Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: I'm Dying Today, This Is My Last Day on Earth

Episode Date: April 12, 2025

A special profile of three extraordinary stories of people who literally died and came back to life. Deb’s heart stops shortly after delivering her second child. Michaela is severely injured in a deadly car accident. Steve is stabbed by his schizophrenic brother who has gone off his meds.This Episode is sponsored by BetterHelpBetterHelp: Visit BetterHelp.com/SURVIVED to get 10% off your first month!Crime House: Check out Crime House: True Crime stories wherever you get favorite podcastsProgressive: Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, iSurvive listeners. I'm Marisa Pinson. And before we get into this week's episode, I just want to remind you that episodes of iSurvived as well as the A&E Classic podcast Cold Case Files, City Confidential, and American Justice are all available ad free on the new A&E Crime and Investigation channel on Apple Podcasts and Apple Plus for just $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year. And now onto the show. This episode contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. And I thought to myself, here I am, I'm 42 years old, I just gave birth to a beautiful

baby girl and I'm dying today. This is my last day on earth. These people died. I never really realized at that point that I was dead. I just felt like I was home. I didn't feel that I lived the life that I was supposed to live. And came back.

And all of a sudden, I felt like I was being sucked through outer space in this tube or something, and it was just like a vacuum. These are their stories. It's December 2002 in San Juan Capistrano, California. I was a safety and health professional. I'd worked at several different companies, very career oriented. I had chased the money, chased the job.

I wanted to be a mom. I wanted to have two children. It was just the best place in the world to be. Deb is about to have her second child by C-section. So when we went into the hospital, they prepped me. I was laying there. The doctor was bringing the baby out. Everything was going as planned but for me it was this intuition that something wasn't right. I just had this sixth sense that something was not right and I wouldn't vocalize that I felt like something was wrong

because everything was right. One of Deb's obstetricians is Dr. Vivian Ellis. There certainly was a sense of joy and happiness in the room. It was all just talking about the baby, the baby's future, Deb's family. And I left without any knowledge or any concern that there was a problem. After giving birth, Deb is wheeled into a recovery room.

When they opened the door, the first thing I saw was Andy and the baby in the bassinet. So very quickly, the nurses rolled me over to the bedside where I would be staying. And they did a heave-ho and, you know, moved me over. And as they set me down, I couldn't breathe. And Andy at that time came immediately to my side. And I remember looking up at him and he said, are you in trouble?

And my eyes were as big as saucers. And I said, are you in trouble? And my eyes were as big as saucers. And I said, yes. And I looked up at the nurse and I said, I can't breathe. And she looked down at me and she goes, you must breathe. I said, oh no, I can't breathe. I remember grabbing the railings of the bed and I tried to jump. Then I said, I'm dying, I'm dying.

Help me, help me. And that's all I remember. I just to jump. Then I said, I'm dying, I'm dying. Help me, help me. And that's all I remember. I just passed out. Mid-morning, 10, 10.30, that I was in the room with a patient. A nurse hits the code blue emergency button. This alerts specialists trained to resuscitate

dying patients. A nurse entered the room and said, Dr. Ellis, we need you right now. And she grabbed me, pulled me out of the room, and pushed me in the direction of room 311. It happened so fast I can barely remember it. But I do remember jumping on the bed. She had facial cyanosis, which meant it was purple. I could not feel a pulse. I started CPR on the bed,

straddling her and just going through the mechanics of that. The nurse had an ambu bag, which is a bag that has a reservoir of oxygen that refills that she was doing the mouth to mouth piece with the bag and forcing the ventilation while I was doing the chest compressions. Brain death occurs after five minutes.

Only five to ten percent of people who receive CPR survive. Dr. Ellis suspects Deb is experiencing a rare complication of childbirth. An amniotic fluid embolus is when amniotic fluid actually gets into the bloodstream and it enters and passes through the lungs and then causes a cardiac arrest. It might be likened to an anaphylactic reaction where there's a total close down of all systems. It is an extremely serious condition with a 60% mortality, which in this day and age is rare.

