From the archives: This story was last updated in March 2019.
Coming back from the dead may seem like the stuff of fairy tales, but here’s one lady who experienced death for 37 seconds. Moreover, she had forewarned her doctors exactly what would happen, and how to save her, weeks before she died, thanks to a supernormal premonition.Stephanie Arnold is a mother of three and married to Jonathan Arnold. Back in 2012, the family were looking forward to the birth of their second child.
But Stephanie’s joyful anticipation at 20 weeks became shadowed by a dark cloud of trepidation when she saw in a vivid dream that she had died after giving birth.
Stephanie voiced her fears to “whoever would listen.”
At 32 weeks pregnancy, Stephanie confided her premonitions about her imminent death with medical staff.
She was suggested to consult the anesthesiologist.
Stephanie was convinced her vision was a sign from heaven to help her prepare for what was to come.
“Not only am I going to die, I’m going to need a hysterectomy, I’m going to hemorrhage, these organs are going to combine, I’m going to be put under general anesthesia,” she told Megyn Kelly in December 2017.
“The baby’s going to be fine and I’m going to be dead on the operating table.”
The anesthesiologist, like her husband and friends, thought Stephanie was suffering from anxiety—yet she could not dismiss feeling that “something didn’t sit right.”
The anesthesiologist later told her that after they finished talking on the phone, she felt that she hadn’t done enough to help, so she flagged Stephanie’s file and incorporated extra blood and a crash cart in the operating room ... just in case.
On May 2013, Stephanie gave birth by C-section to a healthy baby boy named Jacob.
Within seconds, Stephanie flatlined.
She suffered an allergic reaction to the amniotic fluid entering the bloodstream, causing a condition called amniotic embolism. It is rare, with an occurrence of 1 in 40,000. The outcomes are fatal.
Stephanie suffered cardiac arrest and kidney failure. Her body went into DIC, which means her body was unable to deal with clotted blood.
She underwent an emergency hysterectomy and was given blood transfusions.
But nothing helped; Stephanie died then and there.
Though brief, the experience in all its detail left a profound impression on her.
She says she was approached by the spirit of a boy, who was the late brother of her best friend. He died at 7 years of age.
“He said to me, ‘tell my sister that I miss the way she twirled my hair,’” Stephanie relayed to Megyn Kelly. “And I’m, like, ‘okay.’”
After she was resuscitated, when Stephanie later called her best friend to tell her about her late brother, she dropped the phone and broke down crying.
“She picks up the phone and says, ‘How do you know this?’”
“She said, ‘I used to do it every night to put him to sleep.’”
Stephanie was able to accurately identify individual medical staff members who were present in the same room as her dead body. She describes it as being in a 3D movie. Even though she was flatlined, she was able to hear, see, and recall everything that happened in the room during her death.
“I saw who hit the button for the code. I saw my anesthesiologist had my feet. I saw the nurse that jumped on my chest.
“I saw what happened with the other child in the delivery room. My husband wasn’t present in the delivery room but I saw what he was wearing when he got off of the plane.”
Stephanie’s obstetrician-gynecologist, Dr. Julie Levitt, was beside her bed during the delivery.
“I heard my doctor say over and over, ’this can’t be happening.‘ And I said, ’did you say that?' And she said, ‘I did [say that]—but it was in my head.’”
There is no medical explanation for Stephanie’s experience.
Dr. Nicole Higgins, who worked on Stephanie, said: “She also had described there was a malfunction of our defibrillator machine, which necessitated that we had to take that one out and bring a new one in. She described that accurately.”
“This experience has left me with a sense of, well maybe there’s something else.”
Stephanie was revived after being flatlined for 37 seconds thanks to the expertise of the medical staff and the anesthesiologist, who took heed of Stephanie’s premonitions by adding extra blood.
The premonition turned out to be a godsend, and Stephanie feels blessed for it.
After coming back from the dead, Stephanie has gone on to become a motivational speaker and claims she continues to have premonitions about things.
On her website, she writes: “Listen to your intuition and we are not alone. Both will help save your life”—and we have more loving help than we can imagine surrounding us.”
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