Considering ... The Choice, Mon/Tue 9/12-13/2016

Today's topic was inspired by the following story:

Miki Ogao lies on the table for yet another outpatient medical procedure. Doctors are performing a Swan-Ganz catheterization to check the health of her finicky heart. She feels nothing, but she’s wide awake. She hears the doctors and nurses discussing the procedure and marveling at their quirky patient’s upbeat mood.

Suddenly the scene turns tense as her numbers fall. A nurse notes that her cardiac output—the formula representing the amount of blood the heart pumps per minute—has dropped to near zero.

Normal is four. Zero is dead.

Ogao nearly flatlines and she catches a phrase she knows all too well from her own medical training. A somber voice says, “I don’t know if I can get her off the table.”

Unable to speak, she remembers thinking, “Um, I can hear you.”

As her numbers continue to fall and the monitors predict the end, someone or something mysterious appears. Ogao doesn’t recognize the brightly lit presence, but he or she is certainly not of this world.

Ogao feels no fear. She’s calm. She’s at peace.


Though she’s not sure what she sees, or whether her eyes are even open, she knows the moment and the message are to be trusted.

Then comes the visitor’s question. It’s the most important one Ogao might ever answer.

“Are you ready to go?”

In that sacred moment with a window to heaven cracked open, thoughts raced through her mind. Remembering one of them still makes her laugh out loud. “No! I don’t want anyone to find my house the way it is!”

In a spiritual blink the visitor left—alone. Ogao soon stabilized and moments later she was talking to her doctor. Before they could convince her to stay, she was home tidying up. “Just in case that ever happens again.”

That was 10 years ago.

Ogao shared that memory and much more during a lengthy discussion about her unusual journey through life.

Naturally, she recognizes some might question her otherworldly experience and she's been reluctant to share it in the past.

"I know that by going public I could come across as somewhat of a whackadoodle,” she said. “But I could never deny the experience. I know what I saw and I know how it changed my life."

Today's q/q: What if you were faced with the choice to leave this life and go to a better life, or to stay on earth to "tidy up" unfinished business? What would you do? Why?