#331 - Bonus Episode: "Modern Day Lazarus"

0:00 I had intense fear and panic because we were obviously crashing. Out of my heart came the thought, oh god help, I'm going to die. From the time that they pronounced me dead was a good 45 minutes. It's determined that I was not breathing for 20 minutes. They cut my clothes and then they paddled my heart, my heart had stopped. And I could see people screaming and crying, but I didn't realise that was actually my physical body because I was somewhere else. By which you went to the past far, in the afternoon, by half past seven I was dead, clinically dead, four minutes. And they were crying because I was dead and I was trying to tell them no, I'm not dead, I'm just fine, I'm okay.

0:45 I was greeted by people I'd known in the past. I started to feel like I was surrounded by all this warm, loving, beautiful, soothing, loving energy. I'm back with God again, I just felt this all in my two release, like, wow, I'm back, I'm back home again. Incredibly safe and felt at home, I'd come back home, it was a very strong feeling, I've come back home. The only thing that I could feel, if you could imagine, absolute love and peace, there wasn't anything else to be felt. And light is literally emitting from him and I could feel that that tremendous amount of love was coming through him as well. They were brighter than everybody else and I just knew who they were.

1:34 Welcome everybody to Around Trip Death and welcome to our special guest today, Kevin Hill from Darby, Across the Pond. And Kevin, how are you today? I'm doing good. It's been a busy week but I'm doing good, I'm doing really good. Okay, what's it like in that area where you live? I live in the countryside now, so lots of cows, lots of horses, lots of sheep, lots of tractors, so I have to play dodge with all of those. My rush hour is getting through the cows.

2:15 As you say that, I'm picturing the Clarkson Family Farm reality show. Have you ever seen that? I have not, no. Okay. Well, it's Clarkson, the guy that has the other TV show about race cars and stuff. And anyway, he's turned himself into a farmer now and there's a reality show based on it and it shows the beautiful countryside. I don't know where it is from you but it's over in your neighborhood somewhere and it's farms and cows and that kind of thing and really beautiful. So we've got lots of fields, lots of trees, it's really good and we've got lots of animals as well.

3:00 The other day, I woke up by peacocks on the roof and in the garden. I don't know where they come from but we have peacocks. Sounds fun. Well, tell us a little bit more about you. I grew up in Sheffield which is a bit more north from where I am now. I used to be a big steel city. I am a twin and I went to Taiwan for 10 years and when I was in Taiwan, I got married to a Chinese lady and I now have four children, three of which were born in Taiwan. One was born here, the youngest was born here.

3:42 We came back to England in 2008. We came back. So girl boy, girl boy, nice even. But it just gets a bit bizarre. Let the dogs out. You can get crazy. Sounds like a lot of fun. Are they grown now or are they little kids? Well, the youngest is 13, the oldest is 19, 19 years at university. The 18-year-old is just finishing college. We have school going to college and universities so it's not college as universities.

4:22 It's slightly lower level. I don't know if you might call it high school or something like that. When we go from high school to and then if we continue school, it's either a college like a community college or a university. It's not like you do one and then you do the other after that, although you can do grad school after that and those kind of things. But hey, let's get back to what we're talking about today, which is near-death experiences because you are an experiencer and you've had a couple of experiences. Tell us about the first one first. I know there's not as much to tell about this as there is the second one, but what happened the first time?

5:06 Just to give you a bit of background, so you know where I'm coming from is I spent one year in hospital. I had a super rare condition. It was called calciflaxis. That means that there was dead skin eating my live skin. The mortality rate of that is 98%. That means death rate is 98%. Survival rate is 2%. And yeah, because I'm on the show, it killed me twice. So you were the 98% and the 2%. That's awesome. I've not thought about that before.

5:49 Excellent. Yes, I can use that. All right. Tell us about the first time. So I don't remember much about the first time, but I had sepsis. They moved me from one hospital because I was supposed to have a heart develop operation. So they moved me back to the hospital nearer to my home. And I had sepsis. And then at that point, it was also not feeding me. So I had 10 days where I had no food. So I was pretty delirious at this point.

