The View from the Ceiling

(entry for 7/31/2024)

When I was growing up, I was given to understand that my soul was not some separate part of me— that it was me, the whole me. “And God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” Didn’t get one— became one.

And I did believe them. The people who taught me that had convinced themselves, and they convinced me. The soul wasn’t something that could leave your body. It was part of your body. When you died, it died. If there was a resurrection, then it was of the whole you, body, mind, soul, everything. Alive, then dead, then alive again, and nothing that stayed conscious in between. While you were dead, you were dead. It made perfect sense to me.

And yet . . .

When I was ten years old, I had my tonsils out. They had been getting sore and swollen every few months or so, and I would toss and turn at night with a fever and with a burning throat. No medications would help. Cough drops didn’t help. Aspirin didn’t help. Prayer didn’t help. Nothing helped.

Finally, my folks had had enough of it. They scheduled me for surgery. Since my dad was the bookkeeper at a medical clinic, he could get a huge discount if one of the doctors he worked for did the surgery. So it was to be.

My folks took me to the hospital the night before, and I slept in a hospital bed that night, in a large children’s ward with about six or eight beds in it. My mom stayed with me all night that first night and slept in a large chair that a nurse brought her.

About eight-thirty the next morning, they came to get me. I was transferred from my bed to a large gurney. (At least it seemed large to me. It was almost as big as my bed.) They wheeled me down a long cream-colored hallway, toward a huge pair of dark green doors. The doors opened, seemingly by themselves, and I was wheeled through. 

My mom had to stay behind at that point. They told her she couldn’t come with me into the operating room. It wouldn’t be safe or sanitary.

Everyone was very kind to me. They could tell I was anxious. One of the nurses said, “You’re going to feel a lot better once this is over.” It was a nice thing to say. I didn’t see how it could feel any worse, so I took her word for it.

We went through another pair of huge doors, both of which opened to let me through. Now we were clearly in the operating room. A large thing, not a bed exactly, but obviously something I was going to be lying down on, stood in the middle of the room. (I found out later they called it a ‘table,’ though it didn’t resemble in any way anything you would gather around for a meal.) There was a huge light, made up of many smaller lights, on a metal arm-thing, suspended over the bed-like thing. The light wasn’t on, but one could see by looking at it that it would be very bright once it was.

I looked around. I had expected that an operating room would be all white. This one wasn’t. The ceiling was the only white thing in the room, apart from the linens on the ‘bed.’ The floor was a light gray, some kind of linoleum or tile. The walls were dark green about half way up. Then there was a shiny metal divider, about a half inch wide, all the way around the room, except where the doors were. From the divider on up to the ceiling, the walls were painted a heavy cream color, almost yellow.

I was very small for my age, about the size of an average six year old. It was an easy matter for one of the nurses, male, to pick me up with both arms under me, and lift me over to the ‘table.’ He gave me a reassuring pat and left.

The anesthetist introduced himself and told me what was going to happen. He was a small, slender man with very short white hair and round glasses. He said he was going to put this large black plastic thing, shaped sort of like a fat, curved funnel, over my mouth. A piece of it went up over my nose as well. He was going to lay a large pad of gauze over the open upper end of the funnel, and over my nose, and he would drip a liquid onto the gauze. The liquid would turn to vapors, and when I breathed the vapors I would go to sleep.

I asked him if the vapors would be ether. I had heard of ether.

No, he said, it would be ethyl chloride, which would smell a lot better than ether and would put me to sleep just as well. Since I had never smelled ether, and had no idea what it smelled like, this statement didn’t mean a whole lot to me, but since he was a nice man and obviously trying to make me comfortable, I nodded and smiled.

Having described what he was going to do, he now proceeded to do it. The ethyl chloride smelled very sweet, almost like pancake syrup, but with a hint of rubbing alcohol to it. I breathed it easily and passed out.

Except I didn’t. I stayed awake, but left my body and drifted up toward the ceiling. When I reached the ceiling I rolled over and looked down at the scene below.

I saw the anesthetist take the black funnel out of my mouth, which gaped open. I was clearly asleep down there on that bed, though I was also up here against the ceiling, watching the proceedings. I watched Doctor Brethouwer walk in, dressed in a pale green robe and with a pale blue mask over his nose and mouth. He was my dad’s boss, and I knew my dad hated him, though he would never admit it out loud. But he seemed to trust the guy to operate on me! They turned the operating light on. As I had expected, it was very bright. I saw Doctor Brethouwer take a scalpel from a nearby nurse and lean over me.

Then I did pass out! Whether it took that long for the anesthesia to take effect, or whether I couldn’t stomach the thought of seeing myself being operated on, I don’t know. All I know is, that’s all I saw in the operating room. The next thing I knew, I was waking up, back in the children’s ward, in the original bed, with a very sore throat. It was about ten thirty.

They gave me ice cream, as a reward, and as something to soothe my throat. It helped for about ten minutes. Next was cool Jello, strawberry flavor. That helped for about five minutes. Then they gave up and let me suffer. I did.

We went home late that afternoon.

The next day my parents both stayed home with me, though my mother had houses to clean and my dad had bookkeeping to do at the medical clinic where he and Doctor Brethouwer both worked.

They asked me how I felt. I told them I felt better, and I did. Then I decided to tell them what had happened in the operating room: how I had drifted up to the ceiling and watched the beginning of the operation, though I soon became unconscious and missed the rest of the event.

They got very quiet as I told them about it. It was pretty obvious that they couldn’t believe me. Their religion wouldn’t let them. My mother said that it was a dream. My dad said I had imagined it. I asked him how I could have imagined something while I was supposedly asleep. He sighed and looked thoughtful and said my mother must be right. It was a dream.

But I knew then, and I know now, it was no dream. I didn’t imagine it. I left my body and went up to the ceiling and watched the beginning of my own operation.

Was it my soul leaving my body? Was it some other aspect of consciousness, other than the soul? I don’t know, and it really doesn’t matter what I call it. All I know for sure is that it happened. Some aspect of myself left my body, and watched myself, asleep, on an operating table.

There have been times in my life when I doubted it. There have even been times in my life, extended periods of time, when I have forgotten about it. But now, looking far back, I know it happened. I know it was real. It wasn’t my imagination. It wasn’t a dream.

I left my body.

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