I am a walking pharmacy with all the pain pills I have. At times I dump them all down the toilet and try to deal with the agony. Then the pain becomes so intense that I call the pharmacy and the delivery boy delivers the drugs to my door within a few hours. The migraines continue and the doctors put me on narcotics, saying they are habit forming, and that I am too young to be on them. In desperation, I go to an acupuncturist. It’s 1974 and acupuncturists are illegal in the U.S., unless they are also a medical doctor. I'm 28.

I’m escorted to a small room and I put on a puke green hospital gown that opens up the back. The doctor holds my hand and gently places his fingers on my wrist to take my pulses. “Very sensitive, very sensitive,” the doctor mutters with his thick Chinese accent.

He looks into my eyes and says, “Not many needles — too sensitive.”

I breathe a sigh of relief that I don’t get too many needles. Lying on my stomach, the doctor puts a few needles up my back to the base of my neck.

Heat starts rising up from my low back ascending up my spine. The heat reaches my neck and I start to feel really weird. He quickly takes the needles out and I drive home.

By the time I arrive home I’m feeling like crap. Michael, my husband, is so tired of my being sick that he usually goes out with the boys when I don’t feel well. Tonight he knows something is wrong. I make him promise that he won’t take me to the emergency room. Since, at this time, Western doctors know nothing about acupuncture, and I’m sure they will kill me.

In bed, the pain and heat continue to mount. After a few moments, I glide into a coma, from there my consciousness streams down a tunnel of light. The edges of the tunnel disperse into a vast void of darkness.

The soothing soft rays of light welcome and caress me. I float up a shaft of light and an iridescent opalescent archway appears before me. The light emanating from the other side of the arch is deliciously inviting. A joyful celebration as the beings of light gathers to greet me. I want to enter the light and stay with my beloved friends.

I am told that it is not my time; I can’t stay. Looking down, the floor is illuminated from below and there’s a clear line near my feet. It’s an invisible barrier that blocks me from stepping into another dimension. If I cross over, there is no returning back into my body.

Soothing celestial music, so dear to my soul, imbues the space. I knew this place. I feel at HOME. Love permeates the air. I beg to cross the threshold.

“Please, please, can’t I stay with you?” I don’t want to go back to my earthly pain-wracked body.

“You must return. It is not your time yet.” The great beings tell me.

“Please, can’t I rest here longer, please?” I am told some things that I later forget. I am asked to turn around and look back at the earth. I see Michael resting at the edge of the bed next to my half-dissolved, limp, lifeless body. I feel his love pulling me back to earth, back into my body. He is sending out strands of love. Each strand of love has a hook on the end, capturing a part of me, drawing and pulling me back to earth. With great hesitation, I bid farewell to my beloved friends and head back down the tunnel of light back towards earth and my body.

The sun streams in the sunroom window as I awake I hear Michael on the phone, “She’s alive, she’s alive, but she won’t be coming to work today.”

An excerpt from my memoir, Unseen Connections: A Memoir from Pain and Violence to Joy.