David's Near Death Experience In ICU With Covid

0:00 Break free from the ordinary and check out a podcast with thought-shattering concepts that will reshape the way you interpret the world. We are The Swerve Podcast and our mission is very simple. Each episode we research and discuss topics that swerve off the mainstream path in an attempt to understand everything in the universe one obscure topic at a time. With your into forgotten history, cutting-edge science, strange frontiers of the unknown or just need a good laugh in an uncensored way, The Swerve Podcast has you covered. Listen to The Swerve Podcast today on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or any other major platforms. From the time that they pronounced me deaf was a good 45 minutes. They cut my clothes and then they paddled my heart, my heart had stopped.

0:42 And I could see people screaming and crying, but I didn't realize that was actually my physical body because I was somewhere else. The only thing that I could feel if you could imagine absolute love and peace, there wasn't anything else to be felt. I was greeted by people I had known in the past. I'm back home again. Incredibly safe and felt at home. Welcome, welcome to Round Trip Death everybody and a warm welcome to our special guest all the way from North Dakota in the United States, David Kipson. Hi David. Hey, how's it going? Good. Tell me how you're doing today.

1:24 What are you doing North Dakota anyway? Well, other than freeze in the winter time, I just recently started my second semester at Minot State University and that's been very busy, very, very busy. What are you studying? I'm studying to be a social worker. Yeah, my goal is to kind of help other people and make a difference. That's awesome. Well, before we jump into your near death experience, tell us one or two other things about you so people can get to know you just a little bit. Well I have a daughter. She's 11 and she is just the focus of everything that I'm doing right now.

2:07 She's a hoot, she's smart and she's a pretty good kid. I have a dog and a cat. That's kind of really the extent of things for me. Well, old time student, life revolves around that, I get it. Since I had my head still spinning. I was just in class about 30 minutes ago and I had to rush home and get ready. By the way, daughters are wonderful. Well, sons are too, but I should say, but I've digging myself a deep hole here. Yeah, daughters are awesome. Anyway, let's jump right into it. So you were one of those unlucky people back in, was it 2021?

2:53 Yeah, 2021 that caught COVID in a bad way. Tell me what happened. What happened to your health for starters? Well, I would say at the beginning of October, I had been working outside. I had an outdoor job. It had been raining and I was feeling under the weather and I was like, well, I must have caught the flu working out in the rain. I just wasn't wearing the right gear. But after about a week of that, it wasn't getting any better. It just kind of spiraled after about a week and a few days after that, it was a fever.

3:36 I remember the fever. It was the hottest, I think I'd ever been ever. I don't know what my temp was exactly. I just know that I couldn't take enough showers to cool down. There wasn't enough fans in my room to cool me off. It was just the hottest feeling I'd ever felt. My cough was getting really bad. And at the same time, my ability to breathe and take on air was being constricted. And by the night I went into the hospital, I remember, because our bedroom was down in the basement, I remember crawling on my hands and knees up the stairs and I barely made it to the kitchen and I made it to the couch and I told my wife, I need an ambulance.

4:29 After that, it was flashes, flashes of things happening. The COVID itself was just nasty. Yeah, that fever. There's a lot of things I can't remember and a lot of things that I can't, but that fever sticks out to me. It was just something I never felt before. I remember her calling the first responders and them getting there, me making light of the situation because that's what I do and trying to make the firefighter left, which they did. And then they wheeled me off into the ambulance and they shut the doors and I don't remember the right there. I remember the doors of the ambulance opening into the emergency room and then it was lights out for, I don't know what that time span was when I went into the emergency room to the time I got up to the COVID ward.

5:23 I do remember coming to the COVID ward and it being scary. I was very scared. It must have been around mid-October. No. So I went in on the 24th to the hospital and then it was a couple of days later because I remember there being scary movies on TV and I was watching them, which was somehow comforting. How long were you in the hospital altogether? A total of 94 days. Yeah, three months of my life was spent in a hospital. Were you intubated? Yes. I was.

