A woman, clinically dead for over 10 minutes, has shared her experience of seeing what she describes as the ‘doorway to heaven’, which ultimately persuaded her to return to life.
Rosemary Thornton received a stage two cancer diagnosis shortly after her husband died by suicide.
In her prayers, she sought relief from her suffering. Following a biopsy, she was discharged from the hospital despite significant bleeding.
“At first I thought, this is my way out,” Thornton remembered, reflecting on the months of grief she had endured.
However, she decided to call for an ambulance, leading to an unexpected experience when she collapsed at the hospital.
“I felt like I’d been catapulted out of my body,” she explained. “Like toast popping out of a toaster.”
“My heart has stopped. Actually, you’re not dying, you’re dead.”
The most notable aspect of the experience, according to her, was the emotional change.
Thornton described how the burden of guilt and grief from her husband’s passing vanished instantly.
“The guilt, the self recrimination, the anxiety, the sadness, the pain, the regret… every negative emotion you can imagine is what I had left behind,” she articulated.
“The predominant thought I had was the peace… it was like peace was infused into every iota of who I am.”
She recounted being in a white room with a single door, which she perceived as the entrance to heaven.
She remarked: “I knew the door was the thing that would make sure I didn’t go back.”
Just as she was about to step through, hoping to reunite with her husband, she saw an image of the nurse from the emergency room.
“Oh honey, we’re not gonna let you die,” she recalled the nurse saying.
She continued: “This nurse was leaning forward, head in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably. And I’m witnessing this. I know she can’t hear me, see me, experience me.”
“If I can spare one human being that much pain, I have to go back.”
When she regained consciousness, doctors informed her that she had been dead for over 10 minutes due to internal bleeding.
Given the duration her brain went without oxygen, they cautioned that severe complications were a strong possibility.
The outcome, however, surprised everyone.
Tests showed she had no neurological impairment at all.
Even more surprisingly, subsequent tests found no remnants of the cancer that she had been diagnosed with earlier.