Anita and husband
Dying to Be Me
Anita Moorjani
https://anitamoorjani.com/?page_id=159
Supplementary Comments:
In view of how remarkable this account is, I e-mailed some additional questions to Anita. Her response is below the questions.
– Dr. Jeffrey Long, NDERF
My questions:
1. You write remarkably well!!! Have you lived in any English speaking area of the world for any period of time?
2. You had Hodkin’s Lymphoma. Was this diagnosed by biopsy? How was the diagnosis made?
3. How long after the chemotherapy was started did all the lymph nodes you had go completely away?
4. The fact that the medical tests, already done, would have their outcome changed depending on your choice is remarkable. If you had chosen not to return to earth, do you have a sense when the medical tests would have changed- after your choice in earthly time, or would your choice have affected the tests at the time the blood was drawn which, in earthly time, I understand would have been before you made your choice to return to earth. Any further comments you have on this would be greatly appreciated.
5. You said “It not only makes me feel that everything (including cancer)is not real (a shift in consciousness made it disappear!) but it also makes me feel very powerful, and I have a totally different understanding of life now.” As a doctor who treats cancer, any further insights you have on this would be greatly appreciated.
6. Would the doctors who treated you be interested in communicating with me? We would all need your prior approval to share information about your medical diagnosis and treatment. If your doctors were interested in writing up your experience to publish it as a “case report” in the medical literature, I would be delighted to help in any way that I can. This could certainly increase the awareness of NDE in your country.
Anita’s response:
Thank you so much for your response, and on your compliments to my English! I attended a British private school for my entire schooling here in Hong Kong, as this used to be a British colony up until 1997. There were British schools set up specifically for the children of the British officers and most of the large corporations in Hong Kong were also run by British. After I finished school, I did some further studies in Manchester, UK, but returned to Hong Kong after I finished. I married someone here, who shared a very similar background as myself – a fellow ethnic Indian born and raised in Hong Kong, with no real attachment to our parents’ native country. I have also been working here in Hong Kong.
Before I go further, I just want to share with you that your e-mail gave me goose-bumps. When I had my NDE, and I was able to see and perceive certain aspects of my future, I perceived that one of the reasons I had to go back was because I was supposed to touch and inspire people’s lives. In that state, I somehow knew that I was meant to inspire thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people. But it was not clear how I was meant to do it – I just knew I was supposed to be doing something to inspire people. I specifically got the feeling that I didn’t need to do anything for this to happen, I just had to be myself and enjoy life. Then recently, I had been thinking about this, and now that I am well and want to do something productive with my life, I have been trying to figure out what it is I am supposed to do that inspires others. And this morning I got your e-mail which said “Over the years, tens of thousands of people will read your experience and, I am sure, be inspired.” I now understand why I was made to feel I didn’t have to do anything!! I was doing it by having the NDE!!!
Regarding your questions I am sorry if the answers seem a bit long, but I want to make it as clear as possible:
About 3 and a half years ago, I had a needle biopsy on a swollen lymph gland at the base of my neck where it meets my shoulder on my left side, and the results indicated I had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. A scan then preliminary staged it at 1A at that time, however more tests still needed to be done. If I can explain some details, which I did not think was necessary in my earlier account as it had nothing to do with the NDE itself: My best friend had just died of cancer – she had a sarcoma in her chest area. The sarcoma had been removed surgically, and then she was given chemo. Her physical condition deteriorated very badly after starting the chemo, and continued to deteriorate until she died. Her family felt very strongly it was the chemo that killed her, not the cancer. I was with her through her experience, and watch her suffer through her chemo experience, which was horrific, and then watched her die. This was my friend whom I had known since grade school, and we had grown up together. When I was then subsequently diagnosed the same year she died, I was shocked, as were a lot of people in our circle of friends. I was very, very afraid of chemo, so refused treatment, and went to see a naturopath who specialized in cancer treatment. At first, the swollen lymph nodes seemed to be shrinking, and we felt the therapy was working, and I was very happy that I would not have to have chemo. But although they got smaller, they did not disappear completely. I was living in a lot of fear at that time – fear of the cancer, and fear of chemo. I cleaned up my diet, did colon therapy, and took all the pills the naturopathic doctor gave me. But around 2 years ago, the lymph nodes seemed to be growing again, and so the doctor changed my therapy, and also sent me to a herbal specialist. Again, it seemed to come under control for a little while, but around 1 year ago, I started to develop fluid in my chest area, and also my left arm became swollen. My doctor then performed a pleural effusion, and then the fluid came back and he performed the effusion several more times. During this time, my glands were getting more and more swollen, until January, 2006, when my health deteriorated dramatically in a span of 2 or 3 weeks. My breathing became more and more laboured, I was always out of breath, and I needed to carry a portable oxygen machine. I was losing weight, I could not eat, as I felt full all the time, my muscles were deteriorating to the point where I could not walk and was using a wheelchair, I had skin lesions which were oozing, and by February 2, I could not move. I could not open my eyes, get out of bed, let alone even walk. I just accepted that this was it, I was going to die, and I just completely let go. I did not feel any pain, or discomfort. I was not on any medication at that point – just a state of total release.
