The Best Angel Stories 2 by Editors of Guideposts

Author:Editors of Guideposts
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633410381
Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser

On a Butterfly Wing

Eben Alexander III, MD

I'VE BEEN A NEUROSURGEON FOR more than twenty years. Over that time, I've heard a lot about angels. Angels who have shown up in patients' recovery rooms after a rough surgery, angels who come in dreams to comfort friends of a patient, and angels who visit mourning relatives. Angels who always seem extraordinarily real to the people who see them. Such people cite convincing details about their angel's appearance, so the angels don't seem vague or imaginary at all.

I listened to these stories with sympathy. Neurosurgeons deal with the brain, the single most complex, and least understood, organ in the body. Operating on the brain can be highly traumatic both for patients and their loved ones. So I'd nod my head and say that such blessed events could happen.

Not that I believed any of these angels were real. The brain is a fantastically efficient machine—efficient enough that if traumatized by illness or surgery, it can actually fool itself into getting better by generating healing imagery. Imagery like a guardian angel, complete with white robes and wings and whatever else a patient might find most comforting. When patients experienced angelic visitations like this, they were simply benefiting from the marvelously efficient mechanisms that the brain possesses that allow it to automatically soothe and heal itself.

Of course, I never said any of this to my patients. These kinds of experiences can be hugely helpful. It was not my place to burst the bubble of a patient who wanted to believe in angels. If it helped a patient get better, then she could believe in anything she wanted.

So you can imagine my surprise when, during the week beginning the tenth of November 2008, I encountered my own guardian angel.

I awoke in my wife Holley's and my Lynchburg, Virginia, house an hour earlier than usual, with a nasty backache. Thinking it was leftover from the low-grade flu that Holley, our younger son, Bond, and I had been suffering from all week, I tiptoed down to the bathroom and ran a hot tub.

The hot water only made the pain worse. It spread to my head. I managed to get myself back to bed. I flopped facedown beside Holley, and she woke up and asked me what was wrong. A little later Bond awoke and came in, as well. Hearing that I had a headache, he reached out and massaged my temples gently.

I screamed in agony. Holley wanted to call an ambulance, but I told her the pain would go away on its own. “Trust me,” I said. “I'm a doctor.”

Holley left me to rest quietly for a while and got Bond ready for school. She stayed out of the room for an hour and a half so as not to wake me. When she finally came back in, she found me lying rigid on the bed, my jaw jutting forward, my eyes rolled back in my head. I was having a full grand mal seizure, a type of seizure that affects the entire brain.

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