6:30 My grasp on reality was all over the place apparently. Sometimes I was in and out consciousness. And sometimes I was aware of what was happening. And sometimes apparently I was just babbling. But yeah, I had sepsis. I had 10 days with no food. And at some point, I died. And you know this because the medical staff informed you afterwards? Yeah, yeah. Because I don't remember much about this one.

7:10 But the nurse came back. You're like, oh, you scared us because you died and we had to bring you back to life again. OK, great. Brilliant. Thank you. Because my wife had been arguing with the doctor, because the doctor said that I signed a do not resuscitate order. And my wife was like, no, he wouldn't sign that. We're not signing that. So if he does die, bring him back to life. So they brought me back to life. This would be a very quiet show today if she hadn't stepped in and done that. I'd be just talking to myself.

7:53 But yeah, the nurse came in and talked to me and said, yeah, we lost you. They didn't say how long that was for this time. They just said, you know, you died, but we came back, come back to life. So that was good. So they carried on with the treatment and we got rid of the sepsis. They started feeding me again. Because they wanted to do more tests. I'm like, I don't need tests. I need food. And they started giving me food. Oh, I started to recover. Surprise. You know, I'm not a doctor, so I don't know why they wouldn't feed you. Did they tell you why?

8:33 No. Don't know why. OK. They just said they wanted to do more tests. We'll have to get a doctor on sometime to enlighten us on that. How long ago was this? This was about one and a half years ago. OK. So quite recent? Yes. OK. So I was in hospital about September 20, 21, September 22. So you've just been out of the hospital, you know, less than a year, a little over six months now, nine months. Yeah. Anyway, OK, if there's not much more from that first thing, then let's go ahead.

9:15 How much further chronologically was it until the second time that you died? This is the second time I died was about one year ago. We just passed the one year anniversary of that, so a year. And what happened this time? This was a lot more. I remember it a lot more. It was a lot more dramatic. You can see that. So Friday, Saturday, Sunday, because as I said, I have calciflaxis, which is dead skin, eating my large skin. I had that all over my legs and my sides. It was spreading. Even though it's dead, it does spread apparently.

10:00 And I also have with that it caused deep skin. Well, let me explain these five levels of what it is. So level one is just like a scratch. Level two is you just take a little bit of skin off. Level three, you've gone deep into your flesh and you've taken some of the flesh out. Level four is that you've got really, really deep and there's a lot of flesh missing. And level five is basically blowing you. There's nothing you can do with level five. That's really beyond repair. My wounds were three and four, depending on where they were.

10:44 So this day, Friday, I was okay. I didn't feel anything. Well, the pain was excruciating pain. I had pain. My pain levels threw the roof one to 10, 10 being excruciating pain. I was on the 200 and I'm not joking. I was like, the pain is really intense. And could they give you much for the pain or is this the kind of thing where they couldn't do too much? They would give me all the strong stuff and I was on four pain killers, strong pain killers.

11:25 And then a few minutes later, I'm begging them, begging, please give me some more because I'm in so much pain and we can't forgive you anymore. You're a low D. So it's like, okay. So you've got two choices, either cry and shout all day because you're in pain or you just kind of push through that and you put up with it. You're not ignoring it because you can't ignore it, but it's not dominating it. So I would force myself to talk to people and distract myself so I wouldn't think about the pain. So the pain was still very high, but because of the deep wounds, I bled out.

12:13 So the nerves come in and you know, you're bleeding. Mr. Hill, you're bleeding. So they looked to my legs and my bed was just covered with blood. We're talking rivers of blood, biblical plague level of blood, paint the walls blood. And there was so much blood. And my leg was bleeding and my side was bleeding. This out, this was a continuous bleeding for three days, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and just bleed, bleed. And whatever the doctors did, it didn't do anything. We couldn't do anything to stop it. They tried, we call them nappy, but you call them diapers.

12:56 So they tried that because they're more absorbent. So they're trying to absorb all the blood and trying to stop the bleeding. And was this one location or sort of spread all over your body? It was three locations, two on my legs and one on my side, all on my right side. So my lower leg, my thigh and my side. So when you say you bled out, were they giving you transfusions at the same time to try to keep up? I lost so much blood. They gave me, okay, I'll see if I can work it out. So they gave me five pints of blood in English and that's about two liters, just over two liters of blood in Americans.