My husband rushed me to hospital, and I was assigned an oncologist who, after examining me, said “its too late. There is nothing I can do.” My husband pleaded with her, and she then relented to assign someone else, as she felt it would be a “waste of her time”, or perhaps she did not want my death on her record. She was very annoyed with my naturopathic doctor, and felt it was his responsibility to send me to the hospital earlier, and made it clear that it was “his fault” that I was going to die.
The scans showed that the lymphoma had spread throughout my body, and my organs were compromised. My feet and hands now began to swell like balloons, and my face was all swollen. The oncologist said “her organs have already shut down – she is dying of organ failure”. Listening to my husband’s pleas, she called another oncologist, who said to my husband “I can’t promise anything, I’ll see what I can do. However, the next 24 hours are critical. She is too unstable to even perform a biopsy to determine what drugs to inject. We will also begin to run the tests right away on her organ functions as all symptoms seem to indicate failure.” This was the conversation that took place outside my room, some 40 feet away, and I heard and saw it, so I had obviously left my body at that time. Anyway, I then became aware of all the needles poking me, and some kind of chemo drugs went into me, but I don’t know exactly what the mix was. And I was connected to an oxygen machine, a food tube, something that monitored my heart, pulse, blood pressure, etc. etc. The next morning, (after drifting between the two worlds through the night and after making my decision to come back into life) I started to feel more awake, and started to feel slightly more grounded in this world than that one, and that was when the doctors came in and said my organs were showing normal function. I was still a bit fuzzy, and said something like “oh, I thought we knew that already”. My brother had arrived, having been on a plane overnight, and by that evening, I was really awake and ready to sit up. My whole family started celebrating. Within 4 days, my progress was remarkable, and I was transferred from the ICU to a normal private room. There was significant reduction in my lymph nodes within those 4 days.
Because it now looked like I was going to make it, the doctor called for a wound specialist to look at my skin lesions. When he first looked at them, he said that surgery would be needed as the skin had been “eaten away”, but he would wait until I became stronger. However, my wounds healed miraculously over the weeks, and never needed surgery (one on the neck and one under the arm). About a week after coming out of ICU, they performed a bone marrow biopsy, and could not find anything, and about 10 days after that, they performed a lymph node biopsy. When I was sent for the lymph node biopsy, the radiologist could not find a lymph node big enough to even suggest cancer, however the oncologist pushed him to mark a lymph node on my body anyway which they biopsied and found nothing. Each time, I knew the test results were going to be negative. The oncologist however, wanted to run these tests so that he could determine what chemo drugs to use, but since he could not find anything, he said it is because I am responding extremely well to what he is currently using, so he will keep giving me that. I said that if the cancer seems gone, why do I have to keep having the chemo, but he insisted that, even though my recovery was remarkable, he had to be sure to give me at least the minimum number of cycles, because of the state I was in when I came in. He said he originally thought I would need a lot more cycles, but was now reducing it drastically to the minimum he ever gives which is six. I don’t know why, but I did not suffer major side effects from the chemo. I was so charged by my NDE, it was as if nothing was going to get me down, and I now lost my fear of the chemo, and knew that I was going to be fine – better than fine.
In answer to question 3, the lymph nodes were visibly reduced by about 80% around 4 days after the chemo. However, the biopsy was done about 2 weeks after that, where they could not find a lymph node to even suggest cancer. They were waiting for my body to be stronger before conducting the biopsy, which is why it was not done earlier. The bone marrow biopsy was done earlier, where they did not find anything.
