Searching for Heaven

Dec. 16, 2005 — -- On Dec. 11, 2002, 42-year-old Deb Foster checked into Scripps Memorial Hospital in San Diego to give birth. Her doctors performed a successful Caesarean section, delivering her second child -- a healthy baby girl named Bryce. Her family was thrilled, especially her husband, Andy, and their one and a half-year-old son, Christopher. Within hours, however, Foster was fighting for her life.

"It was as if my breath was knocked out of me, and I couldn't breathe. I said: 'I'm dying. I'm dying. Help me,'" Foster recalled.

She had suffered an amniotic fluid embolism -- a life-threatening condition. "It [the embolism] went in through my heart into my lungs and shut everything down. I was flat-lined. There wasn't a pulse. I was dead," Foster said. The doctors later confirmed that Foster was clinically dead for about four minutes. As they struggled to bring her back to life, she says she took an unforgettable journey.

"I immediately went to a different place. I was on a staircase, and the staircase went as high up into the sky as you can imagine and the sky was the most incredible color of blue that does not exist in this life. It's not on any color palette. I've tried to find it after this experience. It doesn't exist."

Foster said she had company during her journey. "There were dogs and cats going up and down the staircase, and they were very gleeful. And you could just tell they were so intensely happy. ... I was in this place of incredible peace. There wasn't any pain. It was serene. It was the perfect moment," she said.

Foster believes she saw a glimpse of heaven.

British psychologist Dr. Susan Blackmore spent decades searching for a scientific explanation for the near-death experience. She developed a theory that these experiences can be explained as the product of a dying brain. "We know that when the oxygen levels fall in the brain, the inhibitory systems start to fail first and you get massive overactivity in the brain. It's kind of going wild in there. I think there is a true transformation but not because you've been to heaven," she said.