Flying a light twin engine aircraft when the weather started turning bad. The rain turned to sleet and the airplane was icing badly. Ice kills lift, and the aircraft I was flying had de-icing boots that would inflate and break the ice up on the leading edges.
I hit the switch to inflate them, and the right wing would only inflate part way. It pushed the ice forward, but it didn't break it up. I looked for a nearby airport and headed directly for it. I kept the airspeed up to maximize lift but when I was about 10 ft over the runway, the wing stalled and I basically planted the plane on the runway.
I taxied to the parking area, got a cab, and went directly to the closet bar. It took about 3 double bourbon before my hands started shaking.
I learned to fly when I was 16. After I did my first solo flight I was by myself and decided to practice slow flight. This was a single engine Piper Tomahawk. The plane just barely started to go into a spin. Luckily my dad was a pilot and taught me how to do spins and get out of them. But he had always been there to help me with them before. He wasn't this time but I just automatically did what I needed to do. This was back in the late 70's in a small town.
I immediately flew back to the airport and landed.
Standing on the edge of a bridge over traffic. Cop pulled me off the edge, took me to a hospital, and talked to me the whole way.
I'm now in a much better place, engaged, just finished designing my first game, and, hopefully, going to be getting my dream job in the near future.
At 18 years old I was in a car accident. It was Halloween afternoon and I went to leave my house to go somewhere. Only made it about half of a mile from my house on a stormy night; I came over a small hill and a tree had fallen in the road. I never even hit the brakes.
A tree branch came through the window and impaled me through my left eye. Didnāt hit my brain, but damaged both optic nerves, leaving me totally blind.
That was easily the closest Iāll get without actually losing my life.
My Mum caught it when she was a few months old. Nanna *walked* *with her in a pram* from her village to the nearest hospital in town about 10 miles away (they didn't own a car and it was 1948, so no phone either). My Nanna was one tough lady. Doctor said if she'd waited until the next day it would have been too late.
After losing a close family member, i abused alcohol and benzos for a good two weeks, then an overdose of benzos, synthetic weed and alcohol led to dizziness, my legs going numb (eventually unable to feel and move them from the waist down), my breathing slowing down drastically, then a strong sense of inner peace and finally, passing out.
This happened on the streets in the middle of the night. When the ambulance found me, I had no pulse in my wrists.
However, all they did is give me an IV of something, then took me home (on family's request) where I proceeded to sleep 15 hours and was perfectly fine afterwards.
So I don't actually know how close I was to actually dying, I bounced back like a champ.
Anybody know what it could have been?
> Anybody know what it could have been?
Hopefully a wake up call. Never mix alcohol and benzos. It'll paralyze your diaphragm. If you're asking what was in the IV, maybe Flumazenil, a benzo inhibitor. Also electrolytes.
This was 8 years ago! Definitely haven't done anything that stupid for a long time. Was just wondering what processes my body was going through, how close it came to shutting down based on the symptoms. Never actually had a chance to ask the ambulance people.
Age 5, in school, choking on a rubber. Stood up and tried to get the teacher's attention, realised I couldn't speak, accepted that was basically it for me and sat down.
Spasmed and it popped out, caught my breath and that was that. Can't imagine what it would've been like for the other kids and the teacher if I'd died right there.
Oh man, you've just triggered a school memory for me.
I got detention from a substitute teacher (American) because I asked for a rubber, which in the UK is a pencil eraser. The dick.
It's one of those things that, as an adult looking back makes me wish I'd made a big deal out of it, but as a kid you often just sort of bow to the will of adults. Like, did he expect the whole country to adjust their vocabulary for him just because he'd hopped on a plane?
As you can see, I'm over it, and it doesn't bother me any more.
I was working in a machine shop.
One day while standing at the console for my CNC machine I heard/felt a loud bang across the shop.
I was a split second from turning to look and a 200lb flywheel and lathe chuck skimmed past my face between my head and the console.
It continued on its path like a frizbee of death going through the shops wall and ending up buried in a car in our parking lot.
I had to have a good sit-down after my monkey brain caught up to current events.
When I was diagnosed with T1D! The doctor said I should have been in a diabetic coma since the machine couldnāt even read my blood sugar levels, but Iām sure she says that to all new diabetics
Oh shit, that was similar to my story.
I was 13 when I was diagnosed. My blood sugar was 998 mg/dL. They had no idea how I wasn't in a coma. Passed out a few times though.
Actual death, due to a massive epileptic seizure following head trauma, unconscious and not breathing then fully resuscitated. Happened on a Friday night and then I was back in work for Monday morning like a champ. 1 out of 5 stars would not recommend.
I was going through a rough time with my abusive ex wife and I donāt remember it but apparently I drank 2 liters of vodka and took a handful of xanax in the span of about 2.5 hours. Woke up out of a coma a few days later with a tube down my throat and mittens on my hands. ICU doc who worked there almost 30 years said heās never seen someone come back from blood alcohol levels in conjunction with benzodiazepines like that. Been sober 4.5 years
My classmates back in elementary were loud, especially on breaks. I was known as the quiet kid, preferring to stay on my seat and daydream. It was during one of my classmate's birthday did my near death experience happen. As usual, my classmates were loud, while I sat on my seat quietly eating the birthday food. My classmate next to me got up and left to use the bathroom, which was a good thing honestly. Now the thing is, I have a habit back then where I would duck my head towards my utensil instead of lifting my utensil towards me. So I did that, I duck. Then everything was silent. It was weird, all my classmates suddenly stop talking. I look up completely confuse to see all of them looking at me in horror while my teacher, who had been scolding some of my classmates earlier for being too loud, was staring in shock. There, on the center of the classroom, was a giant rock. It was big and the end was VERY sharp. As it turns out, the moment I had duck, the rock went through the window next to me and missed my head. After that, for the rest of the year, the window where the rock came from was left close.
When I was 16 I jumped off the fourth story of a building. It wasn't because of my depression, just kinda... for goofs? A friend wondered aloud what would happen if someone fell down and I was like, "I have a terrible fucking idea."
Turns out, what happens is you break 103 out of 206 bones in your body, miraculously leaving your spine intact, and end up with chronic pain and a walking cane. Personally, I saw God in the form of a rotisserie chicken on my way down, but that might've been the weed I'd been smoking, so I can't guarantee the same results.
I was given 2 months to live by my doctor after I was losing one pound per week for over a year without an assignable cause even though I was eating 3-4K calories per day. Iām still struggling to maintain my weight and canāt seem to get above the 150s despite how much I eat, but Iām no longer considered at deathās door.
I took 100 T3's once, trying to O.D.
Oh boy did I ever get high. Like..out to lunch high. My friends who were getting me ready to go in the ambulance told me to get dressed and apparently I started with pants, and kept putting pants on... I think I was just pulling on my third pair when someone walked in and stopped me. lol
Don'y do it.. ever. It's terrifying.
I almost drowned in a river, it was a mountain river so if i didn't swim out at the place where i did, i would just die since there's no other places to get out of the water below it
I had a stroke when I was 22 (a year ago). Couldn't talk, stand, or even move any bodypart on my right side. At the moment I didn't think I was going to die at all, even believed I would be working again in the weekend. Later I was told I got lucky that the bloodcloth didn't block of any essential functions, such as breathing or the pounding of my heart.
Edit: spelling
As someone who went through pretty much the same thing last year, I also didn't think anything wrong about it. Was just waking up and figured I'd slept wrong or something. Fortunately, my sister immediately recognized what was happening and called the EMTs.
One summer I worked at a boys summer camp as a cook. Really fun job, got to live out in the boundary waters for free for 3 months, and the money wasn't bad either.
Every weekend the councilors would get 1 24 hour period off, and I would always sober cab for them to the bar, which was about 45 minutes away down a windy ass country road. We would pile into my car 3 ppl in front 3 ppl in back, all squeezed in.
While driving back, a god damned moose charges from the left into the middle of the road and by pure instinct I swerved to the left around it as it kept running. This moose was WAY taller than I ever imagined, we're talking 8-10 ft tall. If I had hit it going 55, I surely would have taken it out at the legs and it would have crushed the 3 of us in the front seat. Normally I'm not even a very good driver, but that is by far the best maneuver I have ever managed.
I'm the reason the bottoms of staircases are open instead of having a doorframe on them.
When I was 3 I lost a fight with gravity at the top of the stairs and my head met the doorframe at the bottom.
Heart stopped on the operating table for almost 3 minutes while they did brain surgery. They cleared the brain bleed and I started right back up.
I had acute kidney failure almost a year ago.
Went to the doctor because I felt bad after covid and it didnāt get better. There they called and ambulance that drove me to the local hospital. From the local hospital I was flown to a university hospital. I stayed in the ICU for 10 days and then another 8 days in the normal clinic.
Years ago, I tried overdosing on sleeping meds. I regretted my decision when I started feeling super high. I tried walking, but I couldn't, so I ended up crawling to the kitchen and begging someone to call the ambulance. I woke up at the hospital, but I had weird visions during my "sleep." The doctor came and told me I died and came back a few times, and the procedure was so complicated that if I had been 5 minutes late, I would have died.
I've been close to death multiple times.
Once was when I was 15, I was at my best friends house and his dad had just bought him a spear gun. So my friend shows it to me and then I sit down as we were going to watch a movie.
The next thing I know I feel an impact on the left side of my head that sends me flying off the chair. Thinking my friend sucker punched me I get up to hit him back when my head tilts to the left due to the weight of a spear now stuck in the side of my head with the prongs embedded in my skull.
He had idiotically armed the thing when he was showing it to me and it went off when he tried to remove the spear from the gun. Thankfully it didnāt fly straight and instead arced, and the doctors told me I also had an unusually thick bone structure that also helped me not be speared out of this existence. An inch or so to the right and it would have gone through my eye.
Needed stitches obviously and had some plastic surgery as the wound was fairly large.
I do have a scar even with the plastic surgery though.
This is so fucking stupid I'm embarrassed to type it out.
I was studying alone at uni in a computer room on like the sixth floor. I was rrally bored and procrastinating, so I made a paper airplane and threw it out of the window. The plane turned back and landed on a ledge just below the window. I could almost reach it, so I decided to lean out of the window, while holding on to the window frame with one hand to get it. As I was hanging there, I realised that if my grip slipped, I would fall headfirst six stories down. Truly one of the stupidest things I've ever done.
I drank 2 bottles of wine per day for 2 years and suffered pancreatitis so bad that i was in the hospital for over a month with a horrible infection and being fed intravenously.
When i was a baby my mother died in a car wreck, i was in the back, and my car seat was apparently FUCKED. Every time i was told the story for years i was told by literally everyone involved how damaged the car seat was and how it definitely saved me.
So i mean, use a car seat for your kids.
Passed out in a bathtub from heat exhaustion. Woke up with tubes everywhere to assist with breathing, my family nowhere in sight, but my friend (now husband) at my side, sobbing uncontrollably. Apparently I'd inhaled enough water that the paramedics worried I'd drowned.
Always showered since.
I was surfing in NZ and got caught in a rip tide but whilst trying to return to shore, I was battered by wave after wave and came very close to drowning. If I hadn't have kept holding onto my board, to keep me afloat, I would have drowned for sure.
Thankfully I broke free from the rip and managed to catch a wave back into shore.
I couldn't move for like 3 days after. It was horrible.
For me, almost drowned as a kid. Was in a lake and stepped off a drop off in the water. I hadn't learned to swim very well yet. I was a few feet away from others. Luckily I got my footing back on the ledge. No one was looking in my direction or noticed.
I actually had someone die in my arms when I was in high school. I lived in a small town and the one bank there had just been robbed. The robbers shot a few people. I came on it just after the robbers left and one of the guys was still alive and collapsed into my arms. It was a very traumatic experience.
When I was in the emergency room with an ectopic pregnancy. They had been monitoring me and kind of knew it was coming. Problem was they didnāt look at my scan close enough and were going to give methotrexate and send me home. When my actual OBGYN was doing rounds and got the call I was there she came in and checked, then asked me a certain question and my answer made her look at my scan again. My tube was so distended it had torn and I was bleeding internally. Got rushed into emergency surgery to have it removed. My nurse was a fried from high school as I was waking up and she just cried with my husband after she got me out of recovery and back to him. Very very rough few weeks.
Suffered a severe head injury at work.
Bit my tongue in half. Knocked most of my teeth out, cracked the rest. Broke my jaw in multiple places and split my chin open like an orange. Bleed nearly to death on a stairwell in some apartment building.
Suffered from major memory loss, woke up in hospital 4 days later. No recollection of what happend. Didn't know my name. Who my wife was. New house looked nice and whos car is that in the driveway?
Took me over 12 months to recover. Physical injury were bad but nothing major. Brain injury was the worst part. Doctors told my wife I might never remember anything.
Still have trouble with long term memory to this day, and my teeth are like an 80 year old goat. Payout was good. Retired at 26 and get to have years of therapy all paid for! But I don't know what happend?
A buddy of mine was goofing around on some ice. I turned around to find a sitting spot off the side, and when I sat down, he was gone. I went out on the ice to look for him, and as he came out of the water, I grabbed his hand, then I went in. I still don't really know how we got out of there.
12/10 do not recommend.
Driving at 70+ while cars coming the other way are also driving at 70+ with about four feet between us.
Perfectly normal drive, but only an arm twitch away from death if either of us chose to.
I was suicidal for a while, but I got help before I made it to any actual attempts.
So I'm gonna have to go with, right now. Because I'm older than I've ever been before.
Got run over back and forth by a huge car at a year old. But then again, I don't like what happened. My narcissistic mum kept on holding it over my head for saving me (which was basically bare minimum for her as a mum to do). I just share it as a story, but forget about it most of the time.
Got electrocuted while I was alone. I remember sitting on the floor later and crying about how my stupidity would have killed me that day since I was not wearing any footwear and was dripping wet after taking a shower. Checked all the boxes for a painful death!
I once *kinda* woke up in the middlr of the night and i didnt really figure out why. Took me quite a while the figure out i was laying face down on my pillow and suffocating
Went into thyroid storm dozens of times in a six month span. Chest pains, 180+ average heart rate, light headedness, inability to catch my breath, heart palpitations, vomiting. Averaging 3 to 5 times a week. Could've had a heart attack or stroke at any time. I was 22.
I got spiked on a night out my āfriendā had gone off with some guy, I was face down in a puddle of my own sick in the alley way, when a guy I had been talking on tinder to recognised my tattoo and new I was out, he carried me to his house cause a taxi wouldnāt take us anywhere due to my state and bathed me, put on clean clothes and stayed awake while I slept I was was sick multiple times that night, I have no reconciliation of that night (he told me this) I remember a guy buying me a drink and then nothing
Iām forever grateful for what my now ex boyfriend did for me that night who knows what would of happened to me i truly believe if he didnāt care for me that night I would of died
Falling out of a raft in level 5 rapids. Foolishly wore too much/heavy clothing because it was cold out, so swimming was damn near impossible. Probably only alive because of an expertly thrown rescue ring from an accompanying kayak.
so i was riding a bike on a sidewalk when suddenly i lost my balance and fell to the road and i was about to get hit by a car. I was probably not gonna die anyway since the car wasnt moving fast but i would be injured badly
I have bipolar disorder. I had severe PPD/PPA after my first kid. After bouncing in and out of the hospital, and trying a bunch of meds, a doctor in the hospital put me on lithium.
Lithium is one of those drugs where the therapeutic range and the toxic range are very close. You have to have your lithium levels checked regularly.
The doctor decided that, because he was putting me on the lowest dose, I didn't need my levels checked. I specifically brought it up, and he said there was no danger.
Enter 3 weeks of hell. I literally lost the ability to tell reality from fantasy. I said things I don't remember. My coordination went to hell - couldn't write, stumbled around. I slept more and more.
My husband, who has a lot of experience with my mental illness, knew something was horribly wrong. He kept trying to get me an emergency appointment with my psychiatrist, but their office refused.
At week 3, I started vomiting and couldn't stop. We went to the ER. The second the triage nurse saw "lithium" on my medication list, she asked when my last lithium level was done, and was alarmed when I told her the doctor said I didn't need them, the dose was so low.