6:04 That's when I was in the COVID ward for about a week and a week and a half and I had an incident in the hospital and the internal emergency crew had to come get me. The next day the doctor came in and he talked to me and my wife and he was like, he needs to go to the ICU. He needs to be intubated and it was scary at that point because I had nurses come talk to me and they'd be like, hey, you got to fight this, you got to do what the doctor say and I was doing my best to do that but I was scared out of my mind because I thought I was going to die. When he came in he was like, this is what's happening.

6:44 This is the cold, hard truth about it all and I didn't know what to do and I looked at my wife and she nodded her head and then I was whisked away into the ICU. Yeah, that sounds really scary. So I assume they put you in an induced coma for how long was that? That was about 30 days. So the near death experience that you remember was it, so it was during that 30 day period sometime? Yeah. I don't know when. There was no way to track. I don't know when.

7:25 It could all happen in the first five minutes or it could have been over the span of the 30 days. There's just no way for me to clock time. I wish there was though because that would have been really, you need to be like this happened then but it doesn't really work out that way. So that was 30 days of the induced coma in the ICU and there were some very strange experiences. Well, go ahead and jump into it. What did you experience? So the first, the strangest, the stranger ones were like the out of body experiences. I can recall the view out the window and it was near the helipad and you could see rocks on the ferrufi material.

8:08 I remember looking out the window and seeing that. I remember looking out into the hallway seeing the nurses, the ICU station, like the color of the cabinet stood out to me. They're like the wood grain. It was a dark. I really remembered that. I remembered looking down on my body saying that's kind of strange and not really thinking twice about it. So the out of body stuff was very interesting and I've asked doctors before, hey, you know, how much am I supposed to remember? How much am I not supposed to remember? And they get kind of shy about it and they're like, you're not supposed to remember anything and that's enough for that conversation.

8:49 And then they just move on. So that kind of told me a lot in that response. I was like, okay, there might be more there. And then there was what happened while I was in my body or what I think is my body. There was two distinct variations of what was induced by drugs because that was wacky. Those dreams didn't make any sense. Those were just outrageous. But then there was two experiences that I had. I can't explain. I don't know. I don't know where I went. I don't know what it was. I don't know who was showing me.

9:29 I just had these two very, very distinct instances where it felt like I was ripped out of the call-on into something else, whether it was another dimension, another timeline. I have no idea. But it felt like I was ripped out of that because everything was clear. It wasn't foggy. It was very clear. You need to see this. Over the years, I've had a lot of time to think about it and kind of go back and revisit and focus on kind of what those were. The first one was, it was like I was placed in space somewhere.

10:12 I know that sounds crazy. But then whoever was showing me this was saying, hey, this is you. This is where you fit into the universe. I remember it looking like a giant double helix. It was like DNA. I was like, okay, well, that's the heat. I was really hoping for some more explanation. But whoever or whatever is, it doesn't work that way. The universe shows you what it needs to show you. And at the time and for months after that, I didn't understand what it meant. And then the second experience, it was a really bright room.

10:58 It was white. They had white floors, white walls, white ceilings. And every so often, a big colored block would just kind of go whoop and then back in. And they would be different colors and they would be kind of just going off every so often. And that one, I still have trouble wrapping my mind around. Because I'm not exactly sure what that means. I don't know. I couldn't get that one. But the first one, that's the one that hit home over time. The more I thought about it, the more things in my life were happening. The more I went back to that and the more it shaped my current decisions.

11:39 I really wish... I've watched Strange Things Since I Was a Kid on Self-Mystery, Sightings, you name it. And I always watched the Near Death Experiences. They were always similar, at least from what I remember seeing. You see a bright white light. You see a family member. You see the deity of your choice. I didn't have any of that. And I felt slighted by that because I was like, hey, how come no one came to visit me? And I was like, okay, well, that's cool. But it was nothing like that. The message was delivered. But it was just the form that I wasn't expecting.

