Author: Soulsearcher

A personal story by Soulsearcher. The featured image is an illustration, not a photograph of the events.

During COVID, my regular infusions had to be done at home.

Going into hospital carried its own risks. Hospitals were overwhelmed, wards were under quarantine, and because of my health problems, avoiding unnecessary exposure seemed the safest option.

A registered nurse would come to my home, administer my infusion and, because I was at home, I could continue working at the same time.

On this particular day, everything started normally.

The infusion finished, the nurse stayed for a while and then left. I went back to work.

It was probably around five in the afternoon when something began to feel wrong.

My muscles started cramping.

First my legs and arms. Then breathing became difficult.

At that stage, nobody knew that I had a serious problem maintaining my potassium levels. We would later discover extremely high aldosterone levels and learn that my body was losing far more potassium than it should.

I would see specialists. I would undergo investigations and genetic testing.

But ultimately there would be no simple explanation for why my body did this.

That evening, however, I knew none of that.

I only knew that my body was shutting down.

Eventually I was on the floor.

I couldn’t use my muscles properly. I couldn’t stand. Even my tongue would not cooperate when I tried to speak.

All I could do was lie there and concentrate on breathing.

Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Keep breathing.

My father eventually came to check on me.

At that time, my mother had not yet been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She and my father somehow managed to get me up, carry me to the car and rush me to the nearest emergency department.

I was assessed immediately.

The doctor on duty called a cardiologist. He looked at my ECG and vital signs and told the other doctor that there appeared to be a blockage.

He said he needed to operate.

I was lying on the bed, barely able to move or speak, with nurses around me.

And something inside me became absolutely clear.

No.

I cannot explain it better than that.

I knew I had to leave.

I knew I needed to get to the hospital where I was normally treated.

There was no careful reasoning behind it. I wasn’t in a condition to analyse medical information or weigh up alternatives.

It was simply an extraordinary certainty.

I could not stay there.

The medical staff did not want me to leave because I was unstable.

I fought them.

I swore.

With enormous difficulty, I managed to make it clear that I was refusing treatment there and wanted to be transferred.

I signed a waiver.

I remember thinking that I would rather take the risk of dying on the way to the other hospital than allow them to operate on me.

Looking back, that sounds extreme.

But in that moment, I had no doubt.

Something was telling me to go.

When I arrived at the other hospital, another cardiologist looked at my ECG.

His response was immediate.

Potassium.

I was given potassium intravenously and more potassium to drink in orange juice. Blood was taken.

The treatment continued, followed by more blood tests and another ECG.

Eventually, my ECG returned to normal.

There was no blockage.

My heart had been struggling because my potassium level was dangerously low.

My potassium level was 2.2 — dangerously low and well below the normal range.

I later underwent further testing to determine whether I had suffered a heart attack. I hadn’t.

A scan of my heart revealed something else I hadn’t known. I was told my heart was smaller than average, but the measurement they used for the strength of my heart was 7.5, when I was told the upper end of the normal range was 5. The cardiologist explained that the strength of my heart muscle had helped me survive what had happened.

I had survived.

Later came the search for an explanation.

Specialists. Tests. Genetic investigations. Questions about aldosterone and why my body was losing so much potassium.

Some answers came.

Others never did.

But there is another question from that night that medicine cannot really answer for me.

Why was I so certain that I had to leave?

I had no medical knowledge telling me that the diagnosis was wrong.

I could barely move.

I could barely speak.

I had just been told that there was a blockage in my heart and that I needed an operation.

Logically, that should have been the moment when I surrendered control and allowed the doctors to do whatever they believed was necessary.

Instead, something in me said:

Go.

And I listened.

I don’t know whether it was instinct, intuition, fear, some subconscious awareness—or simply one of those decisions we make in extreme circumstances that we only understand afterwards.

I don’t want to pretend that I know.

What I do know is that I left.

At the second hospital, they found the problem.

And that night, once again, my life continued.