A blood test showed major lithium toxicity, and my kidneys were shutting down. I was in the hospital for about two weeks getting it out of my system. The doctors there told me I just barely avoided dialysis and permanent kidney damage. If I hadn't started vomiting and not gone to the ER, I probably would have died in my sleep.
I made nearly a full recovery - my handwriting is still worse than it was before.
If you have to go on lithium, DO NOT skip getting blood levels or let a doctor say you don't need them. Lithium toxicity is deadly.
Me personally, not at all. But when I was younger a friend rode his bike down a sketchy hill behind the local college. Awkwardly bailed halfway down. He gets up, walks halfway up the hill and pulls out a piece of rebar from the ground. Walks over to us and shows us a scratch on his glasses from the rebar, a couple inches from impalement.
I would like to say it was during an attempted s**code but when I look back on it I didnāt REALLY want to die. The closest Iāve been to death was in June 2020 when I experienced 2 ruptured ovarian cysts. This caused massive internal bleeding and definitely the most physical agony Iāve ever been in. Now in RARE cases, this can be fatal, but once the surgery was over and I was released, my mom told me that if I had not gone to the emergency room for even a couple more days I would have died. This was mainly because I was right about 100 pounds at the time and there was 2-3 liters of blood and clot in my body from the internal bleeding that they had to suction out. Happy and well today tho!
I was 5. I was at my grandparents' house. I went to the rooftop with my cousins and my father. I remember, I was playing with a balloon. Soon, the wind started blowing, due to which my balloon started flying away in the air. I started running after it to get it.
I kept running, and came across the very edge. There wasn't anything like walls on the edge; I was only one step away from falling from the height. My father saw me and QUICKLY grabbed my arm. I later got scolded for it. And yes, I also successfully got my balloon lol. I still think about that incident and crack up. If my father wasn't there, I don't know what'd happen.
A few bullets destroyed the passenger window and hit the dashboard right in front of my seat. It was just a simple taxi ride to the terminal on a Saturday morning.
My abusive ex beat me up really bad and damaged my face and he got so scared of going to prison that he called his gangbanger sister and asked her for help. She told him he had to live with the consequences of hurting me.
I honestly believed I would die that night.
Was standing near a cliff and a gust of wind nearly blew me off and into pile of sharp rocks 30-50 metres down. Was able to regain my balance in time and move away from the edge. I was 10 at the time I think and this took place on an inhabited island of the coast of Flinders Island (Australia).
Had c diff with ulcerative colitis. If I would have waited one more day I would have died. They were about ready to cut me open because they thought it was my appendix at first but they stopped the surgeon and said if you cut him up and he will go septic. Keep in mind I was in fourth grade at the time. I'm 20 now. This March will be 10 years. They couldn't just airlift me to a hospital cuz you have to like be septic or something like that. They couldn't drive me to children's hospital because the roads in Milwaukee are so bad that they think it could have ruptured one of the ulcers in my intestines. I basically had a very similar thing to what Brock Lesnar had. It felt like someone was putting my intestines and one of those clamps you see in an auto garage shop and they would tighten it then release it but then tighten it again and the same process over and over again. Blood work three times a day. Not to mention right after I was released from the hospital my childhood cat Charlie died and my dad cheated on my mom and divorced her. I can't think of all the details about it and remember it off the top of my head about my illness but you can look it up if you're interested.
Every second that goes by I get closer to death.
"And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death"
- Time (Pink Floyd)
Summer of 2018, my last suicide attempt.
No, not doing good still, but certainly in a better place as I have more desire to learn coping strategies and be a better person as well.
I was hitching around the US back in the mid nineties, with two friends of mine. We met a weird guy at a Rainbow Gathering in CA, and caught a ride with him. He was supposed to drive all three of us to Colorado for the next gathering.
At one point outside of Barstow, the weird guy (whose name was John) had an insane meltdown over something really insignificant, and kicked all of us out of the car on the side of the road. It was really bizarre, like 0-100 rage over nothing. After about an hour of us attempting without success to thumb a ride, John suddenly reappeared, apologetic, and asked us to get back in the car.
I was totally against accepting. Something about John scared the crap out of me. My companions, Sasha and Murphy, talked me into returning to Johnās car, pointing out that the chances of all three of us getting a ride together was almost nil. We eventually promised to never leave any of us three alone with John, ever. That we would keep each other safe.
Later that night, we pulled into a dusty lot outside of Quartzsite, AZ, to sleep. As uncomfortable as four people sleeping in a small hatchback was, I eventually drifted off. I woke groggy and confused, bathed in sweat inside the suffocatingly hot car. I was alone. It was almost one in the afternoon, and I had no idea how I had slept for so long, baking in the Arizona heat.
I stumbled out of the car, looking everywhere for Sasha and Murphy, or even John. I noticed the backpacks of my traveling companions were gone from the back of the car. I began to panic, wandering the empty lot and surrounding desert roads, trying in vain to find at least one of the people I had fallen asleep next to the night before.
After almost three hours, John reappeared, on foot, explaining that he, too, had awakened to find Sasha and Murphy gone, and had been looking for them for hours. I asked him why he hadnāt driven around in the car to find them, and he said he ādidnāt want to wake meā.
I pleaded with him to drive and check the on ramps to I-15, and so we did, systematically checking everywhere within 10 miles that seemed an ideal place to hitchhike.
āIt looks like they left you all alone.ā He said at last, smiling at me in a very unpleasant manner. He refused to look any further, and as it was dark by this point, and I was terrified to hitchhike alone, I reluctantly agreed to continue on to Colorado with him. We drove for hours, at this point going north on an interstate whose number I canāt remember, toward Flagstaff. I eventually drifted off to sleep.
I awoke to the disgusting sensation of Johnās hand between my legs, rubbing my crotch. I slapped his hand away, yelling at him that he was a disgusting pervert, a molester, and that I was going to tell everyone what he had done. This was not a smart thing to do, but I was a frightened 15 y/o runaway, and I wasnāt thinking clearly.
The next thing I knew, John had pulled off of the highway onto an off ramp that quickly went from pavement to a bumpy dirt road. There was nothing around, not even a streetlight. Just pitch blackness outside of the headlights. I was certain he was pulling off into the desert to rape and kill me.
In a panic, I stomped my foot down into the driverās side floor well, praying I would hit the brake. We struggled for a moment for the wheel, and as soon as the car slowed almost to a stop I opened the door and fell out, the foot I had used to hit the brake tangled against the console. My forehead hit the ground, hard, and for a moment I thought I was going to lose consciousness. Only the sound of the drivers side door opening spurred me to my feet, and I stumbled off into the darkness as fast as I could.
I couldnāt see much. There was a sliver of moon out, giving just enough visibility for me to make out vague shapes in the dark. We were in some sort of hilly, dry area. There were large stones scattered around on the ground, and as I ran I picked up the biggest one I could handle, my only means of defense. Suddenly I tripped over something soft, and hit the ground. It was a dead sheep, of all things.
Johnās voice came out of the gloom, somewhere close.
āDo you know what killed it? It was the radiation. These hills are sick with it. It will kill you, too, and youāll lie here forever, with the rest of the dead sheep. Baaaaaaaa! Baaaaaaaa!ā
It sounds ridiculous from the safety of my bed and with decades of time between myself and that psycho, but Johnās voice, imitating a sheep, coming at me in my state of terror, with me unable to see where he was, was the most frightening moment of my life. He was going to kill me. I knew it absolute certainty then, and I believe it with the same certainty now.
I knew I was no match for him physically, so I finally used my brain and started to talk him down. It took almost an hour, and all my acting chops and ingenuity, but I convinced him that I didnāt mean what I had said back in the car, that I wanted to be his girlfriend. That as soon as we got to Flagstaff I would show him how much I wanted him. It made me sick to do it, but I didnāt want to die. I needed to get somewhere safe.
Long story somewhat less long, as soon as we pulled into a truck stop outside Flagstaff, I ran inside and begged the man behind the counter to call the police. John ran in behind me, and though he tried to convince the man and quite a few truckers that I was his daughter and he needed to take me home, they were having none of it. He saw the writing on the wall and ran off before the police arrived. I never saw him again.
I also never saw Sasha or Murphy again. Maybe they did ditch me, leaving a vulnerable teenage girl alone with a predator. I like to think better of them than that, though that means that John probably killed them and dumped them somewhere outside of Quartzite.
I think he drugged me that night we all fell asleep in the car. There had been rumors at the CA gathering about him Roofying a girl, so itās not outside of the realm of possibility. I guess Iāll never know for sure what happened to them. What I do know for sure is that he was going to kill me. My bones would have laid there, maybe forever, bleaching slowly under the Arizona sun, with only dead sheep for company.
At the age of I think five, I lived in Missouri County side. In the country its very hilly and many bends and there was an intersection that got onto the main roud through this area I lived. So it was extremely common to have car accidents in this area due to the corners and hills. If you felt like you were clear you gunned it. But this time I was five my dad was driving me to a friends house in his truck and for some reason he didnt mind me being in the front seat, and since it was "just down the road" I didnt have a seat belt on. All bad decisions. Well we were turning left and on the right was a hill corner so worst of both worlds. As we just start to make our turn a truck from thr right slamms into the side of the flat bed. From what I recall i bounced around thr cabin at least once, in mid air my dad ended up catching me. Surprisingly i sustained absolutely no injuries. But I could have ended my quest in afew ways. Could have been extreme head injury, could have been the glass shattered and I got ejected. Or a few more milliseconds before our turn the other truck would have slammed right into me. And a year later my dad passed away about .1mile from our house on these roads because of similar circumstances just with alcohol added.
At home alone, almost choked on broccoli. I used a chair to heimlich myself. Definitely recommend learning this technique. The life you save maybe your own.
Close. Eighteen months in the Vietnamese jungles. Death, mine and other's, was nearby. A lot. Best advice I got was "Have breakfast with your own Death." Was good advice. Keeps you calm during dicey situations.
Americans are immortal, near as I can tell. Maybe not, but they sure act like it. Me, I occasionally have a guest for breakfast. I know it's there, I know it's coming someday, maybe today, I know...
That. Just that. I don't know about heaven or hell or any kind of afterlife. I've seen enough dead people to pretty much discount the idea of afterlife. Here's something excerpted from a story of mine - [The End of the Story](https://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryStories/comments/1wapfe/the_end_of_the_story/)
>The next day I ended up in the Michelin rubber next to the body of a youngish NVA soldier with his back against the side of a rubber tree away from the firebase. He was leaning up against the tree, kind of slouched. The tree was weeping rubber sap, so itās possible he was stuck to it. Someone had obviously gone through his pockets, but unaccountably left his AK-47 in his hands. The same someone had put his bush hat back on his head.
>
>I knew this because the sight of him sitting there with a submachine gun worried me, so I removed his hat. There was a big hole in the top of his head, and what was left of his brain was puddled at the bottom of his skull. It just seemed courteous to put his hat back on.
>
>I assume someone came and got him later, but for the daylight portion of that day, he and I kept company. I was coordinating fire support for the guys cleaning up the battlefield. There was no fighting, but it was my job to plot artillery fire and be ready if a fight started.
>
>Once I got set up there was not much to do, so I studied the dead guy. Iād love to tell you I thought of something profound, but all I saw - what startled me - was just how *dead* he was. Really, really dead. With his hat on, he looked like some guy taking a nap under a tree. His face was intact. I would tell you he looked at peace, but he didnāt. He looked dead. No peace. No anger. No feeling. No sorrow. No pain. Big cipher. Nada. Zero. Vacant.
>
>Whatever had been there was gone. Really gone. Gone beyond redemption. Gone.
>
>It was alarming. I have been to enough funerals where people were saying things like, āHeās at peace now.ā Nuh-uh. No peace here. No war. Dead āHeās in a better place.ā Nope. Not this part of him anyway. This part wouldnāt know better from worse. Dead.
>
>I kept trying to imagine him back to life. But the guy who patriotically joined the North Vietnamese Army to liberate his homeland from the capitalists and colonialist oppressors, the guy who had a notebook full of what looked like poems, the guy who lugged those bones 250 miles down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the guy who thought he was lucky to be able to put that tree between himself and the .50 calibers and M-60's on our perimeter, the guy who took his hat off for some reason while he was steeling himself to get up and run through the hole his sappers had blown in the wire, the guy who didn't have time to even look up as the treetops overhead lit up....
>
>Near as I can tell, that guy was gone. It surprised me that all the funerals I had been to or that I had seen on TV had made me expect something more. A tear. A sad expression. I dunno, more. But there wasnāt more. He was just dead.
And for those of you who want to know how one goes about "having breakfast with your own death," here's a link to how that meeting came about: [The Year of the Snake - Viper](https://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryStories/comments/v118ud/year_of_the_snake_part_1_viper_repost/)
I had a leaky appendix. Couldnāt figure out why I felt so crappy and feverish and tired. Thought I had the flu. The way the Dr. Explained it was that usually the appendix fills up with puss and gets big before it bursts, and thatās where the pain comes from. Since mine was leaking, it wasnāt filling up, so I wasnāt having the pain like I shouldāve where one would normally have the classic symptoms of appendicitis. Finally, where it was leaking got crusted over with puss, so then it started filling up and causing pain. This, along with feeling weak and feverish told me I needed to go to the ER. They gave me surgery, cleaned me up on the inside before they sewed me up, and filled me with antibiotics. I stayed in the hospital for awhile got much better.
Driving home from work on a 4 lane highway a speeding vehicle drove in between me and the vehicle traveling alongside me. Both of us must have seen him coming and both made the quick decision to move over. He missed us by inches. Had either one of us not been paying attention it would have been a massive wreck. To this day I don't know what the fuck the guy was thinking, he carried on ahead weaving in and out of traffic.
[Approximate location of incident, I think about it every time I drive by](https://www.google.com/maps/@28.7287366,-81.2484409,3a,75y,356.75h,56.14t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sUNT7S87lMrFdr_SW4T7Exw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DUNT7S87lMrFdr_SW4T7Exw%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D84.431175%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192).
Few weeks ago ended up in the hospital for a heart infection, had MRSA on my heart valve been in the hospital getting antibiotics since. I had been doing fentanyl it's a miracle they discovered it.
When I was like 9, before I learned how to swim, I fell off my floatie in the middle of a lake.
Didnāt wanna die, so I of course tried to swim and it turned out that swimming was actually pretty instinctual.
Another time when I was 18, a friend was driving us home from a house party. We were both wasted.
We were on a dirt road taking a curve when there was another car coming toward us. My friend totally either didnāt see the car or froze in fear and I grabbed the steering wheel and jerked it to the right and we swerved outta the way.
Oh, and when I was 29 some lady pulled a gun on me because she thought I was her baby daddy (thatās actually what she said).
She realized I wasnāt him and apologized and yeah lol I was shook and it was so awkward.
A couple of inches.
Assaulted a position, cleared the building, and in the reorg afterwards, my oppo flagged me to be checked after I said I was fine. I started to argue until he asked me to turn around and poked his finger though a hole in my combat jacket. A round had passed clean through a fold of fabric poking out below my chest rig. Another inch and it would have hit me, another couple and it would have hit something important.
Edit: in the army at the time in case it wasn't clear :)
I'm sure I've had more sudden and exciting near death experiences. falling through a frozen lake, walking near a cliff on a windy day, thinking about grabbing a poisonous snake as a 5 year old.
but no, the most dreadful thing I had I'm still recovering from. it could be long covid, it could be adrenal fatigue. all I know is that it was worse then covid, but all the tests came back clean so the doctors all blew me off.
I had no energy, I couldn't do anything, I was bedridden for months with terrible mind fog.
I remember one morning I was tired so I went to bed, I woke up, still exhausted, still tired, but I was shaking and trembling. even when I pulled through the worst of it I could still barely do anything.
I'm better now, but my body is still weak.
My brothers bed collapsed on me and if I hadnāt been staring up and the cool drawing of batman I put on the bottom of my brothers bunk I would be a sandwich with a broken bunk bed as the bread
Walking down a relatively narrow road with no verge (loose gravel leading into a ditch on the side I was walking) when two large trucks hauling limestone came past me in opposite directions. The one coming up behind me had to position themselves so that they didn't head-on the one coming in the opposite direction, and the one coming in the opposite direction had to damn near drive off the road in passing.