She was not moving. I felt for a pulse in her carotid artery in her neck. There was no pulse. I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders and all I had were my hands. I was somewhere else. I had gone to this beautiful place. I was on a staircase. I was extremely afraid of heights.

But I was sitting on the very edge of the staircase, very high up into the sky, and I could look down, and it was a very long drop down, but I wasn't scared at all. I looked up to the very top of the staircase, and there was this radiating ball of light. I thought it was the sun.

It was extremely bright to look at, but it didn't hurt my eyes. I could just look straight into this ball of light. I could see rolling hills. There was all this lush greenery as I looked down from the staircase. I could see plants and even though it was so far down that your your eye could not distinguish the type of plant, in my mind I knew what the plant was and I can remember seeing you know a sage bush and thinking in my mind, oh, there's a sage bush.

I was just suspended on the staircase going up into this radiating ball of light, and it didn't feel weird to me. It is the best feeling I have ever had. Dr. Ellis is trying to start Deb's heart with CPR, but her organs are shutting down. The lungs have stopped breathing, the heart has stopped beating, and there is no brain activity.

Now, one of the other things that was happening is there were dogs and cats on that staircase. The cats would come up around my legs and they would rub against my legs. I didn't recognize any of the dogs and cats for any of the animals I had had or anyone that I knew it had, but there were animals there. And the dogs would be bounding up those stairs as the dogs were going into the light. They would kind of look back at me and then they would just going into the light, they would kind of look back at me and then they would just jump into the light. It's almost if they wanted me to get up and walk with them right into that light.

Of course, I was sitting there and I was just enjoying the moment so much I wasn't going anyplace. I had no concept of what had just happened. I wasn't thinking about having the baby. I wasn't thinking about my life. I was just taking the moment in. Time stands still. There is no concept of time in this place.

It doesn't exist. After five minutes without a heartbeat, Deb will be brain dead. I was waiting for the Code Blue team to come, which of course from my perspective seemed like an eternity. So I used all of my positive energy for Deb, my hands, my voice. I had always imagined that hearing is the last thing to go. So I was talking to her, telling her, Deb, you need to come back. Except I had an educated mind that was going and fast forward,

trying to figure out what caused it, what are we going to do, where are we going to go from here, why is this happening. Time stands still. Now all at once I heard a voice that was saying, Deb, can you hear me? Can you hear me? Will you squeeze my finger? Here I'd been in this place of incredible beauty and complete peace. Your perfect moment in time.

I was completely content. And now I was in this place of immense chaos. All these people talking at once. And I realized as I heard people say, she doesn't have a brachial, she doesn't have a radial, it started to dawn on me they were talking about me and I'm in trouble. And I thought to myself, here I am, I'm 42 years old. I just gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, and I'm dying today. This is my last day on earth. I wasn't afraid. I'd already been in a beautiful place, but I didn't want to go. I had too much, you know, to

live for. I had two children. I had a husband. I had my family. And for me, it was just, this was it. In my head, I just said, Dear God, I don't know if you can hear me, but I ask you to let me live for my children. They are too young to lose their mother. I don't want my husband to have to do the task alone. And then I let go of that thought and I just became very peaceful and very calm because I felt like it was out of my hands. The Code Blue team arrived. They told me to continue to do the CPR. They started giving medications that would try to stimulate the heart to work again. Dr. Ellis is still straddling Deb, performing CPR.

The one thing I know, I was up somewhere at the top of that hospital room. Only this time I could see because what I saw is that Dr. Ellis crawled over my body on the bed. And I didn't know what she was doing. I couldn't feel anything. I just knew Dr. Ellis was there. All at once, she saw my eye flicker. Just the briefest flicker. So she kept working on me and she kept working on me and all at once I started to

get a pulse and a heartbeat on the monitor. I had been gone for four and a half minutes and I began to come back. I could see a lot of people like starting to get me ready. They were covering me with a sheet. I heard someone say, let's get her to the ICU. And that's all I remember is as they ran beside me to the ICU. So somewhere in the neighborhood of a day later,

I woke up and I was in a room, which was the ICU, and I was in a room, which was the ICU, and I was filled with tubes. My husband was there when I woke up, and he came immediately to my bedside, and I couldn't talk. So I kind of motioned to write, and they brought a piece of paper over to me. I wrote, what happened? And my

husband wrote back, they think you had an amniotic fluid embolism. I thought it can come back and I'm not gonna go to sleep. It can come back, whatever it is can come back. And so I was so afraid to go to sleep because I was afraid I would go again and not get to be with the kids. So I fought sleep and fought sleep. Of course I went to sleep because they had me so heavily medicated. So I'd come in and out somewhere around that second or third time that I woke up again. They brought Bryce in and there was my beautiful baby girl.