13:43 So about half of my blood was lost, at least, maybe more. So just to give you those that lighten the numbers, 30% blood loss is critical. You are at the danger level, 30%. 40% or above you're dead. Your body shuts down, goes into shop, you're dead. I had half of my body's blood had to be put into me again, but infusion, yes. So just to give you that lesson, so half of the human body blood had to be given to me because I was just bleeding and it couldn't stop.

14:29 I don't know quite when I died. This is one of the second time when I died. And again, they told you after the fact, your heart had stopped, you were gone, we brought you back. Yes, but this time I knew. I was separate from my body. Right. Yeah, I've seen some people have said, oh, I was looking down, floating over my body. That wasn't me. Some people said I've seen a white light and I didn't. I knew I was separate from my body. Okay, let's go through this part step by step, detail by detail.

15:13 Okay. So you said, I believe in your words, you were separated from your body. Explain that and how do you know that? Okay, I'm glad I'm on this show because your followers will understand this a bit more and believe a bit more. And by the way, for our listeners, Kevin has not talked about this very much. So give him a break that it's hard to put into words at this point. Okay, go ahead, Kevin. Thank you for that. It is, yeah, because it's still a very recent thing. I only came out a few months ago, out of hospital a few months. So like now, I'm in my body, I'm conscious.

15:55 I can feel my body and everything, my thoughts, everything is together. That time it was separate. I knew my body was kind of there and I was in, the best I can say is I was in the spirit realm. I wasn't in the physical realm. I was in the spirit realm. I was very aware that I was bleeding. I knew I was bleeding out. I knew it was serious and dangerous. I knew that I was bleeding from three parts of my leg and body.

16:36 I was aware of who was in and out of the room. But I wasn't in the bed looking around. I was kind of looking, but not over the body, some people have said. That may be their experience for me, it wasn't that, but I was, it was like I was watching a movie of my life, it was pain. I wasn't scared. I wasn't afraid. I had a lot of peace at this point. Were you still feeling pain? My body was. I was not. I don't know if you can understand that because I was in the spirit realm.

17:16 There wasn't a pain, but I was conscious that my body was in pain. The nurses and doctors were rushing in and out. The emergency alarm was going off all through the weekend. So my body was in pain. My body was, well, with the blood loss. So my body was. So did you feel like you went someplace or you were just separated from the body? I definitely went someplace, but it wasn't, it wasn't a journey. I was just there. I didn't, so I didn't get on the bus or didn't get in a car, taxi, drive off or anything like that.

17:59 Yeah. Or you, or you mentioned not through a tunnel either. You were just there. Hey, tell us where you were. What did you experience? See, feel here? I was at peace. I was, I was at peace because at my side, I, I believe there was Jesus Christ was there. Jesus was there at my side all the way through this. I didn't see him. I would have loved to see him. That would have been pretty awesome. But he was there and I could sense him. I could feel him. I don't know. I think I could have turned around and looked and would have been there. I don't know. But it was there because my physical body was elsewhere and I was in the spirit realm.

18:47 It's just that I knew it was there, a sense that Jesus was there. And that gave me two things. One, it gave me hope, but it also gave me peace. And I was not afraid. I was like, this is going to be, this is going to be good because Jesus is there. He's going to help me through this. So I had that hope. I had that peace because I wasn't alone. You know, even though I was aware of people running around and doing things, I was in the spirit realm.

19:28 So I was there and I was aware of things, people coming in and how my body bleeding. I didn't feel the blood coming out or feel the pain. I knew this was happening and I knew Jesus was at my side. He really gave me so much peace and hope. But other than that, I knew it was very serious, but I knew it wouldn't end in death. I was like, this is not my time to die. And I had that hope in me. It's not my time.

20:09 So I kind of relaxed at that point because it's not my time. But I wasn't anxious. I was peaceful and it was almost like a revelation to understand that it's not my time. I'm okay. I'm going to be okay. It's not my time. So I had peace. So I was able to relax and just see what was going on. The time moved differently. In the physical world, it was three days. But there just seemed a few moments. It was time moved. So I was somewhere else, but I didn't feel transported there.