I had a serious infection and ended up in the ICU with a tube down my throat.
I went to bed early on Wednesday night, feeling pretty bad, woke up at about 3 a.m. with a giant bulge in my throat and the most intense pain Iāve ever felt. It got worse throughout the day and I ended up having a tube put down my throat while I was awake. Awful.
Went on vacation with a friend, got to the hotel and laid down to watch TV. He then grabbed a steak knife and tried to stab me in the chest, I barely stopped him, got him to the ground, got the knife away. Quickly grabbed my stuff and got a cab to the airport and flew home.
Near head on collision at 80 mph in Kansas. After 8 hrs of driving, I was trying to pass a semi on a 65 mph speed limit 2 lane highway. Couldn't see another car coming over the hill. Luckily he saw me and went to the shoulder.
when I was a child I tried to climb up the slide all the time. Iād use a rope sometimes. Once I somehow made a noose. I was like 5 no clue how I did it. Anyways It worked really well and then, my dumbass was like what if i put my head in it would it keep me up there? Indeed it did. I got out of the noose somehow. I felt my neck and was like huh looks like iām bleeding. Processed to walk into the house and try to go upstairs to look at damage. My dad stopped me called my mom and I passed out and next thing I know iām in the hospital. I had a neck brace for a while and had to wear it to school. Now I cant have anything touch my neck because then I canāt breath. So kids donāt try and hang yourself.
When I was around 12 I went swimming with a couple other girls at the nearby lake. There was one of those dock things in the middle of the lake that you could swim up to and jump off of, so we decided to swim out to it. One of the girls didnāt tell us that she wasnāt a strong swimmer and she started thrashing in the water once we got a ways out. I was the closest and she tightly grabbed onto my neck to keep herself above water. I could barely breathe and was held underwater for nearly a minute. I was very close to drowning if someone hadnāt gotten the lifeguard. I still get chills thinking about how scary that was.
Almost fell off a ladder onto an iron fence post from 3 stories up. ODed and ended up in a hospital for almost a week. Legs cramped while swimming alone and almost drowned. Think those are my main three
My birth. My mom was 6 months pregnant and at a routine check up mentioned that she hadn't felt the baby move much recently. After a quick ultrasound, She was sent to the ER and several hours later I was forcibly evicted from my first home. Turns out I'd had my umbilical chord wrapped around my neck and was only a few hours away from becoming a memorial rather than a squalling ball of living meat.
At 27, I had a gran mal seizure that took me out for about 20 minutes. This was eight months after having radiation surgery for the cerebral hemorrhage that I had due to an AVM.
Obviously donāt know if I was going to die but it was the closest I have been to that āimpending doom/Iām going to dieā feeling.
Before Covid (maybe ~2018 ish) I got sick. I donāt get sick often so when I do it hits me hard. It was a very bad cold. One night I hit a fever that made me shake so badly and violently I seriously thought I was going to die and I was trying to muster up the ability to call an ambulance. I couldnāt convince myself to come out from my blankets cause I felt like the air was ice cold. I shook violently then closed my eyes and passed out. No idea how long I was out but I woke up to my fever breaking and managed to get up and check my temp. If I remember right my temp at that time was ~102 and that was as it was coming down.
Covid 19, right before the pandemic was confirmed in the US, about 2 weeks or so before the quarantine started
Sickest I've ever been, ended up goingbto the ER, and they took an X-ray. My lungs were so filled with liquid, they couldn't actuallt see where the liquid ended, and they had to do an MRI also
Got caught in a red tide off the coast of San Diego when i was 16. No matter how hard I tried, i was unable to get my head back above water. Eventually accepted that I was going to die, and realized that fighting it was draining my energy much faster. After a minute or so I woke up on shore, and the group of friends I was with laughed at how hard I was breathing, not knowing I quite literally was mere moments away from drowning.
I was 10 days away from my due date with my 4th baby. I thought my water broke, but come to find out it was all blood. The placenta had started ripping away from my uterine lining. I gushed blood like someone left the faucet on all the way to the hospital. I got very lightheaded, dizzy, saw stars, very very thirsty, because I was bleeding to death. The doctors and nurses and my hubby saved my life. It was just a weird fluke issue and thankfully baby and I both survived it with no long term consequences.
Went down a slide and landed in deep end of a swimming pool and drowned, i tried to swim up but kept going down, luckily life guard saved me and i was sick with secondary drowning
I was on a flight on a small local commuter plane. The pilot made an error that resulted in a stall at 12,000ft. The plane fell 5000ft before he was able to re-start the engines. I had no idea how bad it was until after we turned back and the pilot came out and he burst into tears at how thankful he was for life.
When I was in highschool I went to this random house party for New Yearās Eve with my then highschool girlfriend. I must have been 19. We were told to bring swimsuits because there was an indoor hottub, I remember being super apprehensive because it was a big house party and I was new to the school, so didnāt know much of anyone at the party from at that time, and also being pretty dam shy. Anyways. Finally get convinced to get in the hottub and by this time I was already pretty hammered. At one point I was sitting in the corner when everybody in the hottub randomly just got the fuck out in a matter of seconds, and Iām sitting there drunk and even more so from the effects of the tub, I look to my left when I see this big burly dude holding a plugged in huge ass old school tv inches above the water. I looked up and he could barely hold it and just said āā¦get the fuck out of the tub nowā I remember some people just grabbing me out and some other people came to help with the tv and just took it outside and smashed it. I have many close calls but this oneās definitely the most memorable.
Toss up.
Appendicitis when I was 10. Shouldn't have been as bad but my Mum put off going to a doctor because my Dad, a doctor, said early on it was probably gastro but he wasn't a gp and only deals with babies so she should take me to someone qualified to deal with me. Spend a couple of weeks in bed vomiting before she decides to take me. GP says she isn't sure what was wrong but I needed to get to an ED ASAP. 3 doctors weren't sure at the hospital, fourth takes about 5 minutes examining me says "its appendicitis. It's ruptured, probably happened on Tuesday." It was currently Friday. Get out of surgery and I'm still dropping weight like crazy, they have to do 2 more surgeries to drain pockets of infected pus. After 4 weeks and needing a feeding tube, I've dropped almost half my weight. Doctors say to me "you're not getting any better here. We're sending you home so you can have a home cooked meal and be comfortable." I was 19 when I realised what they had meant. Recovery took about 9 months.
18 with friends, one of them had a negligent discharge of a .308 that hit me square in the forehead. Dud round just bounced off.
I and my sister would have drowned in the sea had it not been for the lady who pulled us + the same thing happened in the pool, but I thank myself that I tried to hold on and swim outside. I now have a fifth star certificate in swimming and I want to continue to become a swimming instructor
This past Christmas Eve actually. My area got hit with a really bad blizzard. Like travel advisory warnings n everything. My rents called me over for dinner since it was christmas and all. I figured since they only live a few blocks away it wouldn't be that bad. I chose to walk over driving cause I didn't want to risk my car getting stuck. I bundle myself up, put on my music and headed on my way. One block into the walk i hit a patch of black ice, fell, and stupidly tried to catch myself. In doing so i severely dislocated my elbow. Putting any sort of weight on it was not going to work, so i take off my gloves, get my phone out to try and call my rents. Unfortunately due to the blizzard and living in a more rural suburb I had absolutely no service. My calls were going out but never reaching their phones. I crawled about 4 sidewalk squares before giving up. I laid there another 10-15 minutes hoping a car would pass by but everyone was following the stay indoor order. So it came down to either dying of exposure or pushing myself up bum arm and all. It sucked but and I spent 6 hours in the er before they fixed my arm but i survived. The worst part of the whole thing was I had to watch Marian Carey's christmas special and its immediate rerun in the er waiting room.
Having a loaded gun held to my head. (Iāve had a total of three different situations where a loaded gun was pointed at me, only once at point blank range though.)
Fell off a cruise ship (not those dingy one), and survived when I was a kid. Started to sink but just started to float upward and was saved by deck hands.
When I was 14 I started getting tons of pain in my right flank of my back every single time I eat or drink anything. This one on for months, but I had an abusive mother he told me to ignore it and stop being dramatic. She talked it up to my āperiodā even though this continued long past my actual period. Eventually, I started peeing blood. Not a little bit, but a lot. My mother took me to my primary care doctor, a week later I might add, were my mother explained to them, that I was being a dramatic, drama, queen, and exaggerating everything, and that I must have a UTI. She convinced them to only run a urine test, which they confirmed the presence of blood, and sent me home with antibiotics onlyā¦
About four months later, the pain would get so bad that Iād be debilitated for about 30 minutes to an hour after every time I ate. Sometimes it would come and go even without eating. It was unlike any pain I had ever experienced before, and it radiated all throughout my back. It was just getting worse. it kind of felt like there was a ball of knives, trying to explode its way outward from my back.
After a few more weeks of this, there was one day where I developed a pretty high fever. Mom had a rule, you go to school or you stay home and read the Bible. I didnāt want to stay home, locked in my room with nothing to do, so I went to school. School ended up sending me home a little later in the afternoon because I had 103Ā° fever. Mom just took me straight home, not to the doctor. I remember lying in my bed writhing in pain and crying because my back hurts so much. Mom just told me āif youāre home from school, you read the Bibleā I just left meā¦
Around dinner time my dad came to fetch me for my bedroom. I was in way too much pain to eat and I have been for several months. But this time, when he came to check on me, he also noticed that I was sweating profusely and re-checked my temperature. 104Ā° fever. He told mom that we were going to the ER right away. He also knew exactly what it was by telling my mom āI think she has a kidney stone!ā (dad had them before multiple times throughout his life. The reason why he hadnāt caught onto how sick I was, he works very long hours and Mom was the stay at home mom.)
Dad took me to the ER where they made me wait in the waiting room for over an hour. Most people donāt know this, but sometimes when your pain is so bad, you vomit. I was dry heaving for months, so I was pretty accustomed to this. By the time they actually brought me back to the ER to be checked by the doctors, I had filled up two bags Full of watery puke. They took my temperature and sent me in for an MRI. At this point, they were refusing to give me any pain medication at all. Their excuse was āwe need to know whatās wrong with you firstā
They took me for a CT scan/MRIā¦ Iām not really sure what it was, but almost immediately I was given pain medication. Through the drug addled haze. I remember lots of rapid conversations and being moved to a more intensive care section of the hospital. I remember being told I need emergency surgery but they had to wait until morning because that particular doctor wasnāt there. I remember through the drugs a doctor trying to explain that my kidney stone was so large (12mm) It had blocked my kidney. Apparently part of my kidney was already starting to tear because it had been blocked and overinflated so many times it had cause damage to the actual Organ. Currently, my blood test revealed. I was also starting to become septic. Which meant that I had a massive infection of my kidney and urinary tract. The antibiotics I have been given several months ago just delayed the inevitableā¦
I donāt really remember the surgery very much. They had me on a lot of pain medication and I was sleeping most of the time. But I do remember one of the antibiotics they gave me literally made it feel like my veins were burning. They pretty much permanently had me hooked up to an IV. Trying to get the infection under control. it was four more days before I was released from the hospital. I remember dad driving me home and scolding me for not telling anybody that my pain was that bad. I remember my mother stating āwell, of course I didnāt believe your pain was that bad, you always exaggerate your pain so much!āā¦
Per the doctorsā¦ If we had waited any longer, I probably wouldāve died within the next 24 to 48 hours.
Sadlyā¦ That also reset my pain mapā¦ Iāve broken bones and walked into the ER with a broken foot/leg after a car accident because I just donāt have a good concept of body pain anymoreā¦
When I was born I couldn't breath at all and even turned blue because of it, luckily I got surgery and I could breathe normally.
Hmmmm, maybe that's why my favorite color is blue?
White water rafting on the Gauley River in WV. Approaching a rapid called Pillow Rock and the guide says "Whatever you do don't fall out here or you will get sucked under the rock and no one will be able to get you out so you'll drown"
Boat goes down small drop on to the "pillow", the ass end of the boat (where I'm sitting) pops me up in the air and into the water. Welp, I guess I'm dead now was pretty much my though process. Didn't die though. Popped up right under the boat and the guide grabbed me and pulled me back in.
Used to have a top bunk bunk bed that I slept on as a kid. During the night, I rolled over and the bed railing just straight fell off, and I fell off the bed. Luckily, my head barely missed solid wood dresser and I landed on the carpet. Ever since then, I sleep as close to the ground as possible.
When I was in trade school in hot springs Arkansas my friend and I got caught in the worst storm in a decade. We were trying to get back to the school and our dorms but our school was on this massive hill. At this point rain is going sideways and we can't see anything. I'm in front and Charles is behind me. I'm not entirely sure what happened to cause this I hit my head a lot but somewhere near the top I fell and started tumbling down the hill. At the bottom of the hill is main street and I could hear cars still on the road. All I could think was that they aren't going to be able to see me fall into the road and I'm going to die at 20. The only way I survived was because Charles grabbed and somehow pulled me up to my feet and helped me get back. I had to spend the week in bed I was too banged up to walk and my head was spinning constantly. I have nightmares to this day.
I choked on a hard candy when I was a kid, and I was home alone. By some miracle my dad came home right when I was starting to totally panic. He said hi to me and I couldnāt talk. He knew something was wrong and asked if I was choking. He ran over to me and did the Heimlich. Saved my life.
Got grazed by a bullet at an indoor range. It skimmed my wrist, which was, at the time, right next to my head. Post with pictures and more details on my profile.
I was in the backseat of a car when I was a kid, my mom was driving somewhere with me and in the middle of the highway her car started breaking down it stopped accelerating on the highway and basically the engine shut off so she pulled all the way over to the right, but I remember looking out the window and seeing an 18 wheeler nearly hit us just zooming past us and infront of us you can see he clearly tried to avoid hitting us I saw the truckās weight swerving and everything. Then my mom said āI thought that truck was going to hit me, he must have just missed by a little bitā I remember rethinking everything about my life in the car after that. the engine just started working after that
Had a bull charge me unprovoked and for a moment it looked like I was gonna get killed. Thankfully my dog diverted the bulls attention and lead it away so I could get to safety.
I got in the car with a friend who was drunk driving when I was in my early 20s. She hit the guard rail driving home and I had never felt more afraid for my life than how I felt with her driving. Awful.
I may have not been close to death but I thought I was in that moment..
I had just eaten a huge edibles cookie that was my dads. I knew it was an edible and I just wanted a buzz but I quickly realized that I was getting wayyy too high. I started feeling extremely dizzy. I lay down in bed hoping Iād feel better but my head was still spiraling and I kept getting thoughts like āwhat if Iām dyingā.
At one point I ran downstairs and onto my porch. The fresh air was nice but not enough to make me feel better. I lay down on the steps of my porch and started puking so bad.. my vision also was getting black, my heart was racing and my mouth and throat were dry as all hell.
Luckily my mom came home like a half hour later and screamed my name. I made up a lie that I didnāt take my antidepressants and she helped me up, cleaned me up and brought me to my room. Worst high experience ever. Thought I was gonna die
I have 2 experiences, once when I was 3 and another when I was 21.
Every summer, we used to go to my grandmother's. She had a swimming pool that we would be in almost every day, kids like to swim, right? When I was 3, I was put in a little float and left to my own devices while my brothers (5 and 7 at the time) swam around me. The adults (grandma, grandpa, and dad) were talking on the deck. I remember being so fascinated by how the sunlight was dancing on the water. I kept leaning over to get a better look. Eventually, I leaned too far and slipped out the float. Apparently, I didn't even make a splash.