And that was that moment in time that I would get to hold her finally. So finally we were together as a family. Deb and Dr. Ellis have stayed in touch ever since. Deb did tell me about her experience and I listened with great detail and interest. I think many would say that scientifically it's the brain's mechanism for self-preservation. However, I personally do believe that there is some aspect of spirituality that goes beyond the science. The big awakening for me is in those moments when I was moments away from never seeing my family again. I wasn't thinking about my job. I wasn't thinking about my money in the bank.

I wasn't thinking about my casserole, how clean my house was. I was thinking about the people I loved. And therein lies the biggest aha of this entire experience. I mean, we're in these very chaotic existences on this planet, and yet, when it all is said and done, and you are moving beyond this life,

you're thinking of the people you love. And I feel like the message that I need to give from this experience is a message of hope because there is more beyond this life. There is not a week that goes by that I don't think of this story. There's not a week that goes by that I'm not grateful and humbled by what happened during that event. That's not a dream. That's a miracle.

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else. Growing up, I was a total good girl. I was the good student. I didn't lie, I didn't swear, I didn't steal, I didn't do drugs, I didn't have sex. I was a good kid. I was 17 years old and I was coming back home from family vacation.

My brother was listening to CDs and my mom was driving. My dad was sleeping in the passenger seat. Mikayla, her brother, and two friends are in the back seat. We were going up a steep hill following a truck that was carrying like farm equipment or farm animals, something like that. A driver following them tries to pass their car. As she pulled out she saw that there were cars coming in the opposite direction, and I'm sure it scared her,

and she swerved to miss them, and ran right into the back of our car. Linda is Michaela's mother. And then I looked up, and the car was going under the truck. The thought that went through my mind is that my husband and I were was going under the truck. The thought that went through my mind is that my husband and I were going to be decapitated. All of a sudden it was as if a hand came down and stopped the car just as the truck was at the base of the of the windshield. The next thing I remember is my son was flying forward.

I caught him just before his head hit the dashboard. My left arm went through the back windshield. My bicep was cut in half. My sunglasses cut my eyelid out. Michaela and her friends are trapped in the wreckage. We had to crawl through a broken window in the back seat. I saw Michaela, her head was hanging down, her hair was covering her face.

You just knew it was not good. Emergency physician Dr. Scott Magley was notified about the accident. There was a call through the 911 center and then directly to my pager that there was a severe accident on route 422, which is approximately two miles from my residence. Michaela's brother and parents have crawled from the car.

Her two friends are removed from the wreckage. We found Michaela, who was in the backseat of a vehicle and had suffered severe trauma. It was obvious at that point that she was having very slow respirations, less than eight per minute, and she was obviously still shocky with a very faint pulse. The jaws of life are needed to cut Michaela out. Michaela's injuries that you could see visibly,

which were very gruesome in the fact that she had a laceration that extended right across her right eye, even into her right eyelid, with visible of the eyeball itself. And then again, the laceration extended across the front part of her forehead with the skin moved up across the front part of her forehead, had a gap of at least two inches of exposed skull in the front part of her head. She was in shock because she was not having any active bleeding from these major lacerations

and major injury that you could just see. This is why they call this the golden hour of trauma. It becomes an orchestrated response to be able to be at a trauma center from the time you have an accident in a rural area to be at an operating bedside of a trauma surgeon in under 50 minutes. In fact, I wondered if she was near death at this time. It has been approximately 30 minutes since the accident. I felt this wind on my face and I opened my eyes and I was on a gurney and there was a helicopter with its blades going and I

thought I was dreaming and so I just went back to sleep. While being transported to the hospital, Michaela flatlines. I was still me but everything was different. They say your life flashes before your eyes. It was in an instant I saw so many different aspects of my life. It was me when I was a child playing Ring Around the Rosie or dancing and watching myself in the mirror and singing songs with my dad.

