Welcome to Round Trip Death. On today's episode we have the privilege again of talking with someone who has never shared their experience publicly before. I hope you like it.
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Now let's hear from today's guest.
Alright, we're so happy to have our guest with us today. Leslie Flaman from British Columbia, Canada. Welcome Leslie.
Thank you very much.
Where does Flaman come from?
It's actually from, means from Flanders. So the Flanders fields in Belgium.
So that's basically telling the world where you're from, what region in the world you're from. So the first Flaman came to Canada in 1629.
As the genealogy goes, there were four brothers and they just basically helped map out Canada.
Well, and what our listeners can't see right now is your four beautiful dogs around you. So I'm going to give them a heads up. If you hear a bark or a cat, it's okay.
It's just part of the reality of what we do. This show is real. So let's go ahead and get right into it. Can you give me a little bit of history?
Way back, I know you had cancer when you were just 19 years old. Tell us a little bit about that and what led up to your near death experience.
Actually, I was 17 when I was first diagnosed with metastatic cancer. It was nodular sclerosin Hodgkin's disease.
Stage three B. So that means there was organ involvement. So my spleen was involved. I had 12 tumors and I basically went through Helen back to get back to the land of the healthy.
How long did it take for you to get back to healthy?
Well, the I was in treatment pain basically for three years. It started months before my 18th birthday and it finished just before my 20th birthday.
So yeah, it was I had the mop ABVD chemotherapy. So the M part was that mustard gas, the nitrogen mustard that you saw back in the old World War World War Two films, the mustard gas that flew in the air that killed troops.
So that chemical warfare is one of the things that they used to get rid of the cancer. And it just boggles boggles my mind how that they would use carcinogens to kill a cancer.
It just doesn't make sense in my head.
I'm not a doctor and I don't know how far the technology the science has come over the last few decades, but I know it used to be what you're talking about here was let's let's kill everything basically get you as close to death as we can because that'll kill the cancer and then we'll bring you back.
And the cancer will be left behind. That was the theory right.
That's totally 100% correct.
So how did that get you really close to death.
Well, they brought me right to death. So my first my okay the type of cancer I had either you have it or you don't. So the collarbone area was the type of the iceberg.
So the first cancer showed up on this on my collarbone area on my neck on the left side. So I ended up having three recurrences. So I was initially diagnosed with the cancer had the chemotherapy was it came up again back on my neck.
I had radiation therapy six weeks radiation therapy.
But the cancer came back again. And at that point Terry Fox was around in the 80s, generating money for cancer research. And he, she was the one that made available the bone marrow transplant that I that ended up bringing me to the near death experience.
So it was December, because the cancer kept coming back so that was the last ditch effort. It was highly experimental back in 1986 when I had it. I was actually the ninth person in Vancouver BC to have that treatment for cancer.
So it was everything was very, very, very experimental I even have on my file to know we do not recommend this procedure for those patient do the standard protocol, there were doctors that would not sign up for me to have that bone marrow transplant.
But ultimately I had it. So what they do they first two weeks before you go in the hospital they take out about a leader of your bone marrow. And they put what's called a hit number of the outline which are lines that come out of your body that are basically tied into the
arteries right near your heart. It's so you they could take chemotherapy and do blood draws at the same time using the same apparatus. So I had those implanted I had to maintain those lines for two weeks before I went into the hospital for the bone marrow transplant.
Give me an idea of what was going on that particular day that you had a near death experience.
Okay, so I was in the hospital during the bone marrow transplant. They had given me mass chemotherapy. That's what they basically do they take out your bone marrow, they harvest it, they irradiate it.
You go into the hospital, they give you mass mass doses of chemotherapy for three days, they put you in a coma basically.
And then they bring you out of the coma after those three days then they give you back your bone marrow. So that both that process.
I was in the hospital basically in six weeks in reverse isolation, but about about this third weekend.
Because I was so sick.
The timeline of things are jumbled.
So basically, what happened, I just, my body stopped making my blood my body stopped doing everything my body shut down. So when my body shut down.