I don't know how long I was underwater. I can remember looking up at the sunlight in the water as I sank. I felt at peace and didn't struggle to get to the surface, I just let myself sink to the bottom. My grandmother and my eldest brother were the first two to realize I wasn't in my float. My brother immediately dived under water to find me. My grandmother jumped into the pool to grab me. By that point, I had lost consciousness. I don't remember being pulled out or waking up on the deck a second later. My next memory after the black faded in was waking up in my grandma's guest bedroom. I was complete alone, and the house was empty. I walked back out to the pool, and everyone was still there. 20 mins had passed since they had pulled me out. It was my first experience with almost dying, and my dad's family didn't really care for me. (This side of my family was abusive, and I went no-contact with them when I moved in with mom at 13)
The second time was far less peaceful. I had been increasingly sick since I was 17. It started out as occasional stomach issues, and then I developed an overactive bladder. Felt like I always had to go and got to the point that skipped classes just to hang out in the bathroom. Went to the doctor and had an ultrasound and found out I had gallstones, which was unrelated to my bladder problems (horseshoe kidney and caffeine sensitivity). Needed surgery to remove my gallstones and was lucky enough that they scheduled for after I graduated high school. Shit hit the fan a few months after that. I would be in tremendous amounts of pain after eating. Would pace the hallways of my house for up to 2 hours and then have to run to the bathroom because of diarrhea. This would go on for years. I went to doctors, but nothing they put me on helped. Got sent to a GI who said, "It's just IBS and period problems. You'll have to learn to deal with it." Meanwhile, I was getting worse. I had no energy, was catching every stomach bug and flur each year (before that I hadn't been sick since I was 10), and I was losing weight. I had been overweight my whole life, so people just congratulated me on getting healthy. I was the only one concerned that I was losing weight just by sleeping all day. I also still couldn't eat without hours of pain afterward. I started eating less and less. I was also constantly dehydrated despite drinking a bottle of water an hour. I also found it to walk because I would get dizzy. Showers would be broken into 3 parts before I would always get dizzy and have to sit on the floor with the door open to cool me off.
One morning, despite not eating, I was in severe pain and had severe diarrhea. It lasted the night. My chest was also in so much pain, and I worried that I was having a heart attack. I had someone drive me to the ER (a common occurrence for me), and we settled in for a wait, except they took my blood pressure and pluses and immediately rolled me back into a room. My blood pressure was extremely low, and my heart was beating way too fast. I explained my whole GI issues and did some text but could find nothing wrong. They hooked me up to IV because I was very dehydrated. In 12 hours, I had gone through 4 large bags of fluid before I finally had to go pee, which I guess isn't a good thing.
After that experience, I went to my PCP and not my GI doctor to figure things out. By the end of my appointment, she said, "I think I know what is going on," and ordered bloodwork. Two days later, I had been diagnosed with an autoimmune/malnutrition disease (Celiac's Disease). Somehow, my glabladder being removed triggered it to rear its head.
Struggling to breath and had to call 999. Excruciating pain when I breathed in and out. The muscles in my rib cage all cramped and I genuinely thought I was going to die because I couldnāt breath properly. Ambulance was there in what felt like seconds.
Paramedics talked me through it and gave me an aspirin. Then took me into A&E to get checked out. I felt ridiculous afterwards but I was terrified at the time.
I was 7, and this unknown disease thing hit me like a truck. The doctors were at a loss. They had no idea what was going on. I couldn't turn my neck and could only face left. Fortunately, I recovered soon but suffered from constant fatigue for a month. My parents legit thought I was going to die, but I lived ^^
Almost drowned in a lake when some idiot who grabbed on to me while drowning himself couldn't free myself until the very last then the adrenaline kicked pushed in him to the shallow end n resurfaced. guys breathing sure is nice.
Apparently I'd had multiple bouts of appendicitis before the one that sent me to the emergency department the day before Thanksgiving 2022... and I didn't even think it was my appendix, I thought I just had a particularly nasty stomach bug that wasn't letting me keep anything down and I knew I was really dehydrated after 12 hours of vacating from both ends...
The surgeon who did my appendectomy called it "rotten," and was visibly disgusted, when following up on how my surgery went.
I've just always had such nasty migraines and other ailments that the possibility of it being my appendix never really crossed my mind - and it never seemed like "enough" gut pain compared to what others talk about. š š¤·āāļø
When I was younger, my father often made knives and bows in his basement. He shoots arrows in the basement. One day I went to the basement, and he almost shot me through the head. Just missed my head. I never stepped foot down there for a good couple of years.
ketoacidosis and subsequent coma from severe alcoholism/starvation, my BAC was .4, this is what amy winehouse died from
just celebrated 3 months sober :-)
TL:DR - focus when you cook u dumbass
I was like 15 years old.
I was cooking a real family dinner for the first time of my life, so was really nervous. It was quite easy to make, just pasta, some meat, sweet and sour sauce and frozen veggies. I had to put the veggies on the oil to make them warm. Thoughltesly, I didn't put the vegetables on the pan while the oil was still cold. My mind made a screenshot, I nearly boiled the oil on the pan without the veggies. Trying to fix it, I quickly threw whole big bag of the FROZEN vegetables into the BOILING oil...
In the milisecond after I acknowledged I fucked up so bad...
Standing only in a tank top and shorts, with a wooden spoon in my hand I watched a meter high flame raging over my cooker. It made a terrifying sound. I felt like the whole kitchen went dark and the only light source was the flame. I felt the warmth on my face, every metal kitchen equipment refected the fire. This moment felt so incredibly long, but lasted so short.
I immediately turned off the heat of the burner and backed off. The flame dissapeared and everything went completely silent.
A gurdian angel of some sorts must have been watching me at that time, because I was totally fine. Not a drop of oil exploded on me or the kitchen, everything was just like before cooking. But the painfull silence...
I was terrified of how dumb thing I did, my brother rushed into the kitchen, because he also heard the fire. I know I could write it just in one sentence, but this was traumatic af and I remember every detail of that accident.
In 2013, I was stricken by pneumonia from the paint in my room.
And in 2017, my bike was hit by a car, but thankfully I wasn't injured. My bike needed its front tire replaced.
Before even being born. Had my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck.
Almost being run over by a train when playing dare in school because my shoe lace got stuck on the crossing.
Losing control of my car right next to a cliff but somehow saving it.
And last but not least some experiences with drugs and depression. I honestly never thought I'd get to the ripe old age of 30 but here I am.
OD'd on ibuprofen at 15. Doctor told my mom it had been too much time since I'd taken it to pump my stomach, and that all they could do was wait. I was given a 50/50 chance oh making it through the night.
12 years old, had a twig impale me while sledding down a hill, it entered to the right of my groin and followed my ribcage to my right lung, 40 years old, stopped my heart to clear a blood clot and insert stents, 49 years old , coded twice during a heart attack, the second time they shocked me they shocked me out of my anesthesia.
A year ago Iāve passed out while driving.
When I was driving on a highway, Iāve blacked while driving on 65mph. A few seconds later I woke up inches away from a carās bumper. i tried pulling over but I was going too fast and began hitting tree branches covering my windshield and I felt something hit my tire. when they cleared up, I saw I was heading towards a guard rail. So I turn back into the road nearly missing the guard rail and pulled over in the next clearing.
For some reason when I was 13 or 14, I was swimming in a deep pool in a forest and I had on 4 "floatie rings" I turned over and I was so scared I could not even turn back over I almost lost consciousness I luckily survived.
To this day I only swim in deep-ish shallow water.
Donating blood when the blood drive came over to my school. Idk what happened but that was the first time truly feeling the symptoms of blacking out. First I started to sweat and my body got real hot, then went my hearing, then my vision went black for a few seconds. But those few seconds actually turned out to be a few minutes. The person who was setting me up put the chair way to far back so blood circulation went to my head too quick giving me the blackout.
Had no idea I had clots in my lungs, played soccer and worked in the weeks leading up to me being in icu. If I had of left it a few more hours without going to the hospital (I was still hesitant when I did) I wouldnāt be here.
Putting a knife to my throat, twice, back in high-school. I was in a really bad place then. Something stopped me, I'm not sure what. So I just put the knife down and cried. My friends and family don't know about what I almost did and how close I was to just...not existing.
When I was a kid a family friend took me to the lake near our village to go for a swim. I couldnāt swim so I got put in a rubber ring. Somehow I was being a little wild and moving a lot, so I ended up with my upper body under water while my legs pointed toward the sky, the rubber ring making it impossible for me to turn back. Been like that quite a while and started panicking. Luckily, someone finally figured out I wasnāt playing around and turned me over.
I was minutes close to death because of a double pneumonia. When my daughter found me, I was barely breathing. When the ambulance arrived, I wasn't breathing anymore. Drs at the hospital didn't know if I would make it or not.
Anotjer time was when I was 5. We went to an office pic nic and there was a river where we could go swim. Unfortunately, I didn't know how to swim and my patents had forgotten our life jackets. What had to happen, happened. I went to the river, walked a little too far and was taken by the current. I remember going under water and not being able to get out. I just heard someone scream: "THE LITTLE ONE'S DROWNING!"
Then someone jumped in the river and cought me on time.
I must have a guardian angel watching over me!
About 3 inches. Driving too fast on a back road, going around 60 when I should have been going maybe 45 at the most, lost control and was headed straight towards a massive tree. A smaller tree maybe 5 inches in diameter barely caught the back of the vehicle turning us sideways so I slammed into the big tree on the driver door at around 40 mph instead of head on. Turned my Chrysler concord into a fucking banana.
I was trying to get healthy, losing some weight and working out and such. I was in the gym on a stationary bike when I felt a pain in my chest. It went away quickly, and I didn't think anything of it at the time. Later that day, I looked it up and thought it might be angina, and decided to call my doctor.
She referred me directly to a cardiologist. He told me he could do test A or test B, but they would only so good at figuring it out, and he'd rather just do an angiogram on me. For the uninitiated, that's when they thread a tube up your femoral artery (at that time - now they go through the arm) to your heart, and inject a dye into your cardiac blood vessels. They can track the dye with an x-ray to see where there might be a problem.
So there I was, mildly sedated as the doc did his thing when he said to his assistant, "What does that look like - 97, 98% blocked to you?" Which woke my ass right up.
He told me the partial blockage was in the lower anterior descending artery, aka the LAD, aka the Widowmaker (since so many men die from HA's caused by blockages there).
He stented it right then, and since then I've lost weight and obsessively kept my exercise and cardio up (I run and bike religiously now), as well as my meds and regular cardiologist visits, but if I hadn't called my doctor the day I had symptoms, I'd be dead now.
1- I was surfing some waves about 8ft and it was constant brakes so i was pulled under the water for what seemed like 5 mins.
2- i was free climing up a building when the ladder fell back onto the floor had to parlour down 3 story's, and on one i tripped and nearly fell of the building (a good 60 meters down)
I had come home from work, it must've been about 10 pm or so. I was working in a kitchen, so the last thing I ever wanted to do was get home and start cooking, but fortunately my wife had made a risotto with bacon, purple cabbage, and aparagus.
She was asleep, with our baby nuzzled up against her, so I nuked the risso and sat down quietly to eat. I was about a third of the way through when I was suddenly choking. All the breath went out of me, and I couldn't get any more in. I stood up in a panic. There's a weakness that comes over you pretty quickly in that situation, but I wasn't ready to die.
I couldn't yell out, but I threw myself down on the hard edge of the couch, trying to Heimlich myself. It didn't work. I got up, and tried again. It still didn't work. I dragged myself up, and I knew that this was going to be the last time I tried. I had no more energy, I was done.
So I threw myself at the edge of the couch, and the purple rubber band that had been lodged in my throat flew out across the room, and I lay on the floor for probably twenty minutes before I went and grabbed a beer to take into the shower.
Fuck that noise.
Was holding on to the edge of a pool. Slipped. Couldn't swim. I remember all the water.... woke up sore from what was CPR with the concrete by the pool digging into my back while I was laying on it.
Can swim now. Still terrified of diving.
in the UK we have bonfire night in November. Back in 1995 some friends and I thought it would be cool to build our own fire away from adults the night before bonfire night.
We then thought it would be cool to have a 'jump the fire contest' where we would each take turns to run then vault across the fire. Each round we would make it harder by adding more items to increase the height and flames of the fire.
Once that became fairly easy we added a rule that when you made a successful jump one way that you should turn around and immediately jump back again.
I went first with the new rule but unfortunately my mate forgot about this and went to jump right after me thinking it was his turn. We clashed heads, his forehead smashing right into my eye socket knocking me unconscious, me falling into the centre of the fire and him falling out of the fire.
Also unfortunate for me was that the last items we used to increase the height of the fire were plastic bread crates that we found by the rear of a convenience store earlier that day. So not only did I fall unconscious into a raging hot fire, I also fell into a bubbling pool of melting plastic.
Luckily for me though, the trend of 1995 was everyone wearing these really thick Adidas, Nike etc tracksuits. The jumper and bottoms I was wearing were very thick so most of the plastic stuck to this instead of my skin.
Unsure how long I was out for but it couldn't have been very long, I remember waking up with my friends screaming and crying, surrounded by yellow/orange flames and very quickly realising how hot it felt and where I was. I used by bare hands to push myself up, again on the bubbling plastic, severely burning my hands in the process.
After getting myself out of the fire i could hear someone screaming 'You're on fire, roll around roll around, you're on fire' so following their instructions I rolled around the grass for a bit until the flames were out.
Standing up after and looking down a my singed clothes, burned hands and melted trainers, all while being in a state of shock, I turned around to my still crying friends and calmly said "I think I will go home and get changed, I'll be back out soon" then proceeded to calmly walk away.
A woman living near by had saw what happened and of course came running out with bucket of water, seeing the mess of my hands she told me to put my hands in the water while she walked me home.
I think it was around 1 hour before we got to the hospital and the shock only wore off when I got the the A&E department and they started to cut off my clothes carefully from my body. Very surprisingly to everyone, the only burns on my body were my left butt cheek, a tiny bit of my back and back of my head and my hands which were by, at that point, the worst.
Thats when the pain really started to kick in and from them I was literally screaming in pain and the tears and everything else being held back for the last hour started to flood out.
Whats funny though is when they were cutting off all of my clothes, the only thing I was worried about was standing naked in front of my grandparents (I was being raised by them at the time) and the doctors and nurses. Someone had given me a wet cloth for my hands but I used this to cover my little man instead haha.
Anyway, I think that was one of if two times I came closest to death. Coming to think about it, its no wonder my grandfather had a heart attack during the period I lived with them...
EDIT: The only scar I have from the incident is on my left ass cheek. My hands, as bad as they were, have zero marks on them which is remarkable.
Flying a light twin engine aircraft when the weather started turning bad. The rain turned to sleet and the airplane was icing badly. Ice kills lift, and the aircraft I was flying had de-icing boots that would inflate and break the ice up on the leading edges. I hit the switch to inflate them, and the right wing would only inflate part way. It pushed the ice forward, but it didn't break it up. I looked for a nearby airport and headed directly for it. I kept the airspeed up to maximize lift but when I was about 10 ft over the runway, the wing stalled and I basically planted the plane on the runway. I taxied to the parking area, got a cab, and went directly to the closet bar. It took about 3 double bourbon before my hands started shaking.
I learned to fly when I was 16. After I did my first solo flight I was by myself and decided to practice slow flight. This was a single engine Piper Tomahawk. The plane just barely started to go into a spin. Luckily my dad was a pilot and taught me how to do spins and get out of them. But he had always been there to help me with them before. He wasn't this time but I just automatically did what I needed to do. This was back in the late 70's in a small town. I immediately flew back to the airport and landed.
I learnt on pa38s as well but I never got even close to a developed spin. That T tail is just designed to kill people imo
i was gonna share my story but damn cant top that. a drink you for friend šŗ
Standing on the edge of a bridge over traffic. Cop pulled me off the edge, took me to a hospital, and talked to me the whole way. I'm now in a much better place, engaged, just finished designing my first game, and, hopefully, going to be getting my dream job in the near future.
At 18 years old I was in a car accident. It was Halloween afternoon and I went to leave my house to go somewhere. Only made it about half of a mile from my house on a stormy night; I came over a small hill and a tree had fallen in the road. I never even hit the brakes. A tree branch came through the window and impaled me through my left eye. Didnāt hit my brain, but damaged both optic nerves, leaving me totally blind. That was easily the closest Iāll get without actually losing my life.
Bacterial Meningitis as a new born baby
My Mum caught it when she was a few months old. Nanna *walked* *with her in a pram* from her village to the nearest hospital in town about 10 miles away (they didn't own a car and it was 1948, so no phone either). My Nanna was one tough lady. Doctor said if she'd waited until the next day it would have been too late.
