4 or 5 litres of blood we were pumping
around this body, we reduce down to 2 or 3,
It began to weaken and his body pulse would go down
and so on, to make a long story short,
we simply couldn't get him off the heart-lung machine.
Finally, we just had to give up.
We said: we can't get him off the heart-lung machine.
so, we have to pronounce him dead.
So, we did that.
So, the anaethegiologist turned his machine off,
and the bellows that were breathing for the pacient
stopped, that machine was quiet,
the anaesthegiologist went in his surgeons' lounge,
He hadn't eaten anything all day,
and went there and got him a sandwhich
then the people who usually clean up the instruments
and all that were coming in and taking away all these tools
my surgical assistant close the patient in a way that
a post mortem exam could be done, because anyone
who succumbs on the table has to, by law, has to
have an autopsy. - An autopsy, right.
So he closed him up, briefly.
A couple three wire in a big stiches
to close his soft tissue.
Well, the machine that records the blood pressure
and the pulse and, left atrial pressure,
and all the monitoring lines continued to run
the paper out on the floor in a very big heap,
nobody bothered to turn it off,
and we put down a trans esophageal echo probe,
which is a long tube that has a microphone at the end of it
and we get a beautiful picture on the monitor
of the heart beating
well, that machine was left on, and the tape
the VCR tape continued to run
Well, the assistant surgeon and I
went in and took our gowns off
and gloves,
and masks and things and came back
and we were in our short sleeved-shirts
and we were standing at the door,
kind of discussing
if there was anything else that could have done
any modern medicines we could have given
to have made this a success.
And, as we were standing there,
it had been, at least, 20 min.
I don't know this exact time sequence, but
it was close to 20, 25 min.
that this man recorded no heartbeat,
no blood pressure,
and the echo showing no movement of the heart,
And, all of a sudden, we looked up
and the surgical assistance just finished closing him in
and we saw some electrical activity
pretty soon the electrical activity turned in into a heartbeat
very slow
30, 40/min.
and we thought: well, that is kind of
an agonal thing and we see that
occasionally, the heart will continue to beat
even though the patient can't generate a blood pressure
or pump any blood.
Pretty soon, we look and he's actually generating
a pressure.
and we were not doing anything.
the machines were all shut off,
and we stopped all the medicines
and all that.
And so, I started yelling: get in the anaesthegiologist back here!
and, get the nurses!,
and, to make a very long story short,
without putting him back on cardiopulmonary by-pass
or on machine and stuff,
we started getting him some medicines and
the anaesthigiologist started giving him oxygen
and pretty soon, he had a blood pressure of 80
pretty soon, a blood pressure of a 100,
and his heart rate was now under the minute
he recovered.
and had no neurologic deficits
and for the next ten days, two weeks,
all of us went in and we're talking to him about
what he experienced.
If anything.
And he talked about the bright light at the end of the tunnel.
as I recall and so on.
But the thing that astounded me
was that he described that operating room,
floating around, and saying, I saw you
and Dr. Nathaniel's, standing in the doorway
with the arms folded, talking,
I saw this, I didn't know where the anaesthegiologist was
but he came running back in
and I saw all of these posteds
sitting on this TV screen
and those were any calls I got,
the nurse would write down who called
and phone number and stick it on the monitor
and then the next posted would stick to that posted and I'd have
a string of posteds of phone calls I had to make.
He described that.
I mean, there is no way
he could have described that before the operation
because I didn't give any call.
- And he's sitting...so he must have been floating
He was up there.
He described the scene,
things that there is no way that he knew.
I mean, they didn't wake up
in the operating room and see all this.
And he was out for, I don't know...
even a day or two.
While we recevered him in intensive care unit
So, what does that tell you?
What does that tell you?
Was that his soul? Up there?
-It's hard to know.
It certainly brings that possibility
- It always makes me very emotional.
There had been other instances
like one other I remember so vividly.
Was a guy who was on anticoagulation
medicines that keep you from clotting.
I don't even remember the operation or whatever,
but we had to do him right away.
And you try to reverse that as much as possible, but
it's impossible to completely do it.
And we were in there, we finished the surgery,
and we just simply couldn't stop this person from bleeding.
I mean, we pulled out every gun in the armoury,
to try and get this,
- Everything you can possibly do.
-Yeah, and we finally decided we're not
going to be able to stop this bleeding.
And, all of a sudden,
nobody spoke,
because everybody in that room
felt a presence
and the aneasthegiologist and I talked about it afterwords.
I mean, there was no question.
There was a presence in that room.
And it stopped bleeding just like that.
-How do you explain that? What is your take on that?
-There's something out there that people with faith
believe is there.
Some people call a God, some people call other things.
Buddah, Mohammed, whoever,
It has convinced me there is something out there.
- Something out there. It is so good of you
to share this with people who don't
get the opportunity to be at those near-dead
or post-death experiences.
I don't know, It just convinces you
that the strings handled somewhere out there
-Absolutely.
-And it makes me very emotional.
- I can tell. It does with me as well.
And I'm so pleased that you would share
this with this people with this video
who just don't get that opportunity
Is there any last thing you would like to say?
- Well, just that I presented this case
to 13 other cardiac surgeons,
throughout the country in a speciall meeting
And they have had several similar
experiences, not quite as dramatic
as the ones I had, but
everybody that deals with that everyday
has had those experiences
It's not just me.
-Dr. Rudy, thank you so much for sharing
-You're welcome.