12:22 What was the message? The message was to help other people. That was the one clear message that I got was that I have lived a life that was rough. It's rough. It was rough by a lot of people's definition. And this was the universe saying, hey, this is your chance. This is your last chance. We're not going to work with you anymore. This is it. Like you get it or you don't. From then forward, I've been trying to do my best to do that. And so that's what led me to go into college and pursuing a career in solar work and doing volunteer work and just being of service to others because that's really, that's a big thing I got from it was, it doesn't matter where you work, what you drive, where you live, we all have needs and we all need help and we all need to be heard and to be seen and to be cared for.

13:27 And prior to the, prior to the hospital experience, I was, I would say I was very selfish. I would say I was probably, I was not a good person. We'll just say that afterwards. You spend three months in a hospital. You wake up after 30 days. You can't move. My muscle mass was gone. I had lost 62 pounds and it was all muscle. You rely on people that you don't know to take care of every need. And now there's more needs because they're, you're hooked up to everything. They're trying to keep you from getting blood clots. They're trying to keep you from, they're trying to just keep getting you to eat. They're trying to get you to move again and everything is not wanting to move.

14:11 And that was very, it was a lesson in humility for me. I've been very independent up until that point. How long was your recovery after the hospital? I was laid up on the couch for probably six months. It was physical therapy, I believe four times a week. And then I had physical, physical therapy at home that I did on my own, which was very hard to do. I just wanted to lay there. Eventually I got out of the hospital and my lungs were at 45%. So there wasn't a lot I could do, but over time I was able to kind of work at it and slowly get back to normal.

14:53 It was, I got off of the portable oxygen probably a year and a half after I left the hospital. So that was pretty recent actually. Yeah, that's a long time. Just a brief interruption here to mention our sponsor, Smart Labels. If fall season means you're putting away summer clothes and toys, there's a product that helps you keep it all organized. Get the Smart Labels and stick their QR codes on all your storage bins. Scan in the app, add names, descriptions, even pictures. Then months down the road when you're looking for that thing that you know you stored somewhere, you can just search in the app and it'll tell you where you put it. Seriously, it's organizing magic. Click on over to Amazon, search for Smart Labels, that's one word, Smart Labels and get organized today.

15:40 Now, back to the guest. All right, there's a whole bunch done pack here. I let your breeze through, but I want a ton more detail. So first of all, I want to make sure that we're clear. You had some drug induced things, dreams, whatever you want to call them. I'm trying not to call them hallucinations. And you had these other two experiences. What's the difference? How do you know one's real and the others are not? It was how they felt. It was how they felt. It was how they made my spirit feel. Like the drug induced dreams were nonsensical.

16:24 They were crazy. I mean, I thought I had escaped the hospital, stolen my own pickup and drove to another state. With craziness in between, that's not what happened at all. And the two experiences were so clear. They were clear in how they were presented to me. It just felt like somebody had ripped me out of this physical world and whatever internal prison you get put into by a coma. I felt like it pulled me out of that and I went somewhere else for a bit.

17:06 You also mentioned seeing your body and seeing things around the hospital. Was that part of these two experiences or was that a little bit separate? That's a whole other set of things. I kind of get a kick out of hearing that. I've heard that from a lot of people that I was up in the room in the hospital, looked down on my body. And very matter of factly, I think that's fascinating. That there's no panic. There's no, oh no, I got to get back in there or, I'm dead, what do I do? No, it was very, you're like, you're standing there and you're like, okay. And that was that. Like, there's my body and it doesn't register.

17:47 You're like, well, look at that. And then you're looking outside, you're looking around, you're kind of seeing what's going on. And then you're back into whatever mystery realm you go to. I also think the fact that all endies are different frankly gives them some credibility. If you were somebody that was just making this up, you'd probably say, oh, I went through this tunnel. I saw this bright light, blah, blah, blah. But your experience was completely different. I find that very interesting and credible. Tell me about the being shown your place in the universe. Did you have any idea who or what was showing you or did you feel like it was just the universe unveiling itself?

18:35 I think it was the universe just kind of pointing me in the direction that I needed to go. Over the years, I've had weird experiences and it's like with each new experience, the universe is like, okay, well, here's a little bit more. You can handle that. Here's a little bit more. And then with the hospital visit, that was it cracking me open completely and saying, hey, this is what we have to show you. This is what you need to do. But that's the strangest thing about it. It was such a simple image, but there was so much information packed into that simple image.

