Nurse Penny Wittbrodt Dies in Hospital Hallway, Meets God

Penny Wittbrodt was home with her daughter, drinking a smoothie in the living room, when her throat began to close. She had a history of anaphylaxis to shellfish, one of those obligatory medical facts you carry around like an expired insurance card, always prepared, never expecting to use it. The EpiPens sat in drawers and purses, just in case. She hadn't had an attack in years.

But this was different. "I start having difficulty breathing and swallowing and I'm a nurse and I was like holy cow this is anaphylaxis," she recalls. She injected herself, her son drove her to the hospital. She knew the nurse checking her in. That's when the first wave of dread hit, not from the anaphylaxis, but from the realization that the person responsible for her care had no idea what she was doing.

"She said well why did you come you know you took your epipen what'd you come to the hospital for," Penny remembers, incredulous even in retrospect. The basic protocol for anaphylaxis is simple: take your EpiPen, go to the hospital. The medication buys you time. It doesn't cure you. The nurse placed her in the hallway to wait for a room.

Penny sat there with stridor, the high-pitched wheeze of a closing airway, while people walked past doing their daily work. "I'm in the hallway I've got strider which is you know and people are just walking around doing their thing I'm dying," she says. She gave herself another shot of her EpiPen. Finally, the physician assistant looked over and noticed she wasn't looking so hot.

The Moment Everything Changed

They moved her into the trauma bay. By then she was crashing fast. Her husband Don arrived. They couldn't get an IV because anaphylaxis causes the blood vessels to clamp down, the body's desperate attempt to contain the threat. Don could see what was happening. "Don it's like if you don't do something she's gonna die you need to intubate her," Penny recalls him saying. The medical team responded that they had plenty of time.

"It was immediately after that that i just quit breathing," she says.

What happened next is what Penny describes with the precision of someone who has spent years trying to reconcile the impossible with the undeniable. "It's funny because I popped out of my body so I could see what was going on and so I'm kind of watching and I'm thinking man who is that girl she's she's pretty sick," she explains. The depersonalization was complete. She watched them intubate her, observed the scene with clinical detachment, and then everything went black.

The next thing she remembers, she had materialized in the back seat of her sister's car. Her sister was driving from Wisconsin to Kentucky through pouring rain, pulled over at a gas station. Penny noticed immediately that something was wrong with her body. "My body felt weird like not solid or and I couldn't feel my bottom and my legs against the seat and that seemed odd," she recalls.

She looked at her sister's clothes. They didn't match. She thought, what on earth is she wearing, she looks ridiculous. Then she sensed something was wrong. Why was her sister driving in this storm? Maybe something had happened with one of the kids. She watched her sister pull out her phone, open Facebook, and type a message: "Hang on or hang in there kiddo I'm coming."

Then Penny popped back out of the car.

The Void

She found herself in an expanse of darkness so complete and limitless it felt oppressive. "I was in this expanse that was so dark and it seemed limitless to me as far as its space and there was an oppressive nature to it," she describes. As a critical care nurse, she wondered if what she was experiencing was connected to being on the ventilator, the agitation that occurs in comatose patients, the body's fight against the machine breathing for it.

But this was something else. She had to perform the work of breathing even though she knew she didn't need to breathe over there. She was stuck. She couldn't figure out how to get out. And time, she discovered, worked completely differently on that side.

"If I had to compare this earthly time with the time that I spent in the void I would say it was probably about ten years," Penny explains. She began to wonder if she had ever really lived, or if she had imagined her entire life just to have something to think about in that place. She would try to move, drag herself forward a little, then collapse into what she calls "the deep sleep" where she had no awareness.

This pattern continued until she started doing introspection. "Is there something that I need to understand or learn before I can leave here," she asked herself. Maybe it was her. Maybe she was the reason she was stuck.

