Barbara says she has experienced death twice, and the second time she begged to come back
A woman says she ‘died’ twice and watched doctors work on her lifeless body before choosing to return to it – first when she was 18 months old and then again at 31. Barbara Bartolome stopped breathing and died for a short period as a toddler after developing a high fever.
Despite her body turning “purple and lifeless”, her family recalled her “suddenly coming back to life”. While Barbara was just a young child then, it was an experience that came back to haunt her when she was 31, when her heart stopped during complications at hospital, where she was preparing for surgery on her back.
When she opened her eyes, she found herself floating above, near the hospital room ceiling, watching her body be worked on as medics fought to revive her. “I was out of my body looking down at the whole scene,” said Barbara, who lives in Santa Barbara, California. “The panic I was feeling in my body was gone.
“I felt wrapped in a beautiful blanket of love and acceptance, and I felt absolutely wonderful. I looked down at what was happening below – the surgeon was calling ‘code blue’. I calmly said ‘if I’m up here and my body is down there, and he’s calling code blue, I think I just died’.
“Right when I said that, there was a feeling of a being that was right next to me, and the being felt like I had known him forever. It felt like it was God. I felt absolute acceptance and absolute love and comfort – when he was next to me, I was a pure being, a pure spirit.
“It was just incredible. It was life-changing to have that feeling of him being right there. I had been on the earth for 31 years at that time but I felt it was way beyond that.”
Barbara, now 69, was in the hospital at the time, back in December 1987, for a laminectomy discectomy – decompression surgeries to treat nerve pain on her back. Part of the prep for the procedure included a myogram – where iodine is injected into the spinal cord in order to check for damage.
But Barbara – who had welcomed her daughter Juli just four months prior, and also had a son, Scott, at home – claims an X-ray technician accidentally pressed a button that moved the table she was lying on, causing the dye to leak into her brain. She began to feel faint prior to losing consciousness, and waking up to see the room below – where the orthopaedic surgeon, neurosurgeon, two X-ray technicians and a nurse began working to save her.
Barbara recalls ‘talking’ to the being next to her, while doctors and nurses “panicked below” and performed CPR on her. But, worried about her young children, she knew she had to return to her body. She said: “I was saying I needed to go back, while I was watching everything down below. They had an oxygen mask on my face, and they were switching between that and chest compressions.”
As a medic applied a heart monitor, she saw herself flatline. She even recalls one surgeon saying “too much time has passed, she’s going to be brain dead”, before the other surgeon used his fist to pound on her chest.
Barbara said: “I watched my body while that happened, and watched the whole thing from above, and my body jerked. I didn’t go back into my body, but up on the ceiling, as I was looking down, the being spoke to me.”
In what she describes as a “beautiful voice”, Barbara recalls being asked what she would do if she returned to herself. ‘Flashes’ of bad memories crossed her mind, and she came to the realisation that she needed to make some changes, including ending her marriage and prioritising herself and her children.
She begged to return back to life. She said: “The second I said it, the surgeon did the second cardiac thump, and it restarted my heart. I opened my eyes and I was back in my body with the oxygen mask on my face. They were all astonished.”
Barbara recalls them stabilising her, before she was able to talk and recount what had happened in detail. One of the surgeons “freaked out” and left the room, while the other wanted her to repeat the tale. Barbara rested for the evening, and had the planned surgery the following day – a laminectomy discectomy – and recovered in hospital for four days, though she says no one would talk to her about her experience.
But that didn’t make her doubt what she had seen. Having never taken drugs, and not been a drinker, and having never hallucinated before – she knew that what she had experienced was real.
Barbara said: “It was as real every time I thought about it, as it was when happening. Talking about it now, if I were to shut my eyes, I would see down where the table is, where the people were, I could see the whole room.”
With no one able to believe her, Barbara didn’t speak about it again for 12 years. But she kept her vow to the being, ending her marriage and becoming a single parent to her son and daughter. She wasn’t sure if she would ever find love again, but decided to jot down a list of traits her ideal partner would have – and eventually went on to meet just the man, her now-husband Victor.
More than three decades on, he remains a strong supporter of hers and all that she went through. And Barbara slowly opened up to other people in her life, too, including one of Juli’s friends’ mothers, who told her it was called a ‘near-death experience’ and explained that other people online had shared similar accounts.
She now believes her near-death experience was ‘planted in her life’ to help her leave her marriage and “grow beyond it”. Barbara added: “It helped change who I was in major ways, and helped me to understand much more than I’ve ever understood before.
“When you open the door to the other side, it’s amazing how they’ll come through for you in so many instances. I think that the other side is listening all the time. They’re here, and ready to help everybody.
Messages from the other side
“But a lot of people close their doors, and when they get an intuitive hint, they think it’s their intuitive hit, instead of a message from the other side helping them. I really wish everybody understood – it’s not someplace far away, they’re here and with us.
“I see in many ways, the other side was teaching me all along, and planting me in places where I could grow and could get to the point of talking about this without worries of anybody’s judgment or non-belief. I can talk to anybody about this – so that’s what I do every day.”
Barbara is passionate about recounting her tale, and pushing others to discover the support they too can find from the ‘other side’, as well as normalising near-death experiences – calling it her “life’s purpose”. S he added: “I do not believe that we are judged by anyone after death, but instead we see a life review and we view our actions and connections with others, and we see both the positive and the negative ones.
“I feel that we are here to ‘grow our soul’ – and our choices and experiences here do that. “I believe that we reincarnate and return here many times, to experience alternate lives and life experiences.
“I don’t believe we go to heaven or hell, but instead we return home – where we originated from. “We can call the being that was with me during my near-death experience God, or Buddha, or Creator, or any other name – he doesn’t care.
“But he does want people to develop a close connection and relationship directly with him rather than with organised religion. His love for us is immense and he does orchestrate miracles, healing, and other amazing experiences in our lives.
“I have no fear of death and look forward to returning home at some future point – when I have experienced my soul’s growth and my life purpose has been fulfilled.”