20:54 I was just there. So it's a bit of a long answer to a short question. Do you remember seeing anything or was it much more of a feeling of all of this? I could see myself. I could see my body. I could see me bleeding. I could see the people coming in and out of the room. But Jesus, it was just a feeling. It was just a very, very deep feeling and sense that he was there. And I didn't see or feel anything else. I was just all in the room. I knew I wasn't in the room. I'm trying to grasp all this, being in the room but not in the room. It's like I was sat in the front row of the movie theater.

21:38 And I was watching a movie of this guy dying and this guy was bleeding out. And all the doctors were coming in, nurses were coming in and watching. And I was sat there. It was like I was sat there watching that movie. So I wasn't part of the movie set. I was a spectator, not participant. Does that help a little bit more? Yeah, yeah, that helps. And it's amazing how often this is described to me so very matter-of-factly. Like there was my body, here was me. And there's no fear like, ah, I've got to hurry and get back in my body or something. Did you feel any of that?

22:19 Like you wanted to go back? It sounded like you wanted to live. And what was it like going back to your body? I wanted to live, yes. I'm a Christian so I'm okay dying because I believe I'm going to go to heaven anyway. So I wasn't afraid of death. I've not been afraid of death for a long time. But yes, I wanted to live. I've got a wife for children and they were devastated through all this. It was a long traumatic ordeal. To be honest, it's one that could have been prevented and I didn't have to go through this because this was doctors and medical staff error.

23:00 You know, what did this and then that caused the perfect storm for me to get this condition. It's not a red-each-a, it's not contagious. I was one in five people. So the UK is just short of 68 million people. So I was one in five out of the whole population, just five of us at this. One had already died, one had it very mild so he was okay. There was, I think, a bit too, I didn't know at that moment. So one in five, that is, those were numbers again. So 4.0007% of the population.

23:49 So astronomical odds of getting this. I wanted to live. I wanted to be back with my family. And I searched a strong sense that it was not my time. I've got so much more to do. I've got things to do. And the world needs Kevin Hill to be alive at this stage. But yeah, I wanted to live. But I felt no urgency to rush back into my body. As I said, time moved very differently. I wanted to keep observing. It was like watching the movie, like, okay, what's going to happen next? What's next?

24:30 But I was in no rush. I didn't, time moved differently. And more slowly, well, slowly or not at all. But I wasn't like, okay, go get back and go back. No, it was none of that. Okay, all right, what's happening next? When it was time, maybe it was just like, I'm getting tired. I need to sleep. And then I just closed my eyes and went to sleep. And I woke up Monday morning. Hey, how are you doing? Good morning, everybody. And they were like, Kevin, you're back. And I was like, yeah, you'd like to go anywhere? And then, then Drs. and nurses and my wife, well, my wife didn't say too much at that point.

25:16 It was later when she was able to talk about it. Yeah, they were just like, you come back. This is a miracle. You know, you're a miracle man. But the miracles, I believe God did. I can't make myself live or die. I can try and make myself die, but you can't make yourself live again in that sense other than having that desire to live. Was this event the turning point and you started getting better finally after this? Yes, amazing. Dreading more and more. I was getting, I had like a checklist going down all the infections.

25:57 Okay, I've done the A's, done the B's, okay, see, whatever infection, yeah, next. I had loads and loads of infections. I couldn't keep up, you know, and the antibiotics, you know, I'd be able to get stopped and then I'd get a new one. And is that how they treat this as strong antibiotics? I had strong antibiotics. I had strong painkillers. You didn't quite know what to do with me. You know, so I had all sorts of dressings on my legs and they were very painful to take off, to clean, put back on.

26:38 But that weekend, beginning of June last year, that weekend, that was a breakthrough. That was a turning point. Because when I came back into my body, my body started to heal, the dead skin started to fall off. I was able to start sitting, because I was bed bound for a year. I couldn't move in the bed hardly at all because of all this. And I started to, I was able to start to sit up and I was able to stand up and start taking a few steps. I've had to learn to walk again. I've had to learn to eat again. It's like literally like a new baby.

