A man who had a near death experience told people what lessons he'd learned from coming so close to death.
TikToker Ash Perrow explained that he'd gone into hospital for a back operation where the surgeon had torn a vein without realising it.
Stitching him up after the operation and sending him back to the ward, he felt a lot of pain during the night and by the morning, one of his legs had swollen up to 'at least double the size it would normally be'.
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His physio tried to get him to stand up, but he collapsed in a matter of seconds and wasn't breathing.
During this time, he was awake and aware thinking 'I'll be alright' until he reached a point where he 'realised I wasn't all right'.
He could hear the emergency team taking his blood pressure and thought 'I'm dying, this is dying', and as he started to black out he could see his physio looking scared which make him think 'you poor b**tard, you think you've killed me'.
After blacking out, he had 'conscious awareness throughout' and was able to realise what had happened to him.
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"My experience was that I had become ripples, and I was heading out like ripples in all directions," he told his followers on TikTok of what he was experiencing in that moment.
"It was infinite, I was infinite and I just kept going and going and going and I was thinking 'wow, this is dying'.
"And I'm still me, I had this sense of this essence of me which was very curious because I always thought I would die and become some sort of enlightened Buddha being or something like that."
Instead Ash still felt very much himself, which led him to take from that the lesson 'even when we die we are still ourselves'.
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As he was experiencing these ripples, he started saying 'I want to stay' and thought about all the people he wanted to stay for including his partner and children.
He thought he was 'still the ripples' and 'still dying' when he felt a warmth and thought he wanted to 'stay for the work that I do and walk the planet from my heart'.
In that instant, he was back in his body with a pulse in his heart and breath in his body once more.
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It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, however, Perrow said he was in 'immense pain' upon the feeling of returning to his body.
Something else he learned was that he was deeply saddened by dying in a place without anyone he loved around him that he wanted his life to be 'full of so much connection, love, passion and beauty'.
He acknowledged that he would die one day and he might be alone for that, so in the meantime he was going to 'nourish myself' on loving connections with others.
Joe Harker