Then it hit her. "The spiritual space that I was in was a picture of the spiritual space that I had made on the earth realm," she realized. After her divorce years ago, she had built a wall around herself and her children. A wall to protect them. But walls that keep danger out also keep connection out. And they keep you in.

"I really started to isolate you know I mean I went to work I took care of my kids I took care of my house I went to work I took care of my kids and took care of my house and I stopped putting myself out there," she says. The isolation she had built on this side had followed her over.

As soon as she understood this, as soon as that realization crystallized, the void responded. "There was this rumbling and it exploded open," she recalls. The darkness shattered into spinning shards, pushing further and further away.

The Grandmother Made of Fire

A spirit came. Penny didn't recognize her at first. "She's just larger than life orange hair on her head that is so bright it's on fire," she describes. Little licks of flame were her hair. The spirit was so attractive, so magnetic, that Penny couldn't keep herself from going to her.

The spirit held Penny against her chest. That's when Penny realized it was her grandmother. "I'm weeping you know I'm so relieved that someone's there and I'm not alone and the dark is gone," she says. Her grandmother's energy circled around her while Penny's remained separate but encompassed. The shards of darkness kept trying to get back in, but they hit her grandmother's energy and were flung further away.

Her grandmother spoke telepathically: "Calm yourself dear one."

Penny describes what happened next with the precision of someone who has felt it: "The words were like if any of the people who watch this have ever been given like morphine or fentanyl or whatever iv for surgery you know um that immediate rush that you get that's super relaxing and you can feel everything that's what it was like it was like a chemical I felt it acting on her words her the intention of those words acted on every cell in my body," she explains.

She melted into her grandmother. She asked if she was dead.

"Oh no no you she said it's like you learned in science energy can't be just created or destroyed it just changes forms it's true here too," her grandmother explained. You don't die. You're either alive on the earth side or super alive on this side. It's just a transition. "You are kind of in between and there's a little cord that's holding you to your living side and if you wanted to go back to that you could," her grandmother told her.

Penny floated in the light. She didn't realize her grandmother had gone.

I Am

Then came the rumbling. "There was this like rumbling thundering and like this presence shook everything that ever had been or ever would be," Penny recalls. Every planet in the cosmos was rumbling with this energy. She could feel it in her bones. She knew something big was coming.

She never saw a person. The energy felt masculine to her, so she refers to God as "he," though she's quick to clarify: "I don't think god is a man I think it's I don't know he was this mix of masculine and feminine because he was nurturing but that power makes you think you know at least me as a traditional person that makes me think of a man," she explains.

God came to her. She heard him say telepathically: "I am."

That was it. Two words. "That's all he had to say I'm like man you're the stuff we just come up to somebody and say I am and you're like yeah you are," Penny says.

There was a resonance to it, a vibration in the key of D that went through every part of her. "I could feel it just coursing through every part of me," she recalls, her voice breaking. It's still hard for her to talk about.

Immediately, she got scared. "Oh no I wasn't ready for this he's going to look at all the stuff that I'm I've done wrong that I'm so ashamed of," she thought. But God wasn't judging her. He was super loving. Still, she felt exposed, like being naked in front of a crowd.

She knew they were going to go through her life. She was dreading it like a kid worried about parents reading their diary.

The Life Review: What Actually Matters

"All those things that I was so worried about that I was dreading never came up," Penny says. She thinks she'd probably beaten herself up enough about those already.

The things that came up were different. First, God showed her the good. "All of the things that I've done that I feel really good about did not come up," she explains.

Instead, there was a scene in a grocery store she had forgotten about, probably from when her kids were little. The woman in line in front of her was short a couple dollars to pay her bill. She was trying to figure out what to put back. "I just knew what it was like to be in that position as a young mom and and I said it's okay it's okay I've got it and I gave her the money," Penny recalls.

Immediately, the scene flashed forward. She saw the same woman working in a food pantry, blessing people with food. "God's showing me he's like I want you to see the ripple effect of every little act of kindness," she says.