I remember laying in the hospital bed I remember floating to the ceiling.
I'm a girl, I like sparkly things. So I see this spot, what caught my eye. There was a sparkling golden cord. And now this is unique I've never heard anybody else with the near death experience that has had this particular
attachment to it. There was a golden cord attached to my right heel of my spirit to the right heel of my body in the bed.
So I see this cord this golden cord shimmering beautifully sparkling, and I'm seeing about a dozen. To begin with, there was only about six people in the room but there, there was probably about 15 or 16 people in the room trying to bring me back.
So when I noticed everybody working then I look over and about three to half floor sheet on the wall, a tunnel appear. So as soon as I noticed the tunnel. Boom, I was sucked into the tunnel.
I was, it was like the speed of light.
Everything at that point was telepathic.
So you just know without without any words transpiring.
I know there was, it looked like sparkly lights in the circumference of the inside of the town, and going at a rapid, like, speed of light, and it took for eternity just seem to get to heaven.
So the sparkly lights, I understood were the, the souls of the people that had had helped me in my life at that point, or even in the future. So there, I understood that the lights in the tunnel were the lights of the people that were guiding me in my life.
At the end of the tunnel there was a bluish, bluish white light. So I am going through the tunnel, boom I make it to the end to the bluish white light.
And everything is just vibrating.
Peace, love.
I think I've recollected to people that I do tell the story to, that as your child, remember when you've hurt yourself or you're stubbed your knee or, you know, scraped your knee up or something and your mom spoofs you up into a blism, and you have that unconditional lozening, you know that deep, deep sense of belonging, that immediately that shearing just overwhelmed me.
And there's nature in heaven and the colors. So it's the problem with this part here is that we're using earthly words, earthly words are not adequate to describe a heaven experience.
Right. I know there were a lot of things, there were a lot of things that you felt.
It sounds like you also saw some specific things. Tell me if you could kind of go back in your memory and look around at what you were seeing, describe that scene to me.
I think I'm going to go with the smells because the smell was just heavenly. Flowers and you can never, the beautiful sweetest smelling fragrance. And everything was just celebrating everything from the blade of grass, the flowers to nature that's there to the angels.
Everything is singing and celebrating. And it was they were actually welcoming, welcoming me home. Yeah, this is supposed to be our home. This is supposed to be where we belong, but it's not where our heart and soul belongs.
Our heart and our souls, everybody has that whole, that missing piece and that missing piece inside that we're all trying to fill as humans. It's actually heaven. And it's actually the creator of us all that has that whole that we have corresponding holes and we complete each other.
And that's why we feel so lost here down on earth. So let me get back to the story. So everything is celebrating. Everything's vibrating. Everything is fragrant and happy. And then of course I see the source of us all coming towards me.
If anybody's watched that movie, Heaven is Real, that little boy describes heaven. And in the scenes of the movie, they show the sun being the source of light in heaven. Well, the sun is not the source of light in heaven. The source of light in heaven is our creator, God.
As soon as I recognize the source coming towards me, I'm peppering with questions. I'm like, why? Why, why, why? Why does there have to be so much hurt? Why does there have to be so much suffering? Why do little kids have to suffer trauma? Why are adults, why are people so horrible to each other?
Peppering, peppering with millions of questions telepathically. He just kind of smiled. You know, I could feel the delight and because I was questioning, why does it have to be so bad down here?
And the message that I got was love. This is the only existence that understands love, that knows love, that is meant, our purpose is to love, not the convoluted whatever, whatever, but agape love, true soul to soul love.
That is our purpose here on earth. We're supposed to love each other and take care of each other. And as soon as I got that love message, I was sent right back to my body, back to the pain, back to life.
So I didn't get a choice. I didn't have any, like, there was no recall of all the things. There was no meeting anybody that I used to know that had, that had passed. I saw the angels and I saw the sorcerer gone. It was all.
Yes, some people get that choice of whether to come back and a lot don't. Yeah. And I think I've given up on trying to figure out why some do and some don't. That's okay.