It didn't feel like a dream feels because I was part of it and it was just as, it felt the same as me walking down the street or making breakfast in the morning. It was so detailed. There was me walking with a man who, I guess would be my partner. And I was, we were holding hands and walking up a mountain. I also saw me as an adult,

I saw me with my grandchildren. I'm not a grandmother, I don't even have kids yet, but I felt what it feels like to be a grandmother and to have those children that love you and look up to you so much. I can't say their names or draw a picture that is exactly what they look like. The love in my heart at that time was just remarkable.

Dr. Magley and the trauma team are still trying to resuscitate Michaela. When I was in the helicopter with Michaela, she remained critically injured, and we were still ventilating her without her feeling pain because she would not respond. She would not have any type of purposeful movement at all. It was something that seemed so familiar,

even though I had never been in that place before. I was very comfortable there. Everything was very peaceful. I felt like I was being hugged or held by someone and just very secure feeling. And it made me happy. I remember just wanting to be a part of this and wanting to see it, but at the same time, I didn't feel that I lived

the life that I was supposed to live in this body yet. So I just started praying and fighting and begging, please God, let me live, I don't want to die. There were three helicopters that were dispatched to this. We had numerous fire and rescue apparatus. In addition, we had five ambulances that were on scene of this accident. Michaela was the third helicopter in, but she was by far the sickest and most critically injured patient. Multiple times throughout the pre-hospital care

that I was with Michaela, she was demonstrating periods where she was not breathing. She was so critically ill that I was able to pass a tube right into her windpipe without any medications, which tells you again that she has a significant head injury. Dr. Magli is continually searching for a pulse. She had such severe injuries to her upper extremities that we could not get a vein to start an intravenous or an IV. At that point, I had to put an intravenous line into her big veins inside of her chest

to be able to start administering her intravenous fluids. At that point, what I saw was it went from the white, fuzzy, warm light that I was in to red, blue, green, What I saw was it went from the white fuzzy warm light that I was in to red blue green like all these colors and emotions and Everything flashing and me just struggling and fighting and fighting and all of a sudden I felt like I was being sucked through outer space and this tube or something. It was just like a vacuum I felt much relieved that I thought she was coming

to a more awake status. Unfortunately it didn't stay long. She was only combative for us for about 15 seconds. Michaela arrives at the hospital 45 minutes after the accident. She slips into a coma. Cat scans confirm a blood clot in her brain. In addition, she was noted to have what's called a diffuse axonal injury, which means that her brain sheared or twisted during the accident. Michaela must have neurosurgery immediately to save her life.

Still in a coma, she is taken to the ICU. And then the next thing I know, I was up in the corner of the hospital room looking at my body lay there. When you're having an out-of-body experience, it's like watching your life unfold in front of you like a movie. I remember seeing my mom and dad in the cafeteria. It was like a bench-style seating.

And my grandma and my gram were sitting across from my parents, and my dad is a smoker, and he said he was gonna go have a cigarette because he just wanted to get some breathing room and get out of there, and it was funny because my grandmother, my mom's mom, who would never, has never, and would never have a cigarette in her life,

was like, oh, I need one too, I'm gonna have one too. And then my other grandma's like, yeah, me too. And neither my grandma or my grandmother would ever smoke a cigarette. 14 days after the accident, Michaela comes out of the coma. Michaela said to me, mom, you and Dad and Grandma and Graham were in the cafeteria. You were talking about me and Dad got up to go have a cigarette and Grandma says,

I'm coming to have a cigarette with you. There was no way that she could have known that that even happened unless she was there. After leaving the hospital, Michaela took three months to recover. that that even happened unless she was there. After leaving the hospital, Mikayla took three months to recover. To have been through something like that, it really makes me think differently about time here on Earth

and how we're rushing around to do all this stuff and everybody's in a hurry to do everything. When I think about death, I think more about it's a celebration. It's almost like graduating to another level, I guess, is how I think of it. It changed everything about my life. And that's not saying that I was totally different after. I was still the same person, but it made me think about everything differently.

