My husband, three sons and I lived in Saudi Arabia. We were living there for my husband's work. At 9:30 a.m. on June 16, 1996 (Father's Day) at the hospital I had my fourth child and fourth C-section. My third child had been delivered there 17 months earlier. Since I was an older mother and I had started having premature labor with this pregancy, I had been in and out of the hospital for months. I was too sick to travel back to the States. During all of this an ultra sound showed that I was having a girl. My Egyptian husband named her Maha, which means beautiful eyes in Arabic; we had seen her face on the ultra sound and her eyes were beautiful then and now. I had been put on bed rest for the last three months of this pregnancy. I was 35 weeks into the pregancy when June 16 was decided for delivery. The doctor who was Saudi but trained in Canada, said that I was dilated to four and contracting too much to go any further with the pregnancy.

I was admitted to the hospital after driving myself to the ER due to difficulty breathing, Asthma. I was in the hospital for approximately one week prior to my life-altering event. I went for a walk to stretch my legs, rolling my I.V. pole along with me to the nurses station. For some reason, I had the intuition to ask the R.N.,"Would you watch me tonight?" She responded, "Are you feeling alright?" I said, "I don't know. She said, "Honey, you keep your door open and I will be there for you." I always kept my door closed because of the high foot traffic and light, but that night I kept my door open.

The year was 1972 and it was seven weeks after the birth of my third child that I was rushed to the hospital with heavy bleeding, loss of sight and massive stomach cramps (now believed to be blood poisoning) and whilst undergoing a procedure I experienced, what I later learned was an NDE. My experience was not, at first of a pleasant nature. I was given an anaesthetic and remember coming back to my room for recovery after the procedure. Being a small hospital it was normal to be taken back to your hospital room as there was a lack of available recovery rooms.

When I was 16, I was in a car accident. I was driving way too fast (being a new driver) and lost control of my car. My car went off the right side of the road, hit a large bump, became airborne, and overturned in a drainage ditch. I was not seriously injured (thank goodness), only a broken nose and some cuts and bruises. It was so weird though, because after my car went off the road it seemed like things became slow-motion.