The Day My Heart Stopped Beating

I was about 29 when I had a cardiac arrest. No, it didn’t happen because of obesity. In fact, I was quite thin. I had no vices, either.

It began with a bout of food poisioning that slowly  spiralled out of control. I had to be hospitalised. For more than a week, doctors tried to control the infection, but something particularly toxic had entered my system. I was weak and exhausted physically,
mentally and emotionally.

About a dozen days into the ordeal, I was sitting up on my hospital bed, talking to my sister-in-law, who is also a doctor. Suddenly, I said to her, ‘Something is not feeling quite right’. She said, “It must be from lack to sleep. Try to get some rest.” I shook my head. “No…I think you better come and ch….”I never completed the sentence. Before I knew it, my words had blurred and dissolved, and I had slumped over, unconscious. My sister-in-law felt my pulse. It was missing.

Her being a doctor saved my life. She knew exactly what to do, so every timely effort was made to revive me. If unattended, cardiac arrest can lead to sudden death within minutes.
 
When I awoke, it was early in the morning, and I saw my husband and my father standing by my bedside in their nightclothes. A pair of hands was pressing down on my chest. I managed to gasp out my questions, “Why are you dressed like this? Why have you come so early? Why are you pressing my chest?”

That was when they told me they had nearly lost me.“Oh, really,” I said, slowly. “But I was in the midst of a beautiful dream. I saw myself in a pool, with a figure with a demon-like face before me. It was smiling, but underneath, its large hands were pulling me down into the water.  Choking, I asked Ganesha to help me. And He replied, you have to help yourself. Come on out now… The dream ended with the demon drowning and I emerged from the water, safe.”

Looking back, it isn’t easy to understand why all of this happened to me. For the two years preceding this episode, I had been under tremendous stress. Marriage, with all its new, unfamiliar challenges. Two children in quick succession. A  constant feeling of exhaustion, and a total disconnect with my own essential needs.

That dream during my near-death experience changed my life. A few months later, I met a woman who introduced me to Reiki. I slowly began to regain the life force that had been sapped from me for so long.

On the physical front, I began paying attention to my diet, making sure I got plenty of fruits, vegetables and essential fibre on my plate. Yoga helped me tremendously, too.
I have learned a lot in the past few years, as I am sure each one of us does. Had I known better, I would have handled my marital life differently.

The mistake I made was to try and conform to the mindset that a woman’s place in her new family is to adjust and compromise. Instead, the right thing to do is create an intelligent balance between their expectations and your own needs. Because unless you are happy inside, you cannot hope to make others happy with you. And bottled-up pressures are bound to burst one day, as they did in my life.

Today, I am a Reiki Master. I live a full, happy life with my family, and am not only blessed with good health, but am helping others restore harmony in their lives.

How cardiac arrests happen
Sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) is a condition in which the heart suddenly and unexpectedly stops beating. When his happens, blood stops flowing to the brain and other vital organs. During cardiac arrest a victim loses consciousness, stops normal breathing and loses pulse and blood pressure.

The most common underlying reason for patients to die suddenly from cardiac arrest is coronary heart disease. Other factors include respiratory arrest, electrocution, drowning, choking and trauma. Cardiac arrest can also occur without any known cause.

95 per cent of people who have SCA die from it within minutes. Rapid treatment of SCA with a defibrillator, a device that sends an electric shock to the heart to try to restore its normal rhythm is life saving.

How Reiki heals
The word Reiki is made of two Japanese words — Rei which means “the Wisdom of God or the Higher Power”and Ki which means ‘life force energy’.

Reiki is a technique for transmitting subtle energy to yourself and others through the hands into the human energy system. It relieves the physical and emotional effects of pent-up stresses, opens blocked meridians, nadas and chakras, and clears the
energy bodies.

Anyone can learn to tap into an unlimited supply of ‘life force energy’ by learning Reiki, or by receiving treatments from a Reiki Practitioner or Master.