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Jan Dix of Caroline County says she left her body and looked down on the doctors trying to save her from a deadly allergic reaction to some medication. She has re-evaluated her life since the experience and has changed some things to make herself happier. She now has a massage therapy business. smc View More Images from this story Visit the Photo Place

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Area residents who nearly died form group to talk about their otherworldly experiences.

Area residents who nearly died form group to talk about their otherworldly experiences.

By JANET MARSHALL

Date published: 6/22/2003

HAT FEBRUARY DAY 12 years ago, Jan Dix skipped breakfast and hurried in to work at her job as a county planner in Northern Virginia.

She was 40, a hard-working churchgoer with a husband and two teenagers whose life was comfortable but chaotic.

Shortly after arriving at her desk, she pulled a prescription bottle from her purse. Antibiotics, for a bronchial infection.

Ten minutes later, Dix broke out in hives. She was itching, nauseated, terrified. A colleague rushed her to Potomac Hospital in Woodbridge.

"I felt like something horrible was happening to me," Dix said recently. "I clearly remember thinking, 'So this is what it feels like to be dying.'"

In the brightly lighted emergency room, doctors and nurses worked frantically to save her life. She was burning up, then freezing. Her blood pressure plummeted. A doctor screamed at her to hold on.

And then, as the beeping and clanging sounds of the ER faded, Dix heard an almost indescribable tone. Soon she felt herself rising above her body and the doctors.

"I was looking down on them," said Dix, who lives in Caroline County. "I saw them get out the [heart defibrillator] paddles."

She remembers sensing a bright light behind her and knowing if she turned to face it, she would never want to turn back.

Dix's life had been outwardly enviable--a nice home and great family--but it took cigarettes, a packed schedule and a drink before bed to keep her anxieties at bay.

Enveloped by that light, though, her anxieties disappeared, even as she heard a doctor say, "We've lost her."

"I remember I wanted to tell the doctor, 'It's all right,'" Dix said. "There was this calm peacefulness, and I wasn't a calm, peaceful person."

Then, as suddenly as she'd risen, she dropped back down into her body, back into this world. She heard the doctor's voice again.

"She said, 'I'm glad you're back with us,'" Dix said. "And I said, 'Well, I am, too, but really, regardless of what would have happened, I would be all right.'"

A 1997 U.S. News and World Report poll found 15 million Americans said they'd had a near-death experience--the kind skeptics deride as hallucinations and believers say provide windows into the afterlife.

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Date published: 6/22/2003