27:21 And to be honest, I had to learn to pee again because I had a catheter for one year. And so I had to do everything again. Again, it's all I knew. So in one sense, I'm a new person. But it was really amazing because at that point, things with the doctors started, they seem to know what they were doing now and the medicine seemed to start working. And yes, there was a lot of people praying as well for me to get well, to be healed. That week, the week after, I was getting stronger and stronger and stronger.

28:04 And to the point that last September, it was really funny. I woke up and I had my breakfast and I was waiting for the doctor to come around in the morning and the nurse and the sister, they came and is that Mr. Helm, it's time to go home. I thought, brilliant, that's really funny. And they're like, this is 10 o'clock in the morning. They're like, no, we'll see this. You've got to go. The next thing you do is you have to go home. And I'm like, I'm not ready.

28:45 I've not done anything. I've not said my goodbyes. I've not done anything. And so very, very quickly, they got me ready. I got dressed, got me ready and bunged me in a taxi cab, zoomed home and I was home. And could you even walk? A few steps. A few steps. Just barely into the house, hopefully. When I left the ward, the hospital ward, I was determined to walk down the ward. So I had my pictures and each step was agony. I'm walking. All the nurses were excited to me, wait, if I fall to catch me.

29:29 I was like, no, I'm walking to the end of the ward to get out of the door. Each step was agony. I was determined to do it. And the nurses, they lined the ward and they were still talking and cheering and I was crying. They were crying. It was amazing. You don't have any video of that, do you? I do actually, yes. Will you send it to me? We'll post it someplace with this. I will, yes. I will. Yes, send me. Let me know where I can send it. I'll send that to you. That'd be awesome. I just got out, just one second, I just got out the ward door and I collapsed into the wheelchair. Take me home. That's awesome.

30:09 How has this all changed your life? Are you, is Kevin the same person that he was a couple of years ago? It changed me and it changed my family. My family was so stressed out, so afraid. So is dad going to die? His mum would come home and say dad died. They was that fear, constantly with them. They knew it was bad and they found out I'd died as well. So that was, I mean, I came back to life and the emotions, the emotional world for them was up, down, they were very stressed.

30:50 But the week I came out, atmosphere in the house, everybody just a big sigh of relief. That fear went, it was able to relax, get on with life. I mean, it's not been easy. You know, it's a very traumatic time for the whole family. For me, it's given me a renewed purpose. It's given me a renewed purpose because when you are dying or have the fear of death or actually dying a couple of times, your focus changes. My wife was putting on my socks at one point and I didn't get it quite right and I was like, just leave it, it doesn't matter.

31:32 You know, I've got to get it right, it doesn't matter. Come and talk to me. My focus now is spend more time with my family as much as I can. Do things with my family as much as I can and to my friends as well. I've got hope. My wife's got hope. My kids have got hope. And they've seen the miracle because I was in hospital. I defied all these odds. I came back to life. Now I'm learning to work again. I'm getting stronger and stronger. I've got a renewed passion for life.

32:14 I want to look at what's important. Because you kind of, people say, no, I don't. I love my family. People do kind of drift off and they just get into their own little world. But when you go through something like this, you experience this. You change and your priorities change. I want to love my wife more and more. I choose to love my wife every day. I choose to love my family. Yeah, I still sometimes get mad and get angry, but it's not okay. I try and bring that in. I try to do as much as I can with the kids.

32:56 Because life is my focus now. Not just working, not just trying to earn that extra dollar. It's not worth it if it's going to kill you. If it's going to put a strain on your family. So my focus has changed now to love people more. And for my wife and my family is to spend more time with them and be with them. But also other people. So give them hope. Helping others prepare for eternity.

33:37 Because there is something out there. This is definitely not the end. There is hope. There is another realm, a spirit realm. So don't be afraid. Don't give up. And have hope. And enjoy life with your family. Spend time with your family. Because we never know what's going to happen. We never know when we're going to die. I've got some extra years. I don't know how long, but I'm going to live these as much as I can to the fullest I can. That's a beautiful message. You mentioned that you are Christian. How has this improved your faith or has it? Tremendously.

34:18 It really has. I did believe in God before. I've been a Christian for a long time. I was active in Christian ministry. I was a pastor of a church. I set all that to stop. But I've not questioned God why did this happen to me. I've never done that. It's not a path I would have chosen. I really, really didn't want to be a modern day Lazarus. I didn't want that. But hey, here I am. Some people have said, oh, you like Joe. You like Lazarus. But I think also like Jonah.