Then they went through some negative things. What stuck with her most was probably the hardest thing to never do again: controlling her thoughts about other people.

God explained the spiritual physics of thought. "A thought has a certain measure of energy to it and a word has even more and an action has more than that but it all starts with a thought," he told her. What you think about is what you talk about is what you end up doing. You have to control your thoughts and your heart.

He showed her negative thoughts she'd had about people. These were jerky people, she's quick to clarify. But here's what God showed her: "When you have a negative thought about that person that energy goes out there and it attaches itself to that person and you contribute to the jerk that that person is now you've attached more of that energy to them," she explains.

This is why forgiveness is so important. "If they don't receive some measure of forgiveness that energy is still attached to them and it can't come away the energy's got to go somewhere," Penny says. When you forgive someone, that negative energy you attached to them can be redirected. The little bit of negative you put on them that made them more the person they are comes off.

And it's not just about them. "Not only does that negative attempt energy going attached to them but it attaches to you and energy attracts energy," she explains. If you're harboring negative feelings about people, even if they're well-deserved, you're drawing more of it to you.

"Wow I mean that's life-changing information," Penny says.

The Anger She'd Been Carrying

Then, in the presence of this loving creator who had let all the big stuff go, Penny suddenly became angry with him. "I realized I'd been angry with god for a long time," she admits.

She told him: "You say you're this loving god and and you want the best for your children and I call bull crap," she said. She could be completely honest. She loved that. She'd seen what God had allowed her own children to go through.

"Here their dad abandons them when they're just babies and you know him leaving me was hard enough and not deserved and and for him to abandon his own children," she continued. She could take whatever he did to her, but watching her kids talk to their father on the telephone and then go to the mailbox every day to check for a gift he said he was going to send that was never coming, watching them walk back heartbroken every day, what kind of god allows that?

"I said it would have been easier on all of us and this is terrible to say but it would have been easier if he died because I could have told the kids this story about what a wonderful man he was and how much he loved them and they would have at least had that," she says. But instead they had a man who was alive and failing them in every way, and children take that on and attribute it to something being wrong with them.

She had held that against God. She was bitter. She was balled up about it.

God said, "Oh you've completely misunderstood me."

He showed her something. They flashed forward. They were sitting in bleachers. Her oldest son David was sitting to her right. When Penny had the experience, her grandson Cole was two. In this vision, Cole was five or six, playing soccer. "He's running up and down this field and the sun's on his hair," she describes. There was magic in it, that thing about kids you can't quite name. Cole was running in his strong body, his hair catching the light.

David looked at her and said, "Mom I'm never gonna get through this he says mom I'm going to be the dad to him that I deserved."

"If if it took his dad leaving for him to make that commitment I get it you know it's been worth it," Penny says. And David has been that dad.

A couple years later, Cole was playing soccer. David looked at Penny and said, "Mom I'm gonna be the dad to him that I deserve." The same words, the same commitment, now extended to his own son.

"I mean it just sucks the air out of you I'm like oh my gosh that happened and it was this confirmation from god you know you were here there's times you doubt that near-death experience because so many people doubt and he's like no you were here and and I'm making manifest the things that I promised you," she explains.

Good and Bad, Redefined

Penny learned something else there that shook her understanding of everything. "We have this really screwed up definition of good and bad to us good is when nothing is wrong and everything is right and in the spiritual realm good is forward motion no matter how awful it feels," she explains.

If you're moving forward, growing, affecting the lives of other people even through grief, that's considered good. "If you're doing good work even though all the circumstances around it suck you're you're still good it's not bad you're moving forward," she says.

The day you start sitting in that recliner, stop interacting with the world, just doing what makes you comfortable, that's bad even though nothing bad is happening. "Not what we're here for we weren't here to be sedentary creatures that have no effect on the world around us there's no point in you being here if that's what you're going to do," Penny says.