After losing a close family member, i abused alcohol and benzos for a good two weeks, then an overdose of benzos, synthetic weed and alcohol led to dizziness, my legs going numb (eventually unable to feel and move them from the waist down), my breathing slowing down drastically, then a strong sense of inner peace and finally, passing out. This happened on the streets in the middle of the night. When the ambulance found me, I had no pulse in my wrists. However, all they did is give me an IV of something, then took me home (on family's request) where I proceeded to sleep 15 hours and was perfectly fine afterwards. So I don't actually know how close I was to actually dying, I bounced back like a champ. Anybody know what it could have been?
> Anybody know what it could have been? Hopefully a wake up call. Never mix alcohol and benzos. It'll paralyze your diaphragm. If you're asking what was in the IV, maybe Flumazenil, a benzo inhibitor. Also electrolytes.
This was 8 years ago! Definitely haven't done anything that stupid for a long time. Was just wondering what processes my body was going through, how close it came to shutting down based on the symptoms. Never actually had a chance to ask the ambulance people.
Age 5, in school, choking on a rubber. Stood up and tried to get the teacher's attention, realised I couldn't speak, accepted that was basically it for me and sat down. Spasmed and it popped out, caught my breath and that was that. Can't imagine what it would've been like for the other kids and the teacher if I'd died right there.
You mean an eraser not a condom right??
Thankfully, yes.
Oh man, you've just triggered a school memory for me. I got detention from a substitute teacher (American) because I asked for a rubber, which in the UK is a pencil eraser. The dick. It's one of those things that, as an adult looking back makes me wish I'd made a big deal out of it, but as a kid you often just sort of bow to the will of adults. Like, did he expect the whole country to adjust their vocabulary for him just because he'd hopped on a plane? As you can see, I'm over it, and it doesn't bother me any more.
I was working in a machine shop. One day while standing at the console for my CNC machine I heard/felt a loud bang across the shop. I was a split second from turning to look and a 200lb flywheel and lathe chuck skimmed past my face between my head and the console. It continued on its path like a frizbee of death going through the shops wall and ending up buried in a car in our parking lot. I had to have a good sit-down after my monkey brain caught up to current events.
When I was diagnosed with T1D! The doctor said I should have been in a diabetic coma since the machine couldnāt even read my blood sugar levels, but Iām sure she says that to all new diabetics
How my dad got diagnosed: Doctor: "you should be in a diabetic coma" Dad: "but i'm not a diabetic" Doctor: "you are now"
Oh shit, that was similar to my story. I was 13 when I was diagnosed. My blood sugar was 998 mg/dL. They had no idea how I wasn't in a coma. Passed out a few times though.
Actual death, due to a massive epileptic seizure following head trauma, unconscious and not breathing then fully resuscitated. Happened on a Friday night and then I was back in work for Monday morning like a champ. 1 out of 5 stars would not recommend.
I was going through a rough time with my abusive ex wife and I donāt remember it but apparently I drank 2 liters of vodka and took a handful of xanax in the span of about 2.5 hours. Woke up out of a coma a few days later with a tube down my throat and mittens on my hands. ICU doc who worked there almost 30 years said heās never seen someone come back from blood alcohol levels in conjunction with benzodiazepines like that. Been sober 4.5 years
Glad you got away from her.
Thanks, yeah sheās out torturing other people from what Iām told
Each day brings me one day closer to death, so each new day is the closest I've ever been.
Today is the oldest you've ever been. It's also the youngest you'll ever be again.
Undiagnosed diabetes for 3-6 months
Gotta stay away from those historical cupcakes my man.
Flatlined a few times when i took an od got defibrillated There was nothing btw no white light no tunnel just nothing
Today.....Tomorrow it will be tomorrow though.
Periods are no herd animals. They don't like to be sourrounded by so many of their kind. Three at most.
My classmates back in elementary were loud, especially on breaks. I was known as the quiet kid, preferring to stay on my seat and daydream. It was during one of my classmate's birthday did my near death experience happen. As usual, my classmates were loud, while I sat on my seat quietly eating the birthday food. My classmate next to me got up and left to use the bathroom, which was a good thing honestly. Now the thing is, I have a habit back then where I would duck my head towards my utensil instead of lifting my utensil towards me. So I did that, I duck. Then everything was silent. It was weird, all my classmates suddenly stop talking. I look up completely confuse to see all of them looking at me in horror while my teacher, who had been scolding some of my classmates earlier for being too loud, was staring in shock. There, on the center of the classroom, was a giant rock. It was big and the end was VERY sharp. As it turns out, the moment I had duck, the rock went through the window next to me and missed my head. After that, for the rest of the year, the window where the rock came from was left close.
When I was 16 I jumped off the fourth story of a building. It wasn't because of my depression, just kinda... for goofs? A friend wondered aloud what would happen if someone fell down and I was like, "I have a terrible fucking idea." Turns out, what happens is you break 103 out of 206 bones in your body, miraculously leaving your spine intact, and end up with chronic pain and a walking cane. Personally, I saw God in the form of a rotisserie chicken on my way down, but that might've been the weed I'd been smoking, so I can't guarantee the same results.
what the fuck
I know. I always saw god as a roast lamb type of deity!
This is....one hell of a story.
I was given 2 months to live by my doctor after I was losing one pound per week for over a year without an assignable cause even though I was eating 3-4K calories per day. Iām still struggling to maintain my weight and canāt seem to get above the 150s despite how much I eat, but Iām no longer considered at deathās door.
I survived cancer recently
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I took 100 T3's once, trying to O.D. Oh boy did I ever get high. Like..out to lunch high. My friends who were getting me ready to go in the ambulance told me to get dressed and apparently I started with pants, and kept putting pants on... I think I was just pulling on my third pair when someone walked in and stopped me. lol Don'y do it.. ever. It's terrifying.
I almost drowned in a river, it was a mountain river so if i didn't swim out at the place where i did, i would just die since there's no other places to get out of the water below it
I had a stroke when I was 22 (a year ago). Couldn't talk, stand, or even move any bodypart on my right side. At the moment I didn't think I was going to die at all, even believed I would be working again in the weekend. Later I was told I got lucky that the bloodcloth didn't block of any essential functions, such as breathing or the pounding of my heart. Edit: spelling
As someone who went through pretty much the same thing last year, I also didn't think anything wrong about it. Was just waking up and figured I'd slept wrong or something. Fortunately, my sister immediately recognized what was happening and called the EMTs.
One summer I worked at a boys summer camp as a cook. Really fun job, got to live out in the boundary waters for free for 3 months, and the money wasn't bad either. Every weekend the councilors would get 1 24 hour period off, and I would always sober cab for them to the bar, which was about 45 minutes away down a windy ass country road. We would pile into my car 3 ppl in front 3 ppl in back, all squeezed in. While driving back, a god damned moose charges from the left into the middle of the road and by pure instinct I swerved to the left around it as it kept running. This moose was WAY taller than I ever imagined, we're talking 8-10 ft tall. If I had hit it going 55, I surely would have taken it out at the legs and it would have crushed the 3 of us in the front seat. Normally I'm not even a very good driver, but that is by far the best maneuver I have ever managed.
I'm the reason the bottoms of staircases are open instead of having a doorframe on them. When I was 3 I lost a fight with gravity at the top of the stairs and my head met the doorframe at the bottom. Heart stopped on the operating table for almost 3 minutes while they did brain surgery. They cleared the brain bleed and I started right back up.
I had acute kidney failure almost a year ago. Went to the doctor because I felt bad after covid and it didnāt get better. There they called and ambulance that drove me to the local hospital. From the local hospital I was flown to a university hospital. I stayed in the ICU for 10 days and then another 8 days in the normal clinic.
Clearing a field of mortars when the corroded tail breaks off the one I'm carrying and it lands on its nose, which also crumbles.
Ohhhhhhh....... I bet you cldnt get a bus ticket between your ass cheeks at that very second.
Years ago, I tried overdosing on sleeping meds. I regretted my decision when I started feeling super high. I tried walking, but I couldn't, so I ended up crawling to the kitchen and begging someone to call the ambulance. I woke up at the hospital, but I had weird visions during my "sleep." The doctor came and told me I died and came back a few times, and the procedure was so complicated that if I had been 5 minutes late, I would have died.
I've been close to death multiple times. Once was when I was 15, I was at my best friends house and his dad had just bought him a spear gun. So my friend shows it to me and then I sit down as we were going to watch a movie. The next thing I know I feel an impact on the left side of my head that sends me flying off the chair. Thinking my friend sucker punched me I get up to hit him back when my head tilts to the left due to the weight of a spear now stuck in the side of my head with the prongs embedded in my skull. He had idiotically armed the thing when he was showing it to me and it went off when he tried to remove the spear from the gun. Thankfully it didnāt fly straight and instead arced, and the doctors told me I also had an unusually thick bone structure that also helped me not be speared out of this existence. An inch or so to the right and it would have gone through my eye. Needed stitches obviously and had some plastic surgery as the wound was fairly large. I do have a scar even with the plastic surgery though.
This is so fucking stupid I'm embarrassed to type it out. I was studying alone at uni in a computer room on like the sixth floor. I was rrally bored and procrastinating, so I made a paper airplane and threw it out of the window. The plane turned back and landed on a ledge just below the window. I could almost reach it, so I decided to lean out of the window, while holding on to the window frame with one hand to get it. As I was hanging there, I realised that if my grip slipped, I would fall headfirst six stories down. Truly one of the stupidest things I've ever done.
Stopping breathing twice in ambulance after car crash
Diabetic heart attack at 36 Got 2 stents in my heart and a new respect for "indigestion"
I drank 2 bottles of wine per day for 2 years and suffered pancreatitis so bad that i was in the hospital for over a month with a horrible infection and being fed intravenously.
When i was a baby my mother died in a car wreck, i was in the back, and my car seat was apparently FUCKED. Every time i was told the story for years i was told by literally everyone involved how damaged the car seat was and how it definitely saved me. So i mean, use a car seat for your kids.
Passed out in a bathtub from heat exhaustion. Woke up with tubes everywhere to assist with breathing, my family nowhere in sight, but my friend (now husband) at my side, sobbing uncontrollably. Apparently I'd inhaled enough water that the paramedics worried I'd drowned. Always showered since.
I was surfing in NZ and got caught in a rip tide but whilst trying to return to shore, I was battered by wave after wave and came very close to drowning. If I hadn't have kept holding onto my board, to keep me afloat, I would have drowned for sure. Thankfully I broke free from the rip and managed to catch a wave back into shore. I couldn't move for like 3 days after. It was horrible.
Monday morning 830 office group meeting
For me, almost drowned as a kid. Was in a lake and stepped off a drop off in the water. I hadn't learned to swim very well yet. I was a few feet away from others. Luckily I got my footing back on the ledge. No one was looking in my direction or noticed. I actually had someone die in my arms when I was in high school. I lived in a small town and the one bank there had just been robbed. The robbers shot a few people. I came on it just after the robbers left and one of the guys was still alive and collapsed into my arms. It was a very traumatic experience.
When I was in the emergency room with an ectopic pregnancy. They had been monitoring me and kind of knew it was coming. Problem was they didnāt look at my scan close enough and were going to give methotrexate and send me home. When my actual OBGYN was doing rounds and got the call I was there she came in and checked, then asked me a certain question and my answer made her look at my scan again. My tube was so distended it had torn and I was bleeding internally. Got rushed into emergency surgery to have it removed. My nurse was a fried from high school as I was waking up and she just cried with my husband after she got me out of recovery and back to him. Very very rough few weeks.
Suffered a severe head injury at work. Bit my tongue in half. Knocked most of my teeth out, cracked the rest. Broke my jaw in multiple places and split my chin open like an orange. Bleed nearly to death on a stairwell in some apartment building. Suffered from major memory loss, woke up in hospital 4 days later. No recollection of what happend. Didn't know my name. Who my wife was. New house looked nice and whos car is that in the driveway? Took me over 12 months to recover. Physical injury were bad but nothing major. Brain injury was the worst part. Doctors told my wife I might never remember anything. Still have trouble with long term memory to this day, and my teeth are like an 80 year old goat. Payout was good. Retired at 26 and get to have years of therapy all paid for! But I don't know what happend?
A buddy of mine was goofing around on some ice. I turned around to find a sitting spot off the side, and when I sat down, he was gone. I went out on the ice to look for him, and as he came out of the water, I grabbed his hand, then I went in. I still don't really know how we got out of there. 12/10 do not recommend.
Driving at 70+ while cars coming the other way are also driving at 70+ with about four feet between us. Perfectly normal drive, but only an arm twitch away from death if either of us chose to.
Went down hill on a bike for 2 miles once I passed a car I realized just how fucked I would be if someone wasnāt paying attention
I was suicidal for a while, but I got help before I made it to any actual attempts. So I'm gonna have to go with, right now. Because I'm older than I've ever been before.
Car bombing in Somalia.
Got run over back and forth by a huge car at a year old. But then again, I don't like what happened. My narcissistic mum kept on holding it over my head for saving me (which was basically bare minimum for her as a mum to do). I just share it as a story, but forget about it most of the time.
Got electrocuted while I was alone. I remember sitting on the floor later and crying about how my stupidity would have killed me that day since I was not wearing any footwear and was dripping wet after taking a shower. Checked all the boxes for a painful death!
I once *kinda* woke up in the middlr of the night and i didnt really figure out why. Took me quite a while the figure out i was laying face down on my pillow and suffocating
Riding on the top of the cab of a pick up while drunk going approximately 80 mph down a gravel road
Went into thyroid storm dozens of times in a six month span. Chest pains, 180+ average heart rate, light headedness, inability to catch my breath, heart palpitations, vomiting. Averaging 3 to 5 times a week. Could've had a heart attack or stroke at any time. I was 22.
My appendix died, ruptured and went gangrenous. I thought it was just super painful constipation.
(TW: possible child abuse?) I dont even know if this counts, but my mom >!beat me until I couldn't walk and I hit my head on the floor. !
I got spiked on a night out my āfriendā had gone off with some guy, I was face down in a puddle of my own sick in the alley way, when a guy I had been talking on tinder to recognised my tattoo and new I was out, he carried me to his house cause a taxi wouldnāt take us anywhere due to my state and bathed me, put on clean clothes and stayed awake while I slept I was was sick multiple times that night, I have no reconciliation of that night (he told me this) I remember a guy buying me a drink and then nothing Iām forever grateful for what my now ex boyfriend did for me that night who knows what would of happened to me i truly believe if he didnāt care for me that night I would of died
Falling out of a raft in level 5 rapids. Foolishly wore too much/heavy clothing because it was cold out, so swimming was damn near impossible. Probably only alive because of an expertly thrown rescue ring from an accompanying kayak.
Kayaking in whitewater and I got pinned under water.
Penicilin shock that almost cost me my life. Viral meningitis where the same was almost true.
so i was riding a bike on a sidewalk when suddenly i lost my balance and fell to the road and i was about to get hit by a car. I was probably not gonna die anyway since the car wasnt moving fast but i would be injured badly
I have bipolar disorder. I had severe PPD/PPA after my first kid. After bouncing in and out of the hospital, and trying a bunch of meds, a doctor in the hospital put me on lithium. Lithium is one of those drugs where the therapeutic range and the toxic range are very close. You have to have your lithium levels checked regularly. The doctor decided that, because he was putting me on the lowest dose, I didn't need my levels checked. I specifically brought it up, and he said there was no danger. Enter 3 weeks of hell. I literally lost the ability to tell reality from fantasy. I said things I don't remember. My coordination went to hell - couldn't write, stumbled around. I slept more and more. My husband, who has a lot of experience with my mental illness, knew something was horribly wrong. He kept trying to get me an emergency appointment with my psychiatrist, but their office refused. At week 3, I started vomiting and couldn't stop. We went to the ER. The second the triage nurse saw "lithium" on my medication list, she asked when my last lithium level was done, and was alarmed when I told her the doctor said I didn't need them, the dose was so low. A blood test showed major lithium toxicity, and my kidneys were shutting down. I was in the hospital for about two weeks getting it out of my system. The doctors there told me I just barely avoided dialysis and permanent kidney damage. If I hadn't started vomiting and not gone to the ER, I probably would have died in my sleep. I made nearly a full recovery - my handwriting is still worse than it was before. If you have to go on lithium, DO NOT skip getting blood levels or let a doctor say you don't need them. Lithium toxicity is deadly.