Because of Michaela's experience, I think that I look at death differently, so that when my time comes, I don't think that I will have, you know, I'll be more accepting of it and not have the fear that most people do. I think that if this experience wouldn't have happened to me, I probably would still be in Homer City. I probably would have just gotten married, had kids, and did what I thought I was supposed to do. It's made me take more chances and more risks

and not be afraid so much of judgment or failure even. — Mikayla's strongest memory was seeing herself as a grandmother. I can't wait to get to that point and I can't wait to be with those people that are going to be such an important part of my life. But I know that when they're here, I'll know that that was the moment that I was seeing at that time. Whether you're a true crime junkie or just getting into it, I've got the perfect show for you. Crime House True Crime Stories, a Crime House Studios original. Every Monday, you'll go on an in-depth journey through two of the most notorious true crime cases from that week in history, all linked by a common theme. From

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I come from a large family. As a kid, I was quiet, very introverted emotionally and socially as well. In my early 20s, I was working in the retail environment. I was putting in long hours and one day on Friday the 13th I was sleeping late. I was catching up on my sleep because it was my day off. It was around 10 o'clock that my brother came knocking on the door. He was asking me for a cigarette. I told him that to come back later and that I'd be up in a couple hours. He has always been very unpredictable.

But when he's on his medication, at least it's a lot safer to be around him. Steve's older brother is a paranoid schizophrenic. He has stopped taking his medication. He'd gotten it in his head that he didn't need it anymore, that he was cured because he'd been taking it long enough. And nobody could convince him otherwise. He went away by all appearances.

Steve's brother takes a knife from the kitchen. It was only a few minutes later that I woke up and he was already standing over me in my room holding a knife. It was an 18 inch double edged blood gutter knife, very big, and it was already coming down. I wrestled with him, struggled with him. I cut my hands up with defensive wounds, trying to keep it from going into my chest, but I couldn't stop it. It wound up going up diagonally into my shoulder. By the time it had found its mark, it had gone an entire 18 inches into my chest.

I was completely in terror, in shock, and I remember screaming out to him, I can't believe you're stabbing me. You're actually stabbing me. And it actually took me a while to realize that this is actually happening. I wasn't dreaming. I pulled the knife out and was trying to back away from him.

My brother didn't say a thing. He had a very glazed look in his eye. I was protesting and yelling out, screaming out for help. My mother came into the room and told my brother to stop. His arms fell at his sides and it was like somebody hit an off switch, and he just stood there staring still. I took that as my opportunity to get the heck out of there. So I, clutching my chest, ran down the hall.

I let go of my chest, and the blood came out like a hose, and it was just a jet that was just pulsing with arterial blood. At that point, it was when I realized, I'm not going to survive this. I am going to die. Clutching my chest, I ran down the hall and out into the kitchen where my sister was on the phone. She started relaying instructions to me from the 911 operator, and I was told to lay down on the floor and raise my legs and put pressure on my chest.

Steve's brother is restrained by his father. While I was laying on the floor with my legs raised, I noticed my mother was coming running back into the kitchen. I asked my mother to come over and help me. She grabbed a dish towel from the kitchen's counter and assisted me in holding the blood in my body. I know I'd lost quite a bit of it in my bedroom, not to mention all the way down the hall, and it was already pooling around me on the kitchen floor. It was probably about five minutes of laying on

the cold tile floor when the paramedics arrived. As the ambulance was driving to the hospital, cutting through traffic with sirens blaring, the driver was asking questions, what's his blood pressure, how's he doing, is he still with us? At the hospital, Steve is prepped for surgery. As I lay in the trauma surgery, as they're working on me,

I'm the eye of the storm, everything is running around me, and I'm still in the center. It was hectic. I could see four or five people standing over me. Several doctors were around me, a lot of technicians, and they were putting tubes in me in every direction that they had and made a few new openings. I was struggling to stay conscious.