Question 4: This is one of the points that is so hard to express with our limited 3 dimensional language. Time seems to have a completely different meaning on that side. What I felt was that all possibilities exist simultaneously – it just depends which one you choose. Sort of like being in an elevator, where all the floors of a building exist, but you can choose which floor to get off on. So if all the future possibilities exist for me to choose from, then I assume all the past scenarios exist too. So depending which future possibility I choose, that will also determine which past automatically comes with it (I chose life, so it affected the past, choosing the appropriate test result for the organ function). I hope I am making sense. It’s very clear in my thoughts, but it is hard to write. When I was being presented the choice, I actually saw a vision of my lab report which said, on the heading: Diagnosis: Organ Failure. Then on the body of the report: Death due to organ failure caused by Hodgkin’s lymphoma. When I actually saw the report after coming back, the sheet of paper looked almost identical, and the heading matched word for word: Diagnosis: Organ Failure, however, the body read: There is no evidence of organ failure. I actually got goosebumps looking at that report, knowing what it could have read.
Question 5: I now know that a lot more exists than we are consciously aware of or capable of understanding. Each day, I am understanding more and more since the NDE. I am finding out that there are things I now feel I “know” or “understand”, which I never did before. The best example I can think of is: imagine there is a huge warehouse, which is dark, and you live in this warehouse with one flashlight. Everything you know about this warehouse is seen through the light of this one small flashlight. Whenever you want to look for something, you may or may not find it, but it does not mean the thing does not exist. It is there, but you just haven’t flashed your light on it. You can only see what your light is focused on. Then one day, someone flicks on a lightswitch, and for the first time, you can see the whole warehouse. The vastness of it is almost overwhelming, you can’t see all the way to the end, and you know there is more than what you can see. But you do see how all the products are lined up on all the shelves, and you notice just how many different things there are in the warehouse which you never noticed, never even conceived having existed, yet they do, simultaneously with the things you know existed (those are the things your flashlight had been able to find). Then, even when the light switch goes back off, nothing can take away the understanding and clarity of your experience. Even though you are back to one flashlight, you now know how to look for things. You know what is possible, and you even know what to look for. You start viewing things differently, and it is from this new springboard that your experiences start to happen. And so I find that in my daily life, I am referring referring to different aspects of my experience at different times, and I am understanding things in a different way, and knowing things I did not know I knew.
I saw all people as “energy”, and depending where our energy level was, that was the world we created for ourselves. The understanding I gained from this was that if cancer was not in our “energy”, then it was not in our reality. If feeling good about ourselves was in our energy, then our reality would be positive. If cancer was in our energy, then even if we eradicated it with modern medicine, it would soon come back. But if we cleared it from our energy, the physical body would soon follow. None of us are as “real” or physical as we think we are. From what I saw, it looked like we are energy first, and physical is only a result of expressing our energy. And we can change our physical reality if we change our energy. (Some people have mentioned I use the term “Vibration”). For me, personally, I was made to feel that in order to keep my energy/vibration level up, I only had to live in the moment, enjoy every moment of life, and use each moment to elevate the next moment (which then elevates my future). It is in that moment of elevating your energy level that you can change your future (like my test results). It sounds very simplistic, but it felt very deep when I was experiencing the understanding of it.
Question 6: As yet, I have not told my doctors of my NDE, because they seem a little old fashioned, and I don’t know how they will respond. However, I am willing to give it a try. I am seeing them on Thursday morning for a general check up, and I will broach the subject. It had occurred to me earlier to mention it to them, but the time never felt right. They had commented however, all through my stay in hospital, at how remarkable my recovery was. I will keep you informed as to how it goes with them, and as long as they agree, I have no problems with you communicating with them.
I hope I have been able to answer your questions. I am very excited about being posted on your site, especially at the thought of being on the archives of the exceptional experiences. My brother forwarded me the link to your site about 10 days ago, as he started to read up on NDEs after my experience, and I started to fill out the questionnaire immediately.
[Subsequent to this writing, Dr. Peter Ko, oncologist from the US, took an interest in this case, and flew to Hong Kong to meet Anita. He made a copy of all the relevant information in Anita’s medical records and studied them in great detail. His comments to her was “Anyway I look at it, you should be dead! After reviewing the records, he submitted his findings to cancer institutes around the globe, all of whom responded they have no record of any such event occurring before. Dr. Ko conducted a public forum with Anita, and was also interviewed on the radio about his findings of her case, which has been recorded and and can be heard on this site.]