Again, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.
The verse doesn't say that, sorry. Souls in hell are "absent from the body" but are certainly not "present with the Lord". Paul writes that he wishes to be (a) absent from the body and (b) present with the Lord; not that (a) necessarily implies (b).
Scripture doesn't do you much good if you read it carelessly and shoehorn it into your preconceived ideas of what it ought to say. Protestants consistently accuse Catholics of doing that, but I find that Protestants do it every bit as much or more.
To be absent from the body is to be present in eternity. Yes, the Lord is there. But so also are other states of existence, and Beings who are NOT with the Lord.
If you recite the Apostle's Creed, you state as confession of faith that after his own death, Jesus, "descended into hell..after three days he ascended into heaven". Christ Himself did not immediately ascend at the moment of His body's death..
Note that "hell" is translated from early terms more synonymous with Hades, a place of punishment based on judgement, but lacking the eternal damnation of Hell which will be brought about at the final judgement..
As one author (not a "fool" I think) has said:
"...while the notion of purgatory is foreign to Scripture, yet believers should not take lightly the possibility of great and painful losses at the judgment seat of Christ, (1 Cor. 3:11-15; 2 Cor. 5:10). None of us should presume that any of us shall enter heaven without a thorough evaluation and full disclosure of the actual quality and content of our lives since we first believed."
http://www.ldolphin.org/descend.html
"Also a "near death experience" is NOT death."
No, but the stage III brain death of those in halting operations IS death.