35:00 Jonah was in the whales belly for three days and the whales spat him out. So you've got to imagine that he had seaweed everywhere. His clothes and his skin was burnt with the stomach acids. And then he comes along, repent, turn to God. Yeah, I'd repent. Yeah, okay, yes. And he had 100% success in his ministry. God saved my life and I've got a renewed passion to preach and to share God's love, God's power.

35:42 This God I talk about is a real God. He's not an angry God. God was there all the time with me. Even though there's times I got very dark and very deep, it was like God always pulled me back out. It strengthened my faith. God showed me lots of things I studied at during the hospital and afterwards. And now I just want to go around the world. I want to share this story that Jesus raised me back from the dead. I am a modern day Lazarus. But it's not to be like, hey, I'm better than you. I'm chosen. I'm not. It's just this is what God decided to do with me.

36:27 I think that certainly certain children. Yeah, do you want to, let's see, do you want a nice, fishy life? Or do you want to die a few times in an excruciating pain? Let me think. I believe God's given me some more years and I just want to get my story out there. God's love, God's power, God's miracles. And there is hope. Well, I appreciate you sharing it here, one of the first places that you have. Just before we wrap up here, you mentioned that you don't fear death. You know, all of us do in some way. Even if we have faith, there's in the back of your mind, we're born with this self-preservation instinct, which is a little bit different than fearing death, but they go hand in hand.

37:19 Where was that? If you could do a scale of one to 10, where were you before this experience? Where are you now after? That's a good question. I think before, I probably say about six, I didn't fear death, but there are certain ways I don't want to die, but after this experience is changed. So I think before six, I think now, I would say nine, ten, I really don't fear death. I'm even more sure I've got the confidence because I believe that God has made me his child and that's what the Bible says, that I'm a child of God.

38:07 And one of the things that I also read, I don't know if you, I mean, I became a Christian when I was 17 and I've read the Bible so many times. And I've read the Gospel of Luke so many, so many times, hundreds, maybe thousands of times. But while I was in the hospital, after the big bleed out weekend, after that weekend, I was reading in Luke, in Luke chapter 20 verse 36, and it says that we are children of God and that we are children of the resurrection. And I was like, well, I've never seen that before. I've never, I've never heard people preach on that before.

38:51 This was like somebody, God had just written that in for me. And I was like, well, I'm a child of the resurrection. I've got this promise. I've got this resurrection hope. I've been through the resurrection, but I've also got God's resurrection power in me now because I'm a child of the resurrection. So I'm not afraid to die. I'm not, yeah, it's always, I don't want to die. Well, thank you for distinguishing the two because they're different. Not having a fear of death is different than wanting to die now.

39:31 You can get rid of the fear of death and still want to be alive. There's so much to live for. There's our families and loved ones and things that we can learn and great things that we can experience here. So no, no, no, we don't want to die even if we don't have a fear of it. Yeah. Okay. You mentioned so many times the word hope and let's leave it on that. What is your message of hope to share? If I may, my message of hope is put your faith in God because God is real. Jesus did come to die so that we could have a relationship with God, the Father and the Holy Spirit. So put your faith in God and believe because God is real.

40:18 There is hope for eternity. There is hope for life after death. There is hope even now because we're children of resurrection. There's hope now to live a better life. But it's not just when we die and so there, we can have that now. That is our inheritance and to have an inheritance, somebody needs to die and Jesus died on the cross so that we can have that inheritance. So we can have hope now. We can have hope in the future and our lives can change now for the better. So that's my message. I think, you know, is believe in God because God is real and he's there and he loves you so much.

41:02 God is not angry with us in that sense. God loves us and when I was leading out, I did feel God's love, deep love there and even more so now. If I can make it, if I may say that, that's my message. Well said. Thank you for being with us today, Kevin. Thank you for this opportunity. It's been great. Thanks again for listening and remember to share this podcast. To be notified when the next episode goes live, follow us on your podcasting app or click over to roundtripdeath.com and sign up for our email newsletter. Until then, I wish you everything good that you're looking for in this life and the next.