She learned that before we come to this life, there's a decision-making process with consultation from spirit guides about what family we want to come to and what general lessons we'd like to learn. "I think we know the whole story before we come I think we forget it when we get here," she explains.

Before you came, you knew what traumas you were going to face. "You were like that's the life I want to live I want to have those lessons because those are going to contribute to the growth of my spirit," she says. This higher you made these decisions. This life seems like a long time, but when Penny pulled out of her body, it seemed like it had been over like that.

People ask her about kids with cancer, kids born horribly deformed. "Those are the most sacrificial spirits," she tells them. Those are the ones on the other side that said, "I'll come void of even the ability to communicate just so I can show people a love that transcends speech."

The Healing Light and God Within

Penny was in the light, and a healing process began. "The light comes through my feet and it just starts creeping up through my body and it's it's healing every little cell that it comes in contact with spiritually," she describes. It went through her stomach, through her chest. The energy was so powerful. It got to her tongue and beautiful songs came out that she couldn't stop.

"God's energy shot out my eyelashes and it was so bright and it was like looking at the sun without having any pain or your eyes dilate even and no heat or anything," she recalls. She tried to close her eyes because she didn't want any of the energy to get out. It shot out her eyelashes, went out into the expanse, turned around, and came back. She could feel it going through the little curves in her brain.

Then she felt like she got to a more core part of herself. God was there. "It blew me away I'm like whoa wait a minute do you mean to tell me you've been in there all the time you're not this external thing," she says.

God told her he's kind of both. "So all of us even the people that don't believe god is in there and he's like you can't take me out any more than you could take out your own father's dna," she explains. He made you. He's in there. You can choose not to acknowledge him, you can choose to walk around saying your dad's not your dad, but we can prove he is. "I'm in there and and I'm just waiting to love you," God told her.

Even through all the hell she went through, all the trauma in her life, he melted it all away.

The Choice to Return

While still in the void, Penny had been able to progress and see herself in her hospital room. She saw herself lying there in a coma. She saw her daughter, knew what she had worn that day, was able to describe it back to her later. She knew what part of the room her daughter had stood in.

Now, in the light with God, she had to come back. "It seemed like a decision that I probably had made before I was born that I'd known this was going to happen and that I was going to choose to go back because I because I hadn't lived the life I was supposed to live not even close fact I had avoided doing the things I was supposed to do," she explains.

She can't tell you how heartbroken she was to leave. Her husband Don asks her why she wouldn't want to come back to him. "I can't make you understand that until you've been there you just can't understand it I knew you'd be okay eventually," she tells him.

She made the decision to come back. She was crying. She told God, "At least let me remember it because if I can't remember this I don't think I'll have any hope."

Waking Up

Penny woke up off the ventilator. Her sister was standing there. The first thing Penny said was, "I was with god."

The nurse called the doctor. They were in Saint Joseph Catholic Hospital. The first person they sent in to see her was a psychologist. You can't see God, apparently. They wrote that she was having delusions. That stuff follows you in your medical records.

"I thought that's just I just couldn't get over the irony of that," Penny says.

When her sister arrived at the hospital, Penny told her, "I saw what you typed on facebook," she recalls. There was no way she could have known that. It really freaked her sister out. Penny asked why she was wearing that outfit. Her sister explained that when she got the call, she just grabbed whatever clothes were on the end of the bed, threw them on, threw some stuff in a bag, and left. That's why she was mismatched. She verified the pouring rain, pulling over at the gas station, all of it. "There's no question that I saw that," Penny says.

The Response and What It Means

The response Penny got when she shared her near-death experience surprised her. As a believer, someone who believed in God beforehand, she assumed her religious friends would want to hear the story. "The people that I have gotten the hardest time from have been the religious folks," she says.

They point to the dark void. You're a Christian, you should have gone right to heaven, they say. But Penny thinks she's figured it out. ["A near-death experience is not a death experience,"](/video/XLJ4V