19:15 I'm still unpacking it. And there was no verbal exchange. It was like, you just get all this information out once and there you go. And then you're just like, okay. And it's up to me to sort through it and to make sense of it and to find a new purpose from that. Yeah, absolutely. And like you said, there was a message there that you'd need to help other people now. Get out of your selfishness. And maybe that's part of your place in the universe to use your words that you were meant to learn. David is this guy that helps others.

19:55 I like that. I like that too. That's kind of the lasting legacy I'd like to leave behind that I've helped as many people as I could before I actually left this world. Tell me about the big white room. Get any more detail you can remember about it. I've tried to think about more of it, but it was really just a big white room. It almost looked like a dance floor, like where the floors and the walls, it would start out really bright in the middle of a wall and it was white, but then it would kind of fade so you get this glowing effect on the walls and on the floors.

20:36 And then every so often a light would just pop out and then pop back in and pop out and pop back in. And that was kind of it, but that was very different from everything else too. And that came in very clear. And that was one that I needed to pay attention to because I felt the same way where I got ripped out of the physical realm and not in a coma, but I'm just in this room and I needed to watch this. And for what reasons, I'm still very unsure of. So I wish I could elaborate. I mean, I have so many questions and I don't know how to get them answered and I don't think they're meant to be answered on this plane.

21:21 Yeah. So I'm going to probably ask you some of the questions that you already have and that's okay to tell me. I don't know. What do you make of that big white room? You've had a couple of years or so to think about it. Do you think it meant something? Do you think it was representing something? I think it was representing something, but what I'm not quite sure yet. I can understand and I can wrap my head around the big DNA looking thing where, you know, this is you, you kind of get inserted here in your part of this big world and you're important, you matter. But so does everybody else. The room?

22:02 Oh. I don't know. I kind of wish I knew. I really do because I mean, it was just seamlessly coming out of a wall and then going back in and I'm like, okay, but as it was coming out, it would, it would light up in a color. It would be blue. I remember blue. I remember orange and I remember green being very, very bright and I'm like, oh, that's cool. And then as it was just a flash and I wish I knew how long it was. I wish I knew how long I was there. But then and now it just seems like a flash in your mind and that's, that's about the only way I can describe it.

22:43 It's, I really, I really wish I knew what that meant. Do you remember how you were feeling at the time? I was a piece both times and nothing felt, it felt very light. Something I haven't felt in maybe ever. It was just a new kind of piece and it was, this is calming and very calming effect on you. I just, yeah, I remember being very calm and very, very awake and being like, oh, somebody's here. There's somebody else in the room. It's time for me to listen. Yeah, I was just very peaceful, very almost like you're floating. I would say, I mean, I've never floated, but if that was floating, I was floating and that's kind of how that, that felt.

23:30 What were you supposed to listen to? The message, the message of the universe saying, hey, we're done with you and your games. You've got to wake up now. Time to grow up, David. That's exactly what it was, man. It was cool. You get it right on the head there. Like it, yeah, it's, you got to get moving with your life. You can't just keep spinning your wheels here. You mentioned that this shaped the decisions further down in your life. Tell me about some of those. Some of them were difficult decisions. What they don't tell you when you leave the hospital is people are going to change the way that number one, you're going to look at the world a whole lot differently than you ever thought possible.

24:14 Your motivations, your priorities are way off of everybody else's now. It is completely different and that can include your loved ones. It can include your wife and about a year later after I got out of the hospital, I ended up getting divorced. There was a lot going on. Nobody knew how to handle anything at that point. In my head, I thought something like this would bring you closer to, you know, your partner, but that's not how that works. And there's statistics that back that up apparently. And I was like, that hurts, but what's important to her and what was important to me were completely different.