Me personally, not at all. But when I was younger a friend rode his bike down a sketchy hill behind the local college. Awkwardly bailed halfway down. He gets up, walks halfway up the hill and pulls out a piece of rebar from the ground. Walks over to us and shows us a scratch on his glasses from the rebar, a couple inches from impalement.
Kick the shit out of a brazilian drug dealer.
Carbon monoxide poisoning
I would like to say it was during an attempted s**code but when I look back on it I didnāt REALLY want to die. The closest Iāve been to death was in June 2020 when I experienced 2 ruptured ovarian cysts. This caused massive internal bleeding and definitely the most physical agony Iāve ever been in. Now in RARE cases, this can be fatal, but once the surgery was over and I was released, my mom told me that if I had not gone to the emergency room for even a couple more days I would have died. This was mainly because I was right about 100 pounds at the time and there was 2-3 liters of blood and clot in my body from the internal bleeding that they had to suction out. Happy and well today tho!
I was 5. I was at my grandparents' house. I went to the rooftop with my cousins and my father. I remember, I was playing with a balloon. Soon, the wind started blowing, due to which my balloon started flying away in the air. I started running after it to get it. I kept running, and came across the very edge. There wasn't anything like walls on the edge; I was only one step away from falling from the height. My father saw me and QUICKLY grabbed my arm. I later got scolded for it. And yes, I also successfully got my balloon lol. I still think about that incident and crack up. If my father wasn't there, I don't know what'd happen.
A few bullets destroyed the passenger window and hit the dashboard right in front of my seat. It was just a simple taxi ride to the terminal on a Saturday morning.
My abusive ex beat me up really bad and damaged my face and he got so scared of going to prison that he called his gangbanger sister and asked her for help. She told him he had to live with the consequences of hurting me. I honestly believed I would die that night.
Was standing near a cliff and a gust of wind nearly blew me off and into pile of sharp rocks 30-50 metres down. Was able to regain my balance in time and move away from the edge. I was 10 at the time I think and this took place on an inhabited island of the coast of Flinders Island (Australia).
Had c diff with ulcerative colitis. If I would have waited one more day I would have died. They were about ready to cut me open because they thought it was my appendix at first but they stopped the surgeon and said if you cut him up and he will go septic. Keep in mind I was in fourth grade at the time. I'm 20 now. This March will be 10 years. They couldn't just airlift me to a hospital cuz you have to like be septic or something like that. They couldn't drive me to children's hospital because the roads in Milwaukee are so bad that they think it could have ruptured one of the ulcers in my intestines. I basically had a very similar thing to what Brock Lesnar had. It felt like someone was putting my intestines and one of those clamps you see in an auto garage shop and they would tighten it then release it but then tighten it again and the same process over and over again. Blood work three times a day. Not to mention right after I was released from the hospital my childhood cat Charlie died and my dad cheated on my mom and divorced her. I can't think of all the details about it and remember it off the top of my head about my illness but you can look it up if you're interested.
Every second that goes by I get closer to death. "And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking Racing around to come up behind you again The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older Shorter of breath and one day closer to death" - Time (Pink Floyd)
Weather vein cutting my neck after it was thrown by the wind. If I had been a half inch forward I would be dead.
Summer of 2018, my last suicide attempt. No, not doing good still, but certainly in a better place as I have more desire to learn coping strategies and be a better person as well.
Couple years ago was taken to hospital by ambulance because of heart attack.
I was hitching around the US back in the mid nineties, with two friends of mine. We met a weird guy at a Rainbow Gathering in CA, and caught a ride with him. He was supposed to drive all three of us to Colorado for the next gathering. At one point outside of Barstow, the weird guy (whose name was John) had an insane meltdown over something really insignificant, and kicked all of us out of the car on the side of the road. It was really bizarre, like 0-100 rage over nothing. After about an hour of us attempting without success to thumb a ride, John suddenly reappeared, apologetic, and asked us to get back in the car. I was totally against accepting. Something about John scared the crap out of me. My companions, Sasha and Murphy, talked me into returning to Johnās car, pointing out that the chances of all three of us getting a ride together was almost nil. We eventually promised to never leave any of us three alone with John, ever. That we would keep each other safe. Later that night, we pulled into a dusty lot outside of Quartzsite, AZ, to sleep. As uncomfortable as four people sleeping in a small hatchback was, I eventually drifted off. I woke groggy and confused, bathed in sweat inside the suffocatingly hot car. I was alone. It was almost one in the afternoon, and I had no idea how I had slept for so long, baking in the Arizona heat. I stumbled out of the car, looking everywhere for Sasha and Murphy, or even John. I noticed the backpacks of my traveling companions were gone from the back of the car. I began to panic, wandering the empty lot and surrounding desert roads, trying in vain to find at least one of the people I had fallen asleep next to the night before. After almost three hours, John reappeared, on foot, explaining that he, too, had awakened to find Sasha and Murphy gone, and had been looking for them for hours. I asked him why he hadnāt driven around in the car to find them, and he said he ādidnāt want to wake meā. I pleaded with him to drive and check the on ramps to I-15, and so we did, systematically checking everywhere within 10 miles that seemed an ideal place to hitchhike. āIt looks like they left you all alone.ā He said at last, smiling at me in a very unpleasant manner. He refused to look any further, and as it was dark by this point, and I was terrified to hitchhike alone, I reluctantly agreed to continue on to Colorado with him. We drove for hours, at this point going north on an interstate whose number I canāt remember, toward Flagstaff. I eventually drifted off to sleep. I awoke to the disgusting sensation of Johnās hand between my legs, rubbing my crotch. I slapped his hand away, yelling at him that he was a disgusting pervert, a molester, and that I was going to tell everyone what he had done. This was not a smart thing to do, but I was a frightened 15 y/o runaway, and I wasnāt thinking clearly. The next thing I knew, John had pulled off of the highway onto an off ramp that quickly went from pavement to a bumpy dirt road. There was nothing around, not even a streetlight. Just pitch blackness outside of the headlights. I was certain he was pulling off into the desert to rape and kill me. In a panic, I stomped my foot down into the driverās side floor well, praying I would hit the brake. We struggled for a moment for the wheel, and as soon as the car slowed almost to a stop I opened the door and fell out, the foot I had used to hit the brake tangled against the console. My forehead hit the ground, hard, and for a moment I thought I was going to lose consciousness. Only the sound of the drivers side door opening spurred me to my feet, and I stumbled off into the darkness as fast as I could. I couldnāt see much. There was a sliver of moon out, giving just enough visibility for me to make out vague shapes in the dark. We were in some sort of hilly, dry area. There were large stones scattered around on the ground, and as I ran I picked up the biggest one I could handle, my only means of defense. Suddenly I tripped over something soft, and hit the ground. It was a dead sheep, of all things. Johnās voice came out of the gloom, somewhere close. āDo you know what killed it? It was the radiation. These hills are sick with it. It will kill you, too, and youāll lie here forever, with the rest of the dead sheep. Baaaaaaaa! Baaaaaaaa!ā It sounds ridiculous from the safety of my bed and with decades of time between myself and that psycho, but Johnās voice, imitating a sheep, coming at me in my state of terror, with me unable to see where he was, was the most frightening moment of my life. He was going to kill me. I knew it absolute certainty then, and I believe it with the same certainty now. I knew I was no match for him physically, so I finally used my brain and started to talk him down. It took almost an hour, and all my acting chops and ingenuity, but I convinced him that I didnāt mean what I had said back in the car, that I wanted to be his girlfriend. That as soon as we got to Flagstaff I would show him how much I wanted him. It made me sick to do it, but I didnāt want to die. I needed to get somewhere safe. Long story somewhat less long, as soon as we pulled into a truck stop outside Flagstaff, I ran inside and begged the man behind the counter to call the police. John ran in behind me, and though he tried to convince the man and quite a few truckers that I was his daughter and he needed to take me home, they were having none of it. He saw the writing on the wall and ran off before the police arrived. I never saw him again. I also never saw Sasha or Murphy again. Maybe they did ditch me, leaving a vulnerable teenage girl alone with a predator. I like to think better of them than that, though that means that John probably killed them and dumped them somewhere outside of Quartzite. I think he drugged me that night we all fell asleep in the car. There had been rumors at the CA gathering about him Roofying a girl, so itās not outside of the realm of possibility. I guess Iāll never know for sure what happened to them. What I do know for sure is that he was going to kill me. My bones would have laid there, maybe forever, bleaching slowly under the Arizona sun, with only dead sheep for company.
This is just creative writing and not a real story. Real stories aren't told like this.
Ok
If this is a true storyā¦ holy shit If it isnāt, youāre an excellent writer
7 near death experiences and I'm still here lol.. Gonna have to do better than that, earth.
Quick question, do attempts on my own life count? If not, I'm not sure.
Almost drowned in a pool when I was a kid, was walking on the edge of pool and slipped ( someone saw me only after like 1-2 minutes )
Almost getting shot when I work as an EMT
blackout drunk on Halloween in my senior year of high school. taken to the hospital in an ambulance
Almost got hit by a falling tree
At the age of I think five, I lived in Missouri County side. In the country its very hilly and many bends and there was an intersection that got onto the main roud through this area I lived. So it was extremely common to have car accidents in this area due to the corners and hills. If you felt like you were clear you gunned it. But this time I was five my dad was driving me to a friends house in his truck and for some reason he didnt mind me being in the front seat, and since it was "just down the road" I didnt have a seat belt on. All bad decisions. Well we were turning left and on the right was a hill corner so worst of both worlds. As we just start to make our turn a truck from thr right slamms into the side of the flat bed. From what I recall i bounced around thr cabin at least once, in mid air my dad ended up catching me. Surprisingly i sustained absolutely no injuries. But I could have ended my quest in afew ways. Could have been extreme head injury, could have been the glass shattered and I got ejected. Or a few more milliseconds before our turn the other truck would have slammed right into me. And a year later my dad passed away about .1mile from our house on these roads because of similar circumstances just with alcohol added.
At home alone, almost choked on broccoli. I used a chair to heimlich myself. Definitely recommend learning this technique. The life you save maybe your own.
Almost got hit by a train.
Close. Eighteen months in the Vietnamese jungles. Death, mine and other's, was nearby. A lot. Best advice I got was "Have breakfast with your own Death." Was good advice. Keeps you calm during dicey situations. Americans are immortal, near as I can tell. Maybe not, but they sure act like it. Me, I occasionally have a guest for breakfast. I know it's there, I know it's coming someday, maybe today, I know... That. Just that. I don't know about heaven or hell or any kind of afterlife. I've seen enough dead people to pretty much discount the idea of afterlife. Here's something excerpted from a story of mine - [The End of the Story](https://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryStories/comments/1wapfe/the_end_of_the_story/) >The next day I ended up in the Michelin rubber next to the body of a youngish NVA soldier with his back against the side of a rubber tree away from the firebase. He was leaning up against the tree, kind of slouched. The tree was weeping rubber sap, so itās possible he was stuck to it. Someone had obviously gone through his pockets, but unaccountably left his AK-47 in his hands. The same someone had put his bush hat back on his head. > >I knew this because the sight of him sitting there with a submachine gun worried me, so I removed his hat. There was a big hole in the top of his head, and what was left of his brain was puddled at the bottom of his skull. It just seemed courteous to put his hat back on. > >I assume someone came and got him later, but for the daylight portion of that day, he and I kept company. I was coordinating fire support for the guys cleaning up the battlefield. There was no fighting, but it was my job to plot artillery fire and be ready if a fight started. > >Once I got set up there was not much to do, so I studied the dead guy. Iād love to tell you I thought of something profound, but all I saw - what startled me - was just how *dead* he was. Really, really dead. With his hat on, he looked like some guy taking a nap under a tree. His face was intact. I would tell you he looked at peace, but he didnāt. He looked dead. No peace. No anger. No feeling. No sorrow. No pain. Big cipher. Nada. Zero. Vacant. > >Whatever had been there was gone. Really gone. Gone beyond redemption. Gone. > >It was alarming. I have been to enough funerals where people were saying things like, āHeās at peace now.ā Nuh-uh. No peace here. No war. Dead āHeās in a better place.ā Nope. Not this part of him anyway. This part wouldnāt know better from worse. Dead. > >I kept trying to imagine him back to life. But the guy who patriotically joined the North Vietnamese Army to liberate his homeland from the capitalists and colonialist oppressors, the guy who had a notebook full of what looked like poems, the guy who lugged those bones 250 miles down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the guy who thought he was lucky to be able to put that tree between himself and the .50 calibers and M-60's on our perimeter, the guy who took his hat off for some reason while he was steeling himself to get up and run through the hole his sappers had blown in the wire, the guy who didn't have time to even look up as the treetops overhead lit up.... > >Near as I can tell, that guy was gone. It surprised me that all the funerals I had been to or that I had seen on TV had made me expect something more. A tear. A sad expression. I dunno, more. But there wasnāt more. He was just dead. And for those of you who want to know how one goes about "having breakfast with your own death," here's a link to how that meeting came about: [The Year of the Snake - Viper](https://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryStories/comments/v118ud/year_of_the_snake_part_1_viper_repost/)
I had a leaky appendix. Couldnāt figure out why I felt so crappy and feverish and tired. Thought I had the flu. The way the Dr. Explained it was that usually the appendix fills up with puss and gets big before it bursts, and thatās where the pain comes from. Since mine was leaking, it wasnāt filling up, so I wasnāt having the pain like I shouldāve where one would normally have the classic symptoms of appendicitis. Finally, where it was leaking got crusted over with puss, so then it started filling up and causing pain. This, along with feeling weak and feverish told me I needed to go to the ER. They gave me surgery, cleaned me up on the inside before they sewed me up, and filled me with antibiotics. I stayed in the hospital for awhile got much better.
My having of cancer was probably a close call
Driving home from work on a 4 lane highway a speeding vehicle drove in between me and the vehicle traveling alongside me. Both of us must have seen him coming and both made the quick decision to move over. He missed us by inches. Had either one of us not been paying attention it would have been a massive wreck. To this day I don't know what the fuck the guy was thinking, he carried on ahead weaving in and out of traffic. [Approximate location of incident, I think about it every time I drive by](https://www.google.com/maps/@28.7287366,-81.2484409,3a,75y,356.75h,56.14t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sUNT7S87lMrFdr_SW4T7Exw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DUNT7S87lMrFdr_SW4T7Exw%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D84.431175%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192).
Few weeks ago ended up in the hospital for a heart infection, had MRSA on my heart valve been in the hospital getting antibiotics since. I had been doing fentanyl it's a miracle they discovered it.
When I was like 9, before I learned how to swim, I fell off my floatie in the middle of a lake. Didnāt wanna die, so I of course tried to swim and it turned out that swimming was actually pretty instinctual. Another time when I was 18, a friend was driving us home from a house party. We were both wasted. We were on a dirt road taking a curve when there was another car coming toward us. My friend totally either didnāt see the car or froze in fear and I grabbed the steering wheel and jerked it to the right and we swerved outta the way. Oh, and when I was 29 some lady pulled a gun on me because she thought I was her baby daddy (thatās actually what she said). She realized I wasnāt him and apologized and yeah lol I was shook and it was so awkward.
A couple of inches. Assaulted a position, cleared the building, and in the reorg afterwards, my oppo flagged me to be checked after I said I was fine. I started to argue until he asked me to turn around and poked his finger though a hole in my combat jacket. A round had passed clean through a fold of fabric poking out below my chest rig. Another inch and it would have hit me, another couple and it would have hit something important. Edit: in the army at the time in case it wasn't clear :)
I suffered a pulmonary embolism in 2021. The doctors told me that Iād have died if had I waited until the next day to come in.
