I was 17 when I had my classic near death experience.

I look down and see my body below, a bright light shines in front of me. I feel warm and calm. I understand ‘I’m dying’ and I feel okay about it, no fear, no anger. Calm acceptance.

I float above my body lying on the bed. there is the clank of something down below, something small falling and a voice says ‘Shh, this boy is very sick, he may not make it.’ The moment ends.

The experience stays with me since then, as a comfort of a dying experience, as a ‘good story’. I talk rationally of oxygen deprivation causing the light, of the possibility of false memory. Eventually as a profound moment in my life. More on this.

So, how did I get there?

Seventeen, second year university student, living at home as was the norm then. Twice a week, I had a philosophy lecture at 2pm, after lunch which probably consisted of a pie and sauce and chips at the uni cafe. I enjoy the lectures, but there is something new. I sit in class and start to sweat and feel nauseous with sharp pains in my side. I struggle to focus. Any moment I’m going to vomit. But I don’t and after maybe 30 minutes the attack stops and I forget about it.

This continues for a few weeks, it gets worse. I soldier on. No whinging, get on with it.

Yes, you’ve already guessed and you’re right. Different times.

Eventually I feel too sick to go to university and stay at home three days, bouts of vomiting and diarrhea, woozy, no strength to study. My parents ‘leave me to it’, no thought of calling a doctor (they did house calls back then). I don’t eat. I lie in bed hallucinating, dozing and by Friday night I feel like a ghost, translucent and ‘out of my body’.

Saturday morning, I feel as if I am separate from the world, a ghost, a shadow. I understand something is seriously wrong. I say to my parents ‘I really need to see a doctor.’ Mum says, ‘I’m busy’ and dad says, ‘Walk to the doctor yourself if you want, I’m mowing the lawn’.

As I expected. Not surprised. I walk to the doctor about 2 kms away. I remember seeing the receptionist and saying, ‘I need to see a doctor’ and she taking one look and running into the doctor’s office. She opens the door and says, ‘doctor will see you now’ and I stand up and nothing after that for two days. Presumably I fainted? Maybe memory is buried by trauma and I refuse to remember.

Yes, you guessed right. I had a ruptured appendix, peritonitis and poison flooding my system. I’m on the way out, the final curtain, my last hurrah.

I learn this later and that I was rushed to hospital by ambulance and straight onto the operation table.

I later learn from my older brother that the GP ‘tore strips off dad for not acting earlier, for making me walk, for such utter neglect.

I am in hospital for three days and home for two weeks, a nurse coming daily to change the drainage tubes and dressings. I return to university and life goes on.

The episode is never mentioned again. As if it never happened.

I never refer to it. I accept it all as normal behaviour. That’s how life is and you just get on with it.

Years later, a therapist opens my eyes. This is not normal behaviour today and it was not normal behaviour then.

So.

This long-ago experience resurfaced while writing an opinion piece on the differences between baby boomer childhoods and the childhoods of the last 20 or 30 years. I intended to use my near-death experience as a sharp delineation between ‘old school, tough love’ parenting for boomers and the expectations of recent decades; no value judgements, simply saying, ‘this is how it was.’

That idea died in a ditch when the therapist’s words truly hit me. This was not how parents behaved then or behave now. It wasn’t tough love, it was always neglect.

This is not a boohoo poor me story. I lived and for years never thought of it.

Now it swirls in my mind every day as I see how much it has shaped my life and my writing.