24:58 I was happy to be alive. I was happy to be with her. I was happy to be with the kids. I was happy to be alive, which, but that was a whole new experience for me. Being grateful to be alive and to have a second chance was, it wasn't as amazing. Over time, you kind of lose that a little bit, but when I think about it, I'm so lucky to be here, but priorities changed, things changed. My mentality changed. I wasn't so caught up in what I drove over how much money I made or the things that I wanted to buy. It was like, hey, you know, I got to spend more time with the kids. I got to do more things around the house and be productive again.

25:43 And you know, how am I helping the next person? You know, how can I make this system a little bit better for everybody else? Because when you leave the hospital, they didn't give me a book. They didn't give me a, your life has drastically changed. Here's a pamphlet. I didn't get any of that. That was what inspired me to become a social worker because I had, I hadn't, there was nothing there for people when you leave the hospital. It's like, here's some, they didn't suggest get therapy, which I had to go seek on my own for like the medical trauma or, you know, here's what you do to restart your life and get a career. There was none of that. And so that inspired me to do, to go back to school. But yeah, like how things panned out was not how I expected them to bow.

26:28 That's okay because I really feel like I'm on the right path now. I'm dedicated and focused on school and my daughter. And again, those are probably the things I should be focused on. It flipped my life inside out. I mean, I lost some people along the way, friends that weren't quite friends. They just looked at me differently because I was different. You don't come back. You don't go to the edge and come back and you can't stay the same. That's not the point of these. I don't think the point of these are, is you get pushed to the edge and you come back to tell the others what it was like, what's important, what you should probably be focusing on.

27:12 We're just unexpected messengers. Like you get picked out of the lottery, you go to the edge and you come back and you report the findings. You're just like a astronaut that doesn't get to go too far, but you go really far. Yeah. Congratulations. I know this is your first time talking about this in a big setting like this. You have talked to a few friends about it. How did they react? So my friends, they're a very small group of people and they're weird like me. We discuss these things like near-death experiences. We discuss UFOs and ghosts. So they were surprised.

27:53 My close knit friends were not surprised. Some other people have reacted differently. Some people don't want to hear it. It affects them so deeply that they just blog it out. They don't want to talk about it. They don't want to see it because it affects, we're asking bigger questions now. What happens after we die? It asks the questions that a lot of people, I think, may not be open to. So some friends just kind of withered away. I think that's okay too. Everything changes. Some people aren't going to view things the same way that I do, but it's also difficult to relate to a lot of people because you've been through this experience.

28:37 That's been a very difficult thing to try to work through and deal with is how far off until left field you really are now. People look at you crazy when you ask them certain things. I mean, I'm in college with all these kids and I ask what seems to be crazy questions, but to me it's normal. Why would you focus your energy on material things and why would you need the newest phone, why would you need the newest car? And I'm looked at like I'm crazy. And it's like maybe you should consider that there's other things in life that we should be worried about and that our relationships with the people that are around us are really what's important is how we're treating each other, how we're spending time with each other.

29:30 Is it healthy? Is it productive? Are we working to make the world a better place or are we just kind of living and buying things and that's kind of how it goes. Yeah, you are crazy. Yeah, I do. No, you're unusual and a nice breath of fresh air in this world. Getting back to the friends for just a second though. Yeah. It's unfortunate that these things happen because there are some people that are going to like you mentioned that believe you and want to talk about it. There are others that may believe you but still do not want to talk about it. These kinds of realities are uncomfortable and just the topic of death in general or in afterlife.

30:18 Some people are comfortable talking about it, some are not. That's okay. And then there are also people that just don't believe it and they may have been too nice to tell you but there may have been some that just are like, yeah, I don't believe that kind of crap. I've had those responses. I've had that's interesting. I've had the rainbow of responses. And like I tell people, I didn't sign up for this. I did not sign up for this. I'm just telling you what was told to me and whether you believe it or not is up to you. I'm just relaying the message and what you get from it or what you choose to listen to, that's up to you.

31:03 But this is what happened to me and that's all I can really do. I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything. I'm not trying to change the world. I'm just relaying a message that was delivered to me. That's a perfect way to put it. I'm sorry to hear about your marriage. I don't know if it's comforting or not to know that. That's a fairly common thing with experiencers because you're different and your priorities are different and the person that she married is now a different person. Sometimes that makes for a better marriage. Well, often it just doesn't because that person's gone.