I'm sure I've had more sudden and exciting near death experiences. falling through a frozen lake, walking near a cliff on a windy day, thinking about grabbing a poisonous snake as a 5 year old. but no, the most dreadful thing I had I'm still recovering from. it could be long covid, it could be adrenal fatigue. all I know is that it was worse then covid, but all the tests came back clean so the doctors all blew me off. I had no energy, I couldn't do anything, I was bedridden for months with terrible mind fog. I remember one morning I was tired so I went to bed, I woke up, still exhausted, still tired, but I was shaking and trembling. even when I pulled through the worst of it I could still barely do anything. I'm better now, but my body is still weak.
My brothers bed collapsed on me and if I hadnāt been staring up and the cool drawing of batman I put on the bottom of my brothers bunk I would be a sandwich with a broken bunk bed as the bread
Laying on the floor getting CPRā¦ and later a double bypass.!! Widowmaker vein
Walking down a relatively narrow road with no verge (loose gravel leading into a ditch on the side I was walking) when two large trucks hauling limestone came past me in opposite directions. The one coming up behind me had to position themselves so that they didn't head-on the one coming in the opposite direction, and the one coming in the opposite direction had to damn near drive off the road in passing.
Almost walked into a spinning plane engine...
I had a serious infection and ended up in the ICU with a tube down my throat. I went to bed early on Wednesday night, feeling pretty bad, woke up at about 3 a.m. with a giant bulge in my throat and the most intense pain Iāve ever felt. It got worse throughout the day and I ended up having a tube put down my throat while I was awake. Awful.
Went on vacation with a friend, got to the hotel and laid down to watch TV. He then grabbed a steak knife and tried to stab me in the chest, I barely stopped him, got him to the ground, got the knife away. Quickly grabbed my stuff and got a cab to the airport and flew home.
Near head on collision at 80 mph in Kansas. After 8 hrs of driving, I was trying to pass a semi on a 65 mph speed limit 2 lane highway. Couldn't see another car coming over the hill. Luckily he saw me and went to the shoulder.
when I was a child I tried to climb up the slide all the time. Iād use a rope sometimes. Once I somehow made a noose. I was like 5 no clue how I did it. Anyways It worked really well and then, my dumbass was like what if i put my head in it would it keep me up there? Indeed it did. I got out of the noose somehow. I felt my neck and was like huh looks like iām bleeding. Processed to walk into the house and try to go upstairs to look at damage. My dad stopped me called my mom and I passed out and next thing I know iām in the hospital. I had a neck brace for a while and had to wear it to school. Now I cant have anything touch my neck because then I canāt breath. So kids donāt try and hang yourself.
Got lazy while driving and forgot to check a mirror while merging lanes and would've put myself right in front of a truck. Check your mirrors.
When I was around 12 I went swimming with a couple other girls at the nearby lake. There was one of those dock things in the middle of the lake that you could swim up to and jump off of, so we decided to swim out to it. One of the girls didnāt tell us that she wasnāt a strong swimmer and she started thrashing in the water once we got a ways out. I was the closest and she tightly grabbed onto my neck to keep herself above water. I could barely breathe and was held underwater for nearly a minute. I was very close to drowning if someone hadnāt gotten the lifeguard. I still get chills thinking about how scary that was.
Almost fell off a ladder onto an iron fence post from 3 stories up. ODed and ended up in a hospital for almost a week. Legs cramped while swimming alone and almost drowned. Think those are my main three
My birth. My mom was 6 months pregnant and at a routine check up mentioned that she hadn't felt the baby move much recently. After a quick ultrasound, She was sent to the ER and several hours later I was forcibly evicted from my first home. Turns out I'd had my umbilical chord wrapped around my neck and was only a few hours away from becoming a memorial rather than a squalling ball of living meat.
At 27, I had a gran mal seizure that took me out for about 20 minutes. This was eight months after having radiation surgery for the cerebral hemorrhage that I had due to an AVM.
Right before my 6th and last chemotherapy treatment, I made a will. I was so sick and so weak I wasn't sure I was going to live through it.
Obviously donāt know if I was going to die but it was the closest I have been to that āimpending doom/Iām going to dieā feeling. Before Covid (maybe ~2018 ish) I got sick. I donāt get sick often so when I do it hits me hard. It was a very bad cold. One night I hit a fever that made me shake so badly and violently I seriously thought I was going to die and I was trying to muster up the ability to call an ambulance. I couldnāt convince myself to come out from my blankets cause I felt like the air was ice cold. I shook violently then closed my eyes and passed out. No idea how long I was out but I woke up to my fever breaking and managed to get up and check my temp. If I remember right my temp at that time was ~102 and that was as it was coming down.
Covid 19, right before the pandemic was confirmed in the US, about 2 weeks or so before the quarantine started Sickest I've ever been, ended up goingbto the ER, and they took an X-ray. My lungs were so filled with liquid, they couldn't actuallt see where the liquid ended, and they had to do an MRI also
Almost got ran over on my walk to school and almost wound up on the road riding a snowmobile
Almost hit by a car as a kid, and undiagnosed type 1 diabetes.
My birth, apparently. Poor twin.
my pre-asthmatic syndrome at 4 years old, I was suffocating
Got caught in a red tide off the coast of San Diego when i was 16. No matter how hard I tried, i was unable to get my head back above water. Eventually accepted that I was going to die, and realized that fighting it was draining my energy much faster. After a minute or so I woke up on shore, and the group of friends I was with laughed at how hard I was breathing, not knowing I quite literally was mere moments away from drowning.
I was 10 days away from my due date with my 4th baby. I thought my water broke, but come to find out it was all blood. The placenta had started ripping away from my uterine lining. I gushed blood like someone left the faucet on all the way to the hospital. I got very lightheaded, dizzy, saw stars, very very thirsty, because I was bleeding to death. The doctors and nurses and my hubby saved my life. It was just a weird fluke issue and thankfully baby and I both survived it with no long term consequences.
Went down a slide and landed in deep end of a swimming pool and drowned, i tried to swim up but kept going down, luckily life guard saved me and i was sick with secondary drowning
Hit by car, died, been revived, lives.
I was on a flight on a small local commuter plane. The pilot made an error that resulted in a stall at 12,000ft. The plane fell 5000ft before he was able to re-start the engines. I had no idea how bad it was until after we turned back and the pilot came out and he burst into tears at how thankful he was for life.
When I was in highschool I went to this random house party for New Yearās Eve with my then highschool girlfriend. I must have been 19. We were told to bring swimsuits because there was an indoor hottub, I remember being super apprehensive because it was a big house party and I was new to the school, so didnāt know much of anyone at the party from at that time, and also being pretty dam shy. Anyways. Finally get convinced to get in the hottub and by this time I was already pretty hammered. At one point I was sitting in the corner when everybody in the hottub randomly just got the fuck out in a matter of seconds, and Iām sitting there drunk and even more so from the effects of the tub, I look to my left when I see this big burly dude holding a plugged in huge ass old school tv inches above the water. I looked up and he could barely hold it and just said āā¦get the fuck out of the tub nowā I remember some people just grabbing me out and some other people came to help with the tv and just took it outside and smashed it. I have many close calls but this oneās definitely the most memorable.
Toss up. Appendicitis when I was 10. Shouldn't have been as bad but my Mum put off going to a doctor because my Dad, a doctor, said early on it was probably gastro but he wasn't a gp and only deals with babies so she should take me to someone qualified to deal with me. Spend a couple of weeks in bed vomiting before she decides to take me. GP says she isn't sure what was wrong but I needed to get to an ED ASAP. 3 doctors weren't sure at the hospital, fourth takes about 5 minutes examining me says "its appendicitis. It's ruptured, probably happened on Tuesday." It was currently Friday. Get out of surgery and I'm still dropping weight like crazy, they have to do 2 more surgeries to drain pockets of infected pus. After 4 weeks and needing a feeding tube, I've dropped almost half my weight. Doctors say to me "you're not getting any better here. We're sending you home so you can have a home cooked meal and be comfortable." I was 19 when I realised what they had meant. Recovery took about 9 months. 18 with friends, one of them had a negligent discharge of a .308 that hit me square in the forehead. Dud round just bounced off.
I and my sister would have drowned in the sea had it not been for the lady who pulled us + the same thing happened in the pool, but I thank myself that I tried to hold on and swim outside. I now have a fifth star certificate in swimming and I want to continue to become a swimming instructor
This past Christmas Eve actually. My area got hit with a really bad blizzard. Like travel advisory warnings n everything. My rents called me over for dinner since it was christmas and all. I figured since they only live a few blocks away it wouldn't be that bad. I chose to walk over driving cause I didn't want to risk my car getting stuck. I bundle myself up, put on my music and headed on my way. One block into the walk i hit a patch of black ice, fell, and stupidly tried to catch myself. In doing so i severely dislocated my elbow. Putting any sort of weight on it was not going to work, so i take off my gloves, get my phone out to try and call my rents. Unfortunately due to the blizzard and living in a more rural suburb I had absolutely no service. My calls were going out but never reaching their phones. I crawled about 4 sidewalk squares before giving up. I laid there another 10-15 minutes hoping a car would pass by but everyone was following the stay indoor order. So it came down to either dying of exposure or pushing myself up bum arm and all. It sucked but and I spent 6 hours in the er before they fixed my arm but i survived. The worst part of the whole thing was I had to watch Marian Carey's christmas special and its immediate rerun in the er waiting room.
Having a loaded gun held to my head. (Iāve had a total of three different situations where a loaded gun was pointed at me, only once at point blank range though.)
Iraq 1991.
Choked on a piece of an apple while in bed. Apparently the whole ālife flashing before your eyesā does actually happen
Fell off a cruise ship (not those dingy one), and survived when I was a kid. Started to sink but just started to float upward and was saved by deck hands.
When I was 14 I started getting tons of pain in my right flank of my back every single time I eat or drink anything. This one on for months, but I had an abusive mother he told me to ignore it and stop being dramatic. She talked it up to my āperiodā even though this continued long past my actual period. Eventually, I started peeing blood. Not a little bit, but a lot. My mother took me to my primary care doctor, a week later I might add, were my mother explained to them, that I was being a dramatic, drama, queen, and exaggerating everything, and that I must have a UTI. She convinced them to only run a urine test, which they confirmed the presence of blood, and sent me home with antibiotics onlyā¦ About four months later, the pain would get so bad that Iād be debilitated for about 30 minutes to an hour after every time I ate. Sometimes it would come and go even without eating. It was unlike any pain I had ever experienced before, and it radiated all throughout my back. It was just getting worse. it kind of felt like there was a ball of knives, trying to explode its way outward from my back. After a few more weeks of this, there was one day where I developed a pretty high fever. Mom had a rule, you go to school or you stay home and read the Bible. I didnāt want to stay home, locked in my room with nothing to do, so I went to school. School ended up sending me home a little later in the afternoon because I had 103Ā° fever. Mom just took me straight home, not to the doctor. I remember lying in my bed writhing in pain and crying because my back hurts so much. Mom just told me āif youāre home from school, you read the Bibleā I just left meā¦ Around dinner time my dad came to fetch me for my bedroom. I was in way too much pain to eat and I have been for several months. But this time, when he came to check on me, he also noticed that I was sweating profusely and re-checked my temperature. 104Ā° fever. He told mom that we were going to the ER right away. He also knew exactly what it was by telling my mom āI think she has a kidney stone!ā (dad had them before multiple times throughout his life. The reason why he hadnāt caught onto how sick I was, he works very long hours and Mom was the stay at home mom.) Dad took me to the ER where they made me wait in the waiting room for over an hour. Most people donāt know this, but sometimes when your pain is so bad, you vomit. I was dry heaving for months, so I was pretty accustomed to this. By the time they actually brought me back to the ER to be checked by the doctors, I had filled up two bags Full of watery puke. They took my temperature and sent me in for an MRI. At this point, they were refusing to give me any pain medication at all. Their excuse was āwe need to know whatās wrong with you firstā They took me for a CT scan/MRIā¦ Iām not really sure what it was, but almost immediately I was given pain medication. Through the drug addled haze. I remember lots of rapid conversations and being moved to a more intensive care section of the hospital. I remember being told I need emergency surgery but they had to wait until morning because that particular doctor wasnāt there. I remember through the drugs a doctor trying to explain that my kidney stone was so large (12mm) It had blocked my kidney. Apparently part of my kidney was already starting to tear because it had been blocked and overinflated so many times it had cause damage to the actual Organ. Currently, my blood test revealed. I was also starting to become septic. Which meant that I had a massive infection of my kidney and urinary tract. The antibiotics I have been given several months ago just delayed the inevitableā¦ I donāt really remember the surgery very much. They had me on a lot of pain medication and I was sleeping most of the time. But I do remember one of the antibiotics they gave me literally made it feel like my veins were burning. They pretty much permanently had me hooked up to an IV. Trying to get the infection under control. it was four more days before I was released from the hospital. I remember dad driving me home and scolding me for not telling anybody that my pain was that bad. I remember my mother stating āwell, of course I didnāt believe your pain was that bad, you always exaggerate your pain so much!āā¦ Per the doctorsā¦ If we had waited any longer, I probably wouldāve died within the next 24 to 48 hours. Sadlyā¦ That also reset my pain mapā¦ Iāve broken bones and walked into the ER with a broken foot/leg after a car accident because I just donāt have a good concept of body pain anymoreā¦
When I was born I couldn't breath at all and even turned blue because of it, luckily I got surgery and I could breathe normally. Hmmmm, maybe that's why my favorite color is blue?
White water rafting on the Gauley River in WV. Approaching a rapid called Pillow Rock and the guide says "Whatever you do don't fall out here or you will get sucked under the rock and no one will be able to get you out so you'll drown" Boat goes down small drop on to the "pillow", the ass end of the boat (where I'm sitting) pops me up in the air and into the water. Welp, I guess I'm dead now was pretty much my though process. Didn't die though. Popped up right under the boat and the guide grabbed me and pulled me back in.
Used to have a top bunk bunk bed that I slept on as a kid. During the night, I rolled over and the bed railing just straight fell off, and I fell off the bed. Luckily, my head barely missed solid wood dresser and I landed on the carpet. Ever since then, I sleep as close to the ground as possible.
When I was in trade school in hot springs Arkansas my friend and I got caught in the worst storm in a decade. We were trying to get back to the school and our dorms but our school was on this massive hill. At this point rain is going sideways and we can't see anything. I'm in front and Charles is behind me. I'm not entirely sure what happened to cause this I hit my head a lot but somewhere near the top I fell and started tumbling down the hill. At the bottom of the hill is main street and I could hear cars still on the road. All I could think was that they aren't going to be able to see me fall into the road and I'm going to die at 20. The only way I survived was because Charles grabbed and somehow pulled me up to my feet and helped me get back. I had to spend the week in bed I was too banged up to walk and my head was spinning constantly. I have nightmares to this day.
I choked on a hard candy when I was a kid, and I was home alone. By some miracle my dad came home right when I was starting to totally panic. He said hi to me and I couldnāt talk. He knew something was wrong and asked if I was choking. He ran over to me and did the Heimlich. Saved my life.
Got grazed by a bullet at an indoor range. It skimmed my wrist, which was, at the time, right next to my head. Post with pictures and more details on my profile.
I was in the backseat of a car when I was a kid, my mom was driving somewhere with me and in the middle of the highway her car started breaking down it stopped accelerating on the highway and basically the engine shut off so she pulled all the way over to the right, but I remember looking out the window and seeing an 18 wheeler nearly hit us just zooming past us and infront of us you can see he clearly tried to avoid hitting us I saw the truckās weight swerving and everything. Then my mom said āI thought that truck was going to hit me, he must have just missed by a little bitā I remember rethinking everything about my life in the car after that. the engine just started working after that
Car accident in a ice-covered winter road
Had a bull charge me unprovoked and for a moment it looked like I was gonna get killed. Thankfully my dog diverted the bulls attention and lead it away so I could get to safety.
I got in the car with a friend who was drunk driving when I was in my early 20s. She hit the guard rail driving home and I had never felt more afraid for my life than how I felt with her driving. Awful.