I knew that if I stopped breathing, that I'd die. Dead people don't breathe. If I could keep breathing, I could stay alive. And that was my only concern. I just kept fighting and it got harder. And eventually I lost consciousness. And that's when I died. I became aware that I was aware.

I was in a dark place. I didn't know where I was. I knew who I was, but who I was was different. Parts of me felt like they were missing. Surgeons cracked Steve's sternum open to gain access to his heart. The darkness was surrounding me, but I got a sense from it. It was holding me. It was cradling me like a mother would a child.

I realized that the darkness knew all my faults, but it still loved me unconditionally. Emotionally, at that point, I felt bliss. I felt just joy. I felt as though with being connected to everything, I loved everything so much and it loved me back. Surgeons discover a severed artery in Steve's heart and attempt to repair it. I never really realized at that point that I was dead. I just felt like I was home. I felt this is where I belong. While I was in the darkness,

I was looking for something else. I knew that there should be something else there. This can't be all there is. And I kept stretching out, but I found nothing. And I kept asking, is this all there is? There should be something more here. I knew it. The darkness that I found myself in was so expansive.

It was, it went out to eternity. It was boundless. And it was kind of like suddenly I realized the light was there. When the light came into view, I was floored by it. It was surrounded with the backdrop of the darkness still, but the light was almost shouting out, here I am.

It was glorious. All the feelings of love were still there. I still felt embraced. I still felt held. But I was also feeling the potency of the light. Surgeons repaired the severed artery in Steve's heart. He receives a transfusion of four pints of blood. I'm not sure how much time had passed.

It could have been a nanosecond. It could have been a million years. Time really didn't make much sense there. But it was all too brief. And that's the last thing I remember. The next thing I was aware of was coming back into my body. It felt like I was being pushed through a screen door without the screen door being opened first.

Like I was being shoved through a sieve. On the other side of the sieve, I was being compressed into like a small mayonnaise jar. It was very cold and hard, very restrictive compared to the infinity of the space that I had just been in. After several hours of surgery, Steve is transferred to the ICU. I was alone in the room with monitors beeping around me. And my first thought as I came to was, I'm not supposed to be here. Where am I?

I didn't understand because I'd already figured I'd died. I felt hurt that I got kicked out. I felt like the gates of heaven had been slammed right on my nose. I was also aware that my anger stemmed from having to leave the place I'd just come from, the place I had just come from, where everything was so loving and accepting to a broken body that was in pain. I wasn't given a choice. I was pretty much took the, got the bum rush, being shoved back into this body and back into this world where I would have much rather stayed on the other side. Steve spent two weeks in the hospital and six months recuperating. I was back in my body and my body was far worse for the wear.

They had to saw my chest open and they actually brought me back by massaging my heart, squeezing it with their bare hand. I later found out that I had lost more blood than the human body can hold. Steve's brother was initially jailed and then transferred to a mental institution. We were able to talk to him and give him a hug before he left. And I was really sad for him. I mean, I'd been through what I'd been through, but it's almost like he wasn't the one who had done it, and yet he was still going to pay for that. When

I was in the void and I experienced the unconditional love, it left an imprint on me. I love everybody after my experience. That's almost hardwired into me now. I'm far more of an extrovert now. I'm more likely to talk to people. Another thing that changed is my effect on electrical things. I've had computers fry on me. I've had hard drives crash. I blow out light bulbs all the time.

I've had two radiators blow up in my car in the last year and a half. Just anything that's under pressure will quite often blow up when I'm around, especially if I touch it. To this day, I'm not entirely sure what my experience meant. When I got dumped off the spiritual bus in the middle of the backwoods, I didn't have Jesus there. I didn't have Buddha there to give me any real nuggets of wisdom to bring back. I'm still trying to fit it in with this dream that I'm walking

around in in this world. The reality of the experience is undeniable. This world that we live in, this game that we play called life, is almost a phantom in comparison to the reality of that. That means drama is free with heart-wrenching stories from Love and Basketball, Power and Green Leaf. In this family, we live by the spirit. And laughter is free with gut-busting comedies like Pee and Peel, The Neighborhood, Everybody Hates Chris and Boomerang. Watch all the hits all for free from all your favorite devices. Oh my God, I love it! Feel the free Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.