— Soulsearcher

Editorial note: personal experience and emergency care

This is Soulsearcher’s recollection of a medical emergency, including test measurements as remembered. It has not been verified against medical records and should not be used to interpret someone else’s results. Severe low potassium can cause dangerous heart rhythms and needs medical treatment; do not try to correct it yourself. If care concerns arise during an emergency, request a senior review and a medically arranged transfer where needed rather than leaving without safe support. See MedlinePlus on low potassium.

A personal story by Soulsearcher. The featured image is an illustration, not a photograph of the events.

It was just another day after work.

At about six in the evening, I was driving to fetch a friend from work. It was summer, so it was still light, and there was almost no traffic on the road.

I approached an intersection and drove through a green light.

Then I looked to my left.

A truck was speeding directly towards me.

It wasn’t stopping at the red light.

There was no time to think.

The truck appeared to be travelling at around 120 kilometres per hour. I was doing approximately 35.

All I could do was take my foot off the accelerator and turn the steering wheel to the right.

Then came the impact.

After that, there is nothing.

I was unconscious and have no memory of what happened immediately afterwards.

The next thing I remember is people trying to get me out of my car.

It was smoking.

They had to pry the door open.

Three airbags had deployed, and fortunately I was sitting in a bucket seat.

My car had travelled roughly 100 metres from the point of impact and ended up wrapped around a pole.

When I regained consciousness, I suddenly felt terrible pain in my left shoulder and neck.

And then, strangely, very little.

Apart from seat-belt burns and an injury to my hand, I seemed remarkably intact.

My left hand had become trapped between the steering wheel and the shattered windscreen at the twelve o’clock position.

I was extremely dizzy.

I later learned that the truck had continued after hitting me. It took out two lamp posts on the other side of the road, struck and wrote off a Toyota Land Cruiser bakkie parked near a petrol station further down the road, and eventually came to a stop near the petrol pumps.

Looking at what had happened, it was difficult to understand how I had walked away.

Maybe it was the concussion.

Maybe it was shock.

But I remember feeling strangely calm.

I reached through the crushed metal around the roof and left side of the car and managed to retrieve my keys and purse.

Then I got out.

That was when the dizziness really hit me.

I sat down on the pavement.

And I looked at my car.

It was destroyed.

Completely crushed—except for the area around my bucket seat.

Blood was dripping from my hand.

And then something happened that I have never forgotten.

Across the road was a beautiful tree.

I found myself looking at it.

Suddenly, around a hundred white birds flew out of the tree.

They were unlike any birds I remembered seeing before.

They rose together, circled, and then returned to the tree.

I watched them.

Then they did it again.

They flew from the tree, circled, and returned.

And then a third time.

The birds rose together, made another circle and landed back in the tree.

After the third time, they flew away.

I just sat there watching them.

For a moment, everything else seemed to disappear.

The destroyed car.

The blood.

The people.

The noise.

The fact that only moments earlier I had been hit by a truck travelling at enormous speed.

There were just these white birds.

A woman who had witnessed the accident came and sat beside me.

I turned to her and asked:

“Did you see that?”

She said yes.

Then she told me something that has always mattered to me when I remember that moment.

She had never seen anything like it either.

So I know the birds weren’t something I imagined while concussed.

Someone else saw them too.

I don’t know what kind of birds they were.

I don’t know why so many of them were sitting in that particular tree.

I don’t know why they took off, circled and returned three times before finally disappearing.

There may be a completely ordinary explanation.

But sitting on that pavement beside the wreckage of my car, bleeding and dizzy, having somehow survived an accident that could very easily have ended differently, it did not feel like an ordinary moment.

It felt incredibly still.

Almost as though, for those few minutes, everything had slowed down.

I have never forgotten those birds.

Just as I have never forgotten the blue-white light from another experience in my life.

And just as, years later, I would never forget the woman who appeared beside my hospital bed wearing a large owl pendant.

Three completely different experiences.

A light.

White birds.

An owl.

And there is something else they share.

They appeared at moments surrounded by chaos.

And somehow, in each of those moments, there was peace.

I don’t know what that means.

Perhaps one day I will.

Perhaps I never will.

But I know what I saw.

And this time, someone else saw it too.

— Soulsearcher