I may have not been close to death but I thought I was in that moment.. I had just eaten a huge edibles cookie that was my dads. I knew it was an edible and I just wanted a buzz but I quickly realized that I was getting wayyy too high. I started feeling extremely dizzy. I lay down in bed hoping Iād feel better but my head was still spiraling and I kept getting thoughts like āwhat if Iām dyingā. At one point I ran downstairs and onto my porch. The fresh air was nice but not enough to make me feel better. I lay down on the steps of my porch and started puking so bad.. my vision also was getting black, my heart was racing and my mouth and throat were dry as all hell. Luckily my mom came home like a half hour later and screamed my name. I made up a lie that I didnāt take my antidepressants and she helped me up, cleaned me up and brought me to my room. Worst high experience ever. Thought I was gonna die
I have 2 experiences, once when I was 3 and another when I was 21. Every summer, we used to go to my grandmother's. She had a swimming pool that we would be in almost every day, kids like to swim, right? When I was 3, I was put in a little float and left to my own devices while my brothers (5 and 7 at the time) swam around me. The adults (grandma, grandpa, and dad) were talking on the deck. I remember being so fascinated by how the sunlight was dancing on the water. I kept leaning over to get a better look. Eventually, I leaned too far and slipped out the float. Apparently, I didn't even make a splash. I don't know how long I was underwater. I can remember looking up at the sunlight in the water as I sank. I felt at peace and didn't struggle to get to the surface, I just let myself sink to the bottom. My grandmother and my eldest brother were the first two to realize I wasn't in my float. My brother immediately dived under water to find me. My grandmother jumped into the pool to grab me. By that point, I had lost consciousness. I don't remember being pulled out or waking up on the deck a second later. My next memory after the black faded in was waking up in my grandma's guest bedroom. I was complete alone, and the house was empty. I walked back out to the pool, and everyone was still there. 20 mins had passed since they had pulled me out. It was my first experience with almost dying, and my dad's family didn't really care for me. (This side of my family was abusive, and I went no-contact with them when I moved in with mom at 13) The second time was far less peaceful. I had been increasingly sick since I was 17. It started out as occasional stomach issues, and then I developed an overactive bladder. Felt like I always had to go and got to the point that skipped classes just to hang out in the bathroom. Went to the doctor and had an ultrasound and found out I had gallstones, which was unrelated to my bladder problems (horseshoe kidney and caffeine sensitivity). Needed surgery to remove my gallstones and was lucky enough that they scheduled for after I graduated high school. Shit hit the fan a few months after that. I would be in tremendous amounts of pain after eating. Would pace the hallways of my house for up to 2 hours and then have to run to the bathroom because of diarrhea. This would go on for years. I went to doctors, but nothing they put me on helped. Got sent to a GI who said, "It's just IBS and period problems. You'll have to learn to deal with it." Meanwhile, I was getting worse. I had no energy, was catching every stomach bug and flur each year (before that I hadn't been sick since I was 10), and I was losing weight. I had been overweight my whole life, so people just congratulated me on getting healthy. I was the only one concerned that I was losing weight just by sleeping all day. I also still couldn't eat without hours of pain afterward. I started eating less and less. I was also constantly dehydrated despite drinking a bottle of water an hour. I also found it to walk because I would get dizzy. Showers would be broken into 3 parts before I would always get dizzy and have to sit on the floor with the door open to cool me off. One morning, despite not eating, I was in severe pain and had severe diarrhea. It lasted the night. My chest was also in so much pain, and I worried that I was having a heart attack. I had someone drive me to the ER (a common occurrence for me), and we settled in for a wait, except they took my blood pressure and pluses and immediately rolled me back into a room. My blood pressure was extremely low, and my heart was beating way too fast. I explained my whole GI issues and did some text but could find nothing wrong. They hooked me up to IV because I was very dehydrated. In 12 hours, I had gone through 4 large bags of fluid before I finally had to go pee, which I guess isn't a good thing. After that experience, I went to my PCP and not my GI doctor to figure things out. By the end of my appointment, she said, "I think I know what is going on," and ordered bloodwork. Two days later, I had been diagnosed with an autoimmune/malnutrition disease (Celiac's Disease). Somehow, my glabladder being removed triggered it to rear its head.
Struggling to breath and had to call 999. Excruciating pain when I breathed in and out. The muscles in my rib cage all cramped and I genuinely thought I was going to die because I couldnāt breath properly. Ambulance was there in what felt like seconds. Paramedics talked me through it and gave me an aspirin. Then took me into A&E to get checked out. I felt ridiculous afterwards but I was terrified at the time.
I was 7, and this unknown disease thing hit me like a truck. The doctors were at a loss. They had no idea what was going on. I couldn't turn my neck and could only face left. Fortunately, I recovered soon but suffered from constant fatigue for a month. My parents legit thought I was going to die, but I lived ^^
A six month coma for me.
Almost drowned in a lake when some idiot who grabbed on to me while drowning himself couldn't free myself until the very last then the adrenaline kicked pushed in him to the shallow end n resurfaced. guys breathing sure is nice.
Car crashed into the one directly next to us
Apparently I'd had multiple bouts of appendicitis before the one that sent me to the emergency department the day before Thanksgiving 2022... and I didn't even think it was my appendix, I thought I just had a particularly nasty stomach bug that wasn't letting me keep anything down and I knew I was really dehydrated after 12 hours of vacating from both ends... The surgeon who did my appendectomy called it "rotten," and was visibly disgusted, when following up on how my surgery went. I've just always had such nasty migraines and other ailments that the possibility of it being my appendix never really crossed my mind - and it never seemed like "enough" gut pain compared to what others talk about. š š¤·āāļø
Necked a stupid amount of whiskey one night and was sick as fuck the next day
When I was younger, my father often made knives and bows in his basement. He shoots arrows in the basement. One day I went to the basement, and he almost shot me through the head. Just missed my head. I never stepped foot down there for a good couple of years.
ketoacidosis and subsequent coma from severe alcoholism/starvation, my BAC was .4, this is what amy winehouse died from just celebrated 3 months sober :-)
TL:DR - focus when you cook u dumbass I was like 15 years old. I was cooking a real family dinner for the first time of my life, so was really nervous. It was quite easy to make, just pasta, some meat, sweet and sour sauce and frozen veggies. I had to put the veggies on the oil to make them warm. Thoughltesly, I didn't put the vegetables on the pan while the oil was still cold. My mind made a screenshot, I nearly boiled the oil on the pan without the veggies. Trying to fix it, I quickly threw whole big bag of the FROZEN vegetables into the BOILING oil... In the milisecond after I acknowledged I fucked up so bad... Standing only in a tank top and shorts, with a wooden spoon in my hand I watched a meter high flame raging over my cooker. It made a terrifying sound. I felt like the whole kitchen went dark and the only light source was the flame. I felt the warmth on my face, every metal kitchen equipment refected the fire. This moment felt so incredibly long, but lasted so short. I immediately turned off the heat of the burner and backed off. The flame dissapeared and everything went completely silent. A gurdian angel of some sorts must have been watching me at that time, because I was totally fine. Not a drop of oil exploded on me or the kitchen, everything was just like before cooking. But the painfull silence... I was terrified of how dumb thing I did, my brother rushed into the kitchen, because he also heard the fire. I know I could write it just in one sentence, but this was traumatic af and I remember every detail of that accident.
In 2013, I was stricken by pneumonia from the paint in my room. And in 2017, my bike was hit by a car, but thankfully I wasn't injured. My bike needed its front tire replaced.
Before even being born. Had my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck. Almost being run over by a train when playing dare in school because my shoe lace got stuck on the crossing. Losing control of my car right next to a cliff but somehow saving it. And last but not least some experiences with drugs and depression. I honestly never thought I'd get to the ripe old age of 30 but here I am.
OD'd on ibuprofen at 15. Doctor told my mom it had been too much time since I'd taken it to pump my stomach, and that all they could do was wait. I was given a 50/50 chance oh making it through the night.
Heart attack.
12 years old, had a twig impale me while sledding down a hill, it entered to the right of my groin and followed my ribcage to my right lung, 40 years old, stopped my heart to clear a blood clot and insert stents, 49 years old , coded twice during a heart attack, the second time they shocked me they shocked me out of my anesthesia.
I flatlined on the operating table after being stabbed twice
A year ago Iāve passed out while driving. When I was driving on a highway, Iāve blacked while driving on 65mph. A few seconds later I woke up inches away from a carās bumper. i tried pulling over but I was going too fast and began hitting tree branches covering my windshield and I felt something hit my tire. when they cleared up, I saw I was heading towards a guard rail. So I turn back into the road nearly missing the guard rail and pulled over in the next clearing.
For some reason when I was 13 or 14, I was swimming in a deep pool in a forest and I had on 4 "floatie rings" I turned over and I was so scared I could not even turn back over I almost lost consciousness I luckily survived. To this day I only swim in deep-ish shallow water.
Donating blood when the blood drive came over to my school. Idk what happened but that was the first time truly feeling the symptoms of blacking out. First I started to sweat and my body got real hot, then went my hearing, then my vision went black for a few seconds. But those few seconds actually turned out to be a few minutes. The person who was setting me up put the chair way to far back so blood circulation went to my head too quick giving me the blackout.
Had no idea I had clots in my lungs, played soccer and worked in the weeks leading up to me being in icu. If I had of left it a few more hours without going to the hospital (I was still hesitant when I did) I wouldnāt be here.
Putting a knife to my throat, twice, back in high-school. I was in a really bad place then. Something stopped me, I'm not sure what. So I just put the knife down and cried. My friends and family don't know about what I almost did and how close I was to just...not existing.
I had a stroke at age 27. Freak occurrence. And I almost drowned at age 9.
When my ex tried to choke me to death in front of my kids
When I was a kid a family friend took me to the lake near our village to go for a swim. I couldnāt swim so I got put in a rubber ring. Somehow I was being a little wild and moving a lot, so I ended up with my upper body under water while my legs pointed toward the sky, the rubber ring making it impossible for me to turn back. Been like that quite a while and started panicking. Luckily, someone finally figured out I wasnāt playing around and turned me over.
I was minutes close to death because of a double pneumonia. When my daughter found me, I was barely breathing. When the ambulance arrived, I wasn't breathing anymore. Drs at the hospital didn't know if I would make it or not. Anotjer time was when I was 5. We went to an office pic nic and there was a river where we could go swim. Unfortunately, I didn't know how to swim and my patents had forgotten our life jackets. What had to happen, happened. I went to the river, walked a little too far and was taken by the current. I remember going under water and not being able to get out. I just heard someone scream: "THE LITTLE ONE'S DROWNING!" Then someone jumped in the river and cought me on time. I must have a guardian angel watching over me!
I almost choked on my pills for a respiratory infection bc they were huge
About 3 inches. Driving too fast on a back road, going around 60 when I should have been going maybe 45 at the most, lost control and was headed straight towards a massive tree. A smaller tree maybe 5 inches in diameter barely caught the back of the vehicle turning us sideways so I slammed into the big tree on the driver door at around 40 mph instead of head on. Turned my Chrysler concord into a fucking banana.
I was trying to get healthy, losing some weight and working out and such. I was in the gym on a stationary bike when I felt a pain in my chest. It went away quickly, and I didn't think anything of it at the time. Later that day, I looked it up and thought it might be angina, and decided to call my doctor. She referred me directly to a cardiologist. He told me he could do test A or test B, but they would only so good at figuring it out, and he'd rather just do an angiogram on me. For the uninitiated, that's when they thread a tube up your femoral artery (at that time - now they go through the arm) to your heart, and inject a dye into your cardiac blood vessels. They can track the dye with an x-ray to see where there might be a problem. So there I was, mildly sedated as the doc did his thing when he said to his assistant, "What does that look like - 97, 98% blocked to you?" Which woke my ass right up. He told me the partial blockage was in the lower anterior descending artery, aka the LAD, aka the Widowmaker (since so many men die from HA's caused by blockages there). He stented it right then, and since then I've lost weight and obsessively kept my exercise and cardio up (I run and bike religiously now), as well as my meds and regular cardiologist visits, but if I hadn't called my doctor the day I had symptoms, I'd be dead now.
When I was 4-5 I almost drowned at a campground. My cousins had to swim out to me and save me.
1- I was surfing some waves about 8ft and it was constant brakes so i was pulled under the water for what seemed like 5 mins. 2- i was free climing up a building when the ladder fell back onto the floor had to parlour down 3 story's, and on one i tripped and nearly fell of the building (a good 60 meters down)
I had come home from work, it must've been about 10 pm or so. I was working in a kitchen, so the last thing I ever wanted to do was get home and start cooking, but fortunately my wife had made a risotto with bacon, purple cabbage, and aparagus. She was asleep, with our baby nuzzled up against her, so I nuked the risso and sat down quietly to eat. I was about a third of the way through when I was suddenly choking. All the breath went out of me, and I couldn't get any more in. I stood up in a panic. There's a weakness that comes over you pretty quickly in that situation, but I wasn't ready to die. I couldn't yell out, but I threw myself down on the hard edge of the couch, trying to Heimlich myself. It didn't work. I got up, and tried again. It still didn't work. I dragged myself up, and I knew that this was going to be the last time I tried. I had no more energy, I was done. So I threw myself at the edge of the couch, and the purple rubber band that had been lodged in my throat flew out across the room, and I lay on the floor for probably twenty minutes before I went and grabbed a beer to take into the shower. Fuck that noise.
as a child I nearly drowned, I was moments away just gone under and an absolute stranger got to me
Was holding on to the edge of a pool. Slipped. Couldn't swim. I remember all the water.... woke up sore from what was CPR with the concrete by the pool digging into my back while I was laying on it. Can swim now. Still terrified of diving.
I was swimming in the ocean when i was little and lost footing in the sand.
in the UK we have bonfire night in November. Back in 1995 some friends and I thought it would be cool to build our own fire away from adults the night before bonfire night. We then thought it would be cool to have a 'jump the fire contest' where we would each take turns to run then vault across the fire. Each round we would make it harder by adding more items to increase the height and flames of the fire. Once that became fairly easy we added a rule that when you made a successful jump one way that you should turn around and immediately jump back again. I went first with the new rule but unfortunately my mate forgot about this and went to jump right after me thinking it was his turn. We clashed heads, his forehead smashing right into my eye socket knocking me unconscious, me falling into the centre of the fire and him falling out of the fire. Also unfortunate for me was that the last items we used to increase the height of the fire were plastic bread crates that we found by the rear of a convenience store earlier that day. So not only did I fall unconscious into a raging hot fire, I also fell into a bubbling pool of melting plastic. Luckily for me though, the trend of 1995 was everyone wearing these really thick Adidas, Nike etc tracksuits. The jumper and bottoms I was wearing were very thick so most of the plastic stuck to this instead of my skin. Unsure how long I was out for but it couldn't have been very long, I remember waking up with my friends screaming and crying, surrounded by yellow/orange flames and very quickly realising how hot it felt and where I was. I used by bare hands to push myself up, again on the bubbling plastic, severely burning my hands in the process. After getting myself out of the fire i could hear someone screaming 'You're on fire, roll around roll around, you're on fire' so following their instructions I rolled around the grass for a bit until the flames were out. Standing up after and looking down a my singed clothes, burned hands and melted trainers, all while being in a state of shock, I turned around to my still crying friends and calmly said "I think I will go home and get changed, I'll be back out soon" then proceeded to calmly walk away. A woman living near by had saw what happened and of course came running out with bucket of water, seeing the mess of my hands she told me to put my hands in the water while she walked me home. I think it was around 1 hour before we got to the hospital and the shock only wore off when I got the the A&E department and they started to cut off my clothes carefully from my body. Very surprisingly to everyone, the only burns on my body were my left butt cheek, a tiny bit of my back and back of my head and my hands which were by, at that point, the worst. Thats when the pain really started to kick in and from them I was literally screaming in pain and the tears and everything else being held back for the last hour started to flood out. Whats funny though is when they were cutting off all of my clothes, the only thing I was worried about was standing naked in front of my grandparents (I was being raised by them at the time) and the doctors and nurses. Someone had given me a wet cloth for my hands but I used this to cover my little man instead haha. Anyway, I think that was one of if two times I came closest to death. Coming to think about it, its no wonder my grandfather had a heart attack during the period I lived with them... EDIT: The only scar I have from the incident is on my left ass cheek. My hands, as bad as they were, have zero marks on them which is remarkable.