When I finished my workout, I was extremely exhausted. My face was all red, sweat was dripping everywhere, but one thing that was concerning me was that I had a dull pain in the center of my breast bone. I didn’t think it was a big deal at the time so I got off my bike and continued with my day normally thinking the pain was just my body getting used to the exercise.

I went to my room after about half an hour and watched videos on my computer. I realized that the pain in my chest was still present so I started to get worried, but I continued to think it wasn’t a big deal. It was when a disturbing feeling popped into my heart that I started to realize something was wrong.

I started to experience a feeling that I’ve done great injustice to the world and that I’ve sinned mortally. The feeling came out of nowhere and I had no idea what I did to sin mortally. I had thoughts of certain acts I did during the day, but I was sure there was no mortal sin of that capacity that I did and wouldn’t notice. I felt that hell was looming over me and wanted to consume me. I started to feel the weight of the sins I’ve committed throughout life. I cannot describe how terrible this suffering was, so I tried to lie down and sleep the pain away.

While I was resting, I began to see how weak my body felt and how much pain I was feeling. I then realized that I was having a heart attack since the pain in my chest got worse. I remember how afraid I was, but still believed in the thought that if it was my time to die then I will have to suck it up and go through this experience. I felt that I didn’t do anything for myself or for the world to further salvation and this thought tortured me greatly, but I still accepted the will of God. I immediately began to pray, but I was struggling both mentally and physically due to the knowledge of my imminent death.

With this realization, I noticed more heart attack symptoms. The first symptoms I noticed after the chest pain was numbness in my left shoulder and jaw. The numbness progressed to my left leg until my left side was completely numb. The next symptom I noticed was that my vision started to get extremely blurry. This happened when I was reading the seven penitential psalms. My vision got so blurry that I had to stop reading and on top of that, I couldn’t process the words in my brain.

At this point I was losing touch with reality and thoughts of my family started to come to my mind. I saw my brother and my mom suffering over my death. The worst part about this thought was that I felt that it was my fault that I was dying and leaving them, but I still persisted with the words “Thy will be done.”

After the thoughts of my family started to fade, I realized I couldn’t feel anything anymore and that I was minutes away from my death. Then a thought popped into my weak state of mind that said “Stay alive and suffer as long as possible. Use your sufferings in death to plea to God to save sinners.” I felt that Jesus did this during His agony on the cross to please His eternal Father. So I forced my eyes to stay open to the best of my ability, but after about fifteen minutes, I couldn’t open them anymore. I knew that this was the end and I said to my Lord “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” and my breathing started to diminish. I knew my soul was about to separate when all of a sudden, all the symptoms were gone. My body could move again, but I felt like I wasn’t in control of it. I felt like I was in a deep trance and that this was a preparation for something terrible.