Vic tells a story of how his near-death experience resulted in far more than his own peace of mind about what it’s like to die; it led to a new, life-saving medical procedure, and it helped an anonymous nurse find the courage she didn’t think she had.

It all began with a routine colonoscopy. Vic was accustomed to the procedure, since he’d had cancer previously, and he was now required to have regular examinations to prevent it from coming back. On this day, the doctors found a polyp and removed it. This was not unusual either, says Vic. He’d had polyps removed before.

This time, however, something was different. A few hours after Vic returned home following the day surgery, he realized he was bleeding, and quite badly. It took some time for the hospital staff to realize how serious his condition was; but, eventually they began giving him blood—at the extremely fast rate of one unit every fifteen minutes.

What doctors and nurses didn’t realize was that Vic has a condition that causes his white blood cells to clump together when he receives a blood transfusion.

“I was dying,” says Vic.

“…I faded to black. Then I was sitting in a chair facing… (my) inner master. There was a white cloud around us and what appeared to be a highly polished black floor below.”

The following is the conversation Vic remembers having with the spiritual master he calls Wah Z:

Wah Z: Do you want to live or die?

Vic: I have never died in full consciousness before; it might be an exciting experience.

Wah Z: This is it.

Vic: (astonished) This is it?

Wah Z: This is it.

Vic: Well, if this is it, it’s not very exciting. This is just a shift of consciousness, and I do this just about every day when I contemplate.

Wah Z: Do you want to live or die?

Vic: I do want to live.

Immediately, Vic says, “I came back to the physical and opened my eyes, seeing the heart paddle just above my chest, and asked what was going on…”

But Vic’s adventure with life and near-death was not over. He was still in hospital with no obvious way to stop his bleeding. That evening his doctor stopped by to say with great regret that he would have to leave, because he promised his daughter he would attend her first piano recital that evening.

“I replied, ‘It’s okay, Ron. Family is very important. Go enjoy it. We said good-bye.”

But, later that night, Dr. Ron returned. “An idea came to me when I was listening to my daughter’s recital. Can I try it?” he said.

Having learned that death was no big deal, Vic was unafraid, even though he still had things he wanted to do in this physical life. So, he agreed. But, then came the next snag: Dr. Ron was going to have to insert a camera into Ron’s colon, so he’d be able to see where to put a clip on the part that was bleeding, and he needed a nurse to assist him. However, the nurse on duty declined to help because she was unsure about the procedure.

“I can’t do it by myself,” Dr. Ron told Vic.

Vic surprised even himself with what he said next: “Tell her…if she can live with the fact she watched a man die and did not even try to save him, and she is OK with that; then, I’m OK with that, too.”

Soon after, Dr. Ron returned ready to do the procedure. Vic watched on a monitor as Dr. Ron placed, not one but two, clips on the bleeding section of his colon.

“We all signed a breath of relief,” says Vic. “Since I had not seen or heard the nurse, I asked Dr. Ron to say thank-you to her for having the courage to do this and save my life. I thanked him as well for the creative solution that came to him during his daughter’s piano recital.”

A couple of years after his near-death experience, Vic was once again in hospital for a routine colonoscopy. Making conversation, he told a nurse that he almost died from loss of blood as a result of his last one.

“Why didn’t they put a clip on it?” asked, incredulous.

“Because I was patient zero,” answered Vic. “I was the first patient that procedure was ever tried on. Now it’s standard practice.”

Looking back on all that happened, Vic is grateful for the whole experience. “I think of how, when you throw a stone in the water, you don’t know how the ripples are going to affect others. This one incident of my bleeding colon has had a beneficial effect on so many others. I had the courage to risk a then-untried procedure that could have ended my life, because I knew that death was just a shift in consciousness.”

At the same time, because Vic said he was willing to die, a nurse found the courage that helped save his life.

Still, says Vic, while his experiences have enabled him to see more clearly than ever that consciousness—or Soul—lives on, no matter what the body, it’s important to keep everything in perspective: “As magnificent as that whole experience was, I can still whimper and cry with the best of them. But it’s okay to be human,” he says. “We all need rest points on the journey of eternity.”

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