Yeah, it's our purpose. Yes, you mentioned that God was smiling. Does that mean that you had a good look at God? And if so, could you describe it?
It's telepathic, remember? Yes. So everything's telepathic there. So I didn't actually see features of the face. I did not see. I felt the energy of the laughter, like the energy of humor.
Then, yep, that's my girl and she's given me trouble. She's wanting to know why. Right. Were there things that you did see or was everything telepathic as far as meaning to your, to your spirit and your brain?
I remember seeing technicolors, colors that you can never, ever imagine here. I remember seeing angels. I all white, you know, garbed in white. Some had wings, some didn't have wings. Some were just silhouettes.
Everything was singing. Everything was praising. Even the flowers and the blades of grass were vibrating. The celebratory, yay, she's here, yay, you know, celebrating God. And it was just amazing.
Again, it's so hard to pull out earthly words to describe this situation, but it's really not adequate.
I understand. It's really not. We don't have the adjectives for it. No, syntax doesn't exist down there. Right. And that is interesting what you mentioned earlier about having that cord connecting you to your body.
I think that is, I think that is the first time that I've heard that. That's kind of unusual. Yeah, I feel that cord was my connection to my earthly body because I'm sure if I was given the choice, I would never have come back.
So I think that cord was grounding me to my earthly body. So I would have to come back. What else did you learn while you were there?
That we are all created equal, that we are all the same. No one is better than anybody else. We're all the same in the eyes of God.
We're all his treasured, treasured, treasured people.
The depth and the breadth and the deepness and the richness and the fullness, full bodiedness of that love.
I see why so many people are so lost and so either drug addicted or not living their authentic life because it's so hard to figure things out down here.
It's so hard to figure things out for us down here and it's just so sad because if we could remember that heart connection, if we could just tap in and remember who we actually are and not who this world says we are.
One of the biggest takeaways is that this world has a lot of labels for everybody and everything. So for instance, people that are on the street, whether or not they're drug addicted or whatever, people are so judgmental.
And so we need to be careful if we just didn't have that peace in life anymore to sit back and understand that we are treasured individuals, that every single one of us is so special that this world really bullies that out of us.
So did you learn a little bit about why we are here?
We are here to experience love. This is the only manifestation that has love.
So this is why we are here to endure the indignities of life.
I wanted to ask you, so how hard was it coming back? Because I know you were coming back to a body that was in really bad shape and pain. What was, in addition to that, was it emotionally difficult to come back?
Yes.
I didn't want to endure. I didn't want to.
But then what are the happy thoughts? Because you got to remember when I was going through this, I was a teenager still. So I've always wanted kids. I always wanted a family and I always wanted to get married.
So my happy thought getting through, because cancer back in the 80s was very much a death sentence.
So when I first got the diagnosis, it felt like prison bars slamming shut. And that was it. I wasn't going to have much of a life.
So for me, the cancer being feeling like it was a death sentence and then enduring so much trauma because I had every reaction. I had every possible adverse reaction to medications, to the chemotherapy, to I had every possible complication.
So to endure all that and then get to heaven, heaven, home. Like this is very much a temporary tent that we live in here on earth.
So home, the substance and the depths of the heaven, home and understanding that this is the temporary situation that we have to endure here.
I really did not want to come back. And when God gave me the message, His love is the answer to why we endure all of this. Love being the whole sole purpose of our existence.
I mean, what do you do with that? It's not a choice. You just got to come back and endure and figure things out. Because God's appointment is a heavy one and it's one that we need to honor.
I mean, He chooses us for us to be here and endure this, then we've got to make the best of it.
So if our sole purpose is love, how do we demonstrate that? How do we live up to that? In a real practical sense, day to day, what do you do for that?
Just treat everybody the way you yourself wants to be treated. If you don't want to be yelled at, don't yell. If you don't want somebody to fill in the blank, then don't entertain those kind of things.
You give what you get out of this life. So you can give greatness, so you can give nothing. It's all one day at a time. Each person we meet, each person we come into contact with, we show Jesus to them.