31:49 There's a two point, a David 2.0 and while you and I think that's a better person, well, doesn't always work out. And I'm sorry to hear about that. I've had a lot of time to step back and really evaluate what she might have been going through during that period. And there was two times where they had told her that his organs are failing and he's not going to make it through the night. And I think that's when the two experiences might have happened is when I was right to the edge. I don't know. I can't imagine what that would be like. I was taking a nap. I was out. I was not present.

32:30 So I don't know what it would have been like to view my loved one hooked up to six hoses that were in me plus whatever else they were hooked me up to. I don't know how that looks and I don't know how traumatic that would be on someone. So I tried to step back. Very traumatic. The family, the loved ones, they have a type of PTSD from this stuff. I've talked with some people that have said, my spouse does not even want to talk about it at all. We're not even talking about the NDE. We're talking about the accident or the hospitalization or whatever led up to it.

33:13 And because it was so traumatic, they just don't want to go there again. But you may need to talk about it to process it and to deal with it on your end. Everybody's different. And some other people whose loved one went through it, yeah, they do need to talk about it as well to process it. So yeah, we're all different on this kind of stuff. And sometimes that lines up, sometimes it doesn't. But I'm glad you have a great relationship with your kids. Yeah, I really do. She is my reason for a lot of things these days.

33:57 And whenever I feel low, I feel like I can't keep going. And I remember that I have her and then I do have a second chance and that I have a lot to offer the world. My social work professor, she was really excited. This is the first semester that I'm in class, in person class. And she's like, you're going to bring so much to the table. And I'm like, OK, I just have a different perspective on a lot of things now. And there is very excited to have me. And I'm excited to be there. So I recently watched a show on Amazon and there was a line that caught my attention and it has not left my mind since the character had said, if you climb high enough, even a nightmare can seem like a dream.

34:42 And so there was times where I was in self-loathing, why me, you know, why this, why that. I step back now and I look at the good things that I have. I'm on a disability. So I'm taking care of, I don't have to worry where my rent's coming from. I have extra time, more than the average person, to go to school, to hang out with my kids, to participate in different events around the campus and volunteer and help other people. So what looked like a curse at the beginning now looks like a blessing. And that's been like a woe, woe kind of moment for me is that instead of looking at it as the cups have, have empty, that cups pretty full.

35:33 And I'm pretty fortunate to be on this side of it. I mean, I look at the kids around me in school, they're working a job going to school full time. I don't know how they do that. Like this is a lot of work and I don't even have a job. So, and I'm like, oh, I feel gratitude about that, that things worked out the way they did and that I'm in the position that I'm in now. It hasn't been easy. Do I wish things were somewhat different? Some things, but I will always tell people that I will never regret going into the hospital. If I hadn't do that all over again, I would because of the person that I am today.

36:15 And that's made it all worth it to be open to so many different things, willing to talk to anybody about anything. And I think that scares a lot of people, but I'm good with it. And to be friendly and genuine in a world that is often probably not that genuine. I think we lack that as a society and as a world is that a realness. And I was given all of that. And it's all thanks to COVID. So David, that's a beautiful way to wrap up. But before I cut you loose on a scale of one to 10, how much fear of death do you have? Zero.

36:55 Not my have any. Isn't that amazing? No. Once you've done it and realize it's not that bad. That is a weird way to put it. And I never thought of it that way. And I love that. You know, I already did that. It's cool. People are people. And that's it's a whole other conversation there. So well, you are going to make a great social worker, someone that has really internalized the message of I want to help others. You're going to be able to do that. I'm really happy for you. Thank you. All right, David, I'll let you go. Thanks a ton for being with me today. Thank you for having me. Thanks again for listening and sharing this podcast.

37:37 Don't forget to hit the follow or subscribe button and sign up for our newsletter at roundtriptest.com. If you want to share your near death experience, or if you have questions or comments about the show, send an email to Eric at roundtriptest.com. Until then, I wish you everything good that you're looking for in this life and the next.