Yob’s Mike Scheidt Describes Near-Death Experience During Surgery
Yob guitarist/vocalist Mike Scheidt has had a harrowing year, undergoing emergency surgery for diverticulitis in February and a second follow-up surgery in March. The surgeries were a success and Scheidt has been in recovery ever since. Yob fans graciously donated over $27,000 to Scheidt via a crowdfunding campaign to help assist the Yob guitarist in covering his medical bills and other life expenses related to the procedures.
In a new interview with Metal Injection, Scheidt opens up about his recovery, the introspection and lifestyle changes the ordeal inspired within him, and a bit about a near-death experience while he was on the operating table. Scheidt explains:
“Almost really everything. The easiest way for me to describe it is when I was in the ER the pain was so bad it kicked me out of myself. There was a chunk of time there where I was no longer there. There was no name, no history. I wasn’t a dad. I wasn’t in a band. I wasn’t even in an ER room, I was gone. Consciousness was there. Awareness was there. The near death experience I had, because I was dying, it was kind of like looking out over the ocean on the beach. It seems really far away but at the same time it wasn’t far away at all, it was right there. there’s a vastness that was very up close and personal. There was a lot of different colors and things going on but I was aware of this incredible vastness that was awake, unmoving and still. There was a little separation inasmuch as I was aware of it being aware of me being aware of it. It wasn’t ego death, there was a sense of myself. But it wasn’t a sense of myself as “Mike.” When they gave me pain drugs it woke me back up. The pain erupted in my body.
“I had two other situations, once when I had a seizure and went from a normal temperature to 104 in 2 minutes. I was shaking on the bed like in a movie. Then in surgery, the surgery was supposed to be 3 hours but it took 8 because I was so messed up, but somewhere in the surgery, and I didn’t know about this until the second surgery, but the surgeon decided to blast Yob in the speakers while they were working on me, and the hit that I got from that was that they were trying to keep me there. What all that equates too is my hard drive crashed. Sometimes on your computer when your hard drive crashes someone can retrieve the information. Other times they can’t and you’re a vegetable. Sometimes they can get most of it. In my case they got most of it.”
“Scary” would be an understatement to describe Scheidt’s experiences. It’s amazing he’s still with us and incredibly productive musically, which he talks about later in the interview. It’s a great read, and you should check it out in full right here.
