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Nowadays, the Ren Cen is GM's headquarters. But from what I can tell of their Web site, the pool is still there, on the food court level. So is the Burger King I was standing in front of. I don't know why that feels like some kind of vindication. One of the things that disturbed me about my experience was that I could see. I mean, not just anything, but specific things, in a coherent whole. The entirety of the environment my body was in, in relation to the reality I had just left by passing out. I have pretty coherent narrative dreams in full color (I can even taste things I eat in dreams), but they are not mistakable for reality. I say this to emphasize that my experience involved sight perception in the kind of repeatable detail that even I don't get in my dreams.

How is that possible, if you don't have eyes? How do you perceive anything when you aren't a physical being? I've poked around over the years to figure out what it meant, and came up with several stories, confirmed by medical folks, of people like Al Sullivan. OOBE. It looks silly. I know Michael Schermer thinks I hallucinated it: he groups it with aliens and angels (I find this insulting, but I understand why he sees it this way). But his logic is a bit off: sure, you can create this sensation in the brain with Persinger's helmet, but then, you can hallucinate music, does that mean music doesn't exist? All it proves is that the brain can mimic the experience, not that the experience doesn't also exist.

I don't think this means that the soul is real, or that we can exist outside our bodies for long, or that this is what happens when we die. I'm neutral on that aspect: skeptical, maybe. (Not even spooked that as I typed that last sentence, my browser crashed. Good thing Blogger autosaves). I'm not convinced of any of it, in fact. All I know is what happened to me, and to Al Sullivan.

MOre

Nowadays, the Ren Cen is GM's headquarters. But from what I can tell of their Web site, the pool is still there, on the food court level. So is the Burger King I was standing in front of. I don't know why that feels like some kind of vindication. One of the things that disturbed me about my experience was that I could see. How is that possible, if you don't have eyes? How do you perceive anything when you aren't a physical being? I've poked around over the years to figure out what it meant, and came up with several stories, confirmed by medical folks, of people like Al Sullivan. OOBE. It looks silly. I know Michael Schermer thinks I hallucinated it: he groups it with aliens and angels (I find this insulting, but I understand why he sees it this way). But his logic is a bit off: sure, you can create this sensation in the brain with Persinger's helmet, but here's the thing: you can hallucinate music, does that mean music doesn't exist? All it proves is that the brain can mimic the experience, not that the experience doesn't also exist.

I don't think this means that the soul is real, or that we can exist outside our bodies for long, or that this is what happens when we die. I'm neutral on that aspect: skeptical, maybe.

Things I'm afraid to write about

So here's the thing: I've been going over my out of body experience in my mind to the point where I think I've worn it away. I was awake. I was looking down at my unconscious self. I could see the woman standing next to me, and that I was now kneeling. I could see the tops of our heads. Then I felt, far away, that there was pain in my knees and I realized suddenly that I was not in my body, that that was me down there, and that I needed to get back in there. Up to that point I was, I guess, confused as to what was happening.

I had been walking, blinded by a lack of oxygen to my brain, toward a pool of water on the ground floor of the Detroit Renaissance Center. I guess I thought there were chairs somewhere, that I was heading for one before I completely lost consciousness. It wasn't until I was out of my body that I saw the planters and the water, and no chairs, and realized I could have ended up in the pool.

Then I hear the lady saying "are you alright?" again, from far away. That's when I will myself back. And come to. She helps me to my feet and I tell her that I'm diabetic (I'm not) and I was in insulin shock (that was true, more or less, but I didn't really know it at the time). At that point my friends saw me and came over and brought me to a table, got me a soda, and some food. I was maybe 19.

I don't usually tell people about this. It sounds weird and I don't want to be in the position of either defending it or wondering if they think I'm nuts or lying. I know what I saw. I also know it's possible that my brain was that creative about what the tops of our heads looked like. Possibly even the pool. Maybe I saw it before I passed out and didn't register it.

But last night I saw a show on Nat Geo channel on the topic, and their last case made me feel a little safer about my own experience. Al Sullivan watched his own surgery, and saw the doctor doing things that no one could have guessed he did. Then they had the doctor speak and confirm the information, and then they had the doctor's colleague confirm it. You can watch Al's story on Nat Geo on January 10th, at 7 pm Eastern. And we can discuss this further.

Longer.

It's still here. The pain blocker started wearing off around 4 yesterday. It bought me about five hours. Today I talked the office manager in the suite next door into letting me hide out in a dark empty office (they had layoffs, we have blistering white fluorescents so intense you can see your soul through your clothes). All I had to do was ask her to shoot me (she said she left her gun on the dresser, if I'd like to go pick it up at her house).

Note: Head On for migraines works for about an hour or so. Not sure what good that does you. Don't want to end up like her.

I have to go get my Katie Couric next week. The GI office gave me a packet of paper listing all the warnings, and the stuff I have to do before I show up face down: no NSAIDs after the 8th. No food after 230 the 13th. No liquids after midnight. Prescription laxatives every half hour (Holy, well, you know). I wonder if they understand that this will trigger another migraine (provided I've recovered from this one by then). And that I can't use an entire class of pain relievers because the GI is averse to turning my colon into a fountain of gory viscera. Remind me to call my doc and ask if Head On is an NSAID.

Long.

The migraine started last Tuesday night. I spent New Year's eve throwing up and wishing I were unconscious. I still have it. I went to the doctor and got a pain blocker, so at least now I can function. How much of this is bottled up misery over Jesse. How much about the newly stressful job? An early sign of menopause? I can't say. I sat with my new doctor and we made a list of everything I've tried to deal with migraines over the years: depakote, propanalol, amitryptaline, celebrex, gabapentin, topamax, prozac, all the triptans, relafen, butalbital, naproxen, vicodin, and more I can't remember. Now, the only two that seemed to work, have let me down: vicodin, and a triptan. Turns out, says my doctor, that they work against each other.

Because she's my new doctor, I had to tell her about Jesse. He's a condition, now. Grief. A factor. The pain blocker seems to work well enough to get me to work. I stare at the prescriptions on my desk and wonder how I'm going to make it through the next month and a half. February 8th, a Sunday, marks two years.