As a child, I had all kinds of nose and throat related illnesses, as almost every child in Chile does, due to the climate. When I was 9 years old, I was diagnosed with tonsillitis. So the doctor said that tonsils had to come out.

I was taken to a hospital and prepared for the surgery. Both my parents were with me in the room, and my father, being a surgeon, was determined to come with me to the quirófano (operating room). However, my surgeon convinced him to stay away and not make me nervous. I thought my surgeon was very wise. I knew my father would try to direct him and the operation.

I was taken to the operating room and the anesthesiologist came in. At that time, ether was used to put you to sleep. He put a mask on me and I started to feel and smell a strange sensation down my body. Suddenly, I found myself falling down on what seemed like a very dark tunnel and started saying, “Soy yo” (It’s me) and everything disappeared and I was no more.

I woke up and my father was in the operating room together with the surgeon. They were saying, “She is coming back”. I went back to sleep but heard everything the surgeon and the nurses were saying while operating.

When I woke up in the hospital room again, my mother who obviously had been crying, told me they had “lost me” in the operating room and they had called my father because of that. I never knew exactly why happened but my father said the anesthesiologist should be grateful that he didn’t knock him down. I guess he gave me an overdose?

The best part of that surgery was that, as soon I came back to the room, a nurse came with a cinnamon sherbet, and they keep bringing me those sherbets all the afternoon. I spent that night at the hospital, and my mother stayed with me, sleeping on a smaller bed they brought for her.

All in all, it was not a bad experience, but my falling sensation and the dark tunnel made me reflect.

Years later, after I had seen the procession at the cemetery where the broken saints were left under the crucified Christ, I remembered having a dream. I was one of the broken saints, falling down and saying “It’s me,” and ended up on the floor, looking up at the face of the suffering Christ.