There's a saying, what would Jesus do? My kids always used to ramble it off. WWJD. Yeah, what would Jesus do? So in every and any possible situation, what would Jesus do? And then you try and do that.
And all he did was love and serve others. Yeah. So let me ask you this. Since you have been back and you've had quite a few years go by since then, what things in your life, what experiences have you had in which you were able to feel something close to that love that you felt on the other side?
For me personally experiencing, I have not felt that. Okay, so during my cancer experience, the doctors told me I'd never have kids. My happy thought, my goal that got me through the hell of cancer, my happy, hopeful thought was to have kids someday, to have a family someday.
So the Lord did bless me, even though I've not been married. That's a whole other story for a whole other day. I've never been married, but I was blessed with two children. So the focusing on my hopeful future was the one thing that got me through the cancer.
Even though today those daughters are estranged because unfortunately I've had such a history of illness in my life. This particular, the cancer experience has not been the only very sick. During the cancer battle, I was infected with Hep C. So I've 2015 my liver decompensated.
So my liver gave up in 2015. It's a miracle that I was able to bring the liver back without transplantation because most people are not able to do that. You die without a liver. Most people die on the waiting lists for a liver.
I was able to bring it back, changing my lifestyle, changing my diet, changing the stresses in my life. There were many. But that cancer experience, that love of that cancer experience, I have not experienced here yet, unfortunately.
Love of my kids. Yes, they were little. It was a beautiful thing. So I don't know. All I can do is be that love and share. Because I've never experienced it other than heaven, that I feel that it's my purpose to be that for others.
So for instance, my dad, back in 2015, he did move with me because the doctors said that if I didn't have something to live with me, that I would certainly die because I was hemorrhaging at the time.
And it took, I was hemorrhaging for about three years before I had the surgery to fix it, before they figured out what was going on to be able to fix it.
So my dad moved in with me because the doctor said that if I didn't have somebody to live with me, that I would not live because I couldn't fold 911 if I was unconscious and bleeding right.
My dad ended up having a stroke back in 2020. So my dad today has got severe dementia. He's got vascular dementia, Alzheimer's mixed.
So the way I example Jesus' love has been taking care of my dad up until recently. He's just gone into a care home.
But I was taking care of him at home by myself as a 24-7 caregiver. To love example that I had from heaven is my choice to show that example to whoever's in my life.
Even people, street people, like I'll go and buy them a meal or I'll try and do what I can to make their lives better.
I just have a couple more questions before we finish up here. One of those is there are lots of people out there going through difficult things.
You've been through some very, very difficult things. What words of hope can you offer to them?
Everything changes. Right now it's temporary what you're going through. It might seem like it's everything and it's going to be everything and it's never going to change.
But the one thing we can count on this life is that there is change. Today might be terrible, but tomorrow might not be so bad.
So one foot in front of the other, you'll get to a better place.
And when they get on the other side?
Celebrate and just be authentic and just. I mean life is messy.
You know, no one's exempt to suffering. No one's exempt to the crap storm that happens here.
But day by day, you know, you just look at the sun. You just get a different perspective. You go into nature and go hug a dog.
You know, you try and be in the moment. And that's one thing my dogs have really taught me is that they're not thinking about what happened yesterday.
They're not thinking about what's going on tomorrow. They're right here in the moment.
So my greatest recommend suggestion and hope for people that just be in the moment.
You know, we don't have five, six, seven days at a time. We have one day at a time.
So in this one day, this one moment, one hour, one day. Just make the best of it that you can.
That's great. Based on your experience on a scale of one to ten, how afraid of death are you?
Oh, not at all. I welcome it. I look forward to it.
All right. Thanks a lot, Leslie. Appreciate you today.
Thank you so much. And I just wish everybody just love is the answer.
Love is our purpose. And if you don't have it in your life, then be it. Just be loved to somebody.
That's great. Thank you.
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Until then, I wish you everything good that you're looking for in this life and the next.