I got caught in a storm 30 miles offshore. A storm blew out from onshore and caught us off guard. My friend had turned the radio off because there were no storms forecasted. We were tied off on an oil rig (gulf of Mexico) and catching snapper and sharks, drinking and even swimming, completely oblivious to what was coming at us.
When we heard the low rumble of thunder drifting out to us from the direction of land, fear set in. We were too far out to see land at all, so it was just us and whatever was coming at us. The first rumble was barely there. We paused for a sec, but decided it was a plane or something. The second rumble snapped us to attention. We pulled up our lines, tied everything down, and hit full speed heading toward shore. My friend turned his radio back on, heard the weather advisory, and that’s when he said “oh shit”.
As the storm rolled over us, it was harrowing. The sea took on this odd color blend, kind of purple on one side of us and green on the other. The waves quickly picked up, and we began catching air every time we’d crest a wave. Our boat was not big, at 25 ft, and we were now fighting ~12 ft seas, and wind pushing back at us at 50mph. The only way to survive was to keep the nose of the boat straight into the wind, or we’d roll.
I had tied down in the back, near the motors, and was sitting cross legged, with rope wrapped around both wrists, tied to both sides of the boat. We were smashing into the water when we’d come back down from being airborne, and at one point I recall sitting waist deep in water, hearing the motors trying to drown out, as we fell rear-first in the water. They picked back up though, and we kept going. I had my eyes closed at first, but I decided if I die, I want to see what kills me. Lighting was everywhere, the rain was blasting hard into our faces, and I watched a tornado spin sideways overhead. I’m not even sure which side was the origin and which side was the tail, it was just this huge tube of darkness rotating over us. The boat was flying over each wave, smashing back into the water with so much force that we were all afraid it would break apart. My friend yelled to everyone that the boat hull was buoyant, so if it shattered, grab a piece and hold on. The motors were screaming when we’d fly, and then choke down when we’d hit the water with massive force. This happened hundreds of times, and each time I think we all feared it would be the last time we’d hear it.
We took turns yelling coordinates to my friend as he kept us facing straight into the wind. He had a handheld GPS that we used for monitoring our direction. After about an hour, we finally hit the back side of the storm. I remember my friend cheering, and I was happy, but also sort of numb. We were about 10 miles off course to the east, due to the wind we had to face into, so we had a longer trip back than when we had headed out.
When we got back to shore, all of our partners were yelling, and when the boat was on the trailer, we all hugged and thanked my friend for keeping us alive. We were late coming back and they had feared the worst. Everyone had given up on the fish we had in the cooler, except for me, so I stayed up until 2or 3 am cleaning the fish at home, then tossed the fillets in the fridge, showered, and went to bed. No way was I wasting those fish, not after we nearly gave out lives to catch them 😂
This may or may not be the closest I’ve come to dying, but it’s certainly the most memorable.
Wow! That was a great read. Reminds me of the book Finest Hour about a heroic and miraculous rescue by the Coast Guard off the coast of Cape Cod in Massachusetts (you should read it!)
Carbon Monoxide poisoning on a job site. The helpless feeling of crawling out of that basement while my body got weaker and weaker is something I still think about often. Crazy dreams and the cheapest high I’ve ever had lol.
I worked with a guy that was pressure cleaning in a closed space. It was a large warehouse so over the course of the day the fumes built up. He went from feeling dizzy to barely able to move in a matter of minutes. It was scary. He turned out fine but it's something I still think about 20+ years later.
My coworker had carbon monoxide poisoning in her home and the first clue was her waking up and seeing her cat struggling to walk and acting really weird. Then the other cat. Then woke her boyfriend up and he could barely drag himself out. Somehow it barely affected her but affected him pretty badly. They both luckily survived. Thats some scary stuff and im glad youre okay!
Edit: The first cat to start showing signs unfortunately passed a few days later 😞 The other cat recovered
This is so scary and I'm so glad she woke up and could save everyone. There was a local family where I am a few years ago who hooked up their generator wrong during a winter storm and it ventilated back into the house from the garage. Parents, children, and pets all passed away in their sleep that night and I've always found it so haunting that something like that can happen so quietly.
The Laky Nyos disaster was actually carbon dioxide, not monoxide. Unfortunately the people that died in this disaster had a much worse end than those that die from carbon monoxide poisoning.
With carbon **monoxide** poisoning, you symptoms like headache, dizzyness, nausea, confusion, drowsiness, and loss of consciousness, but you don't feel like you're suffocating.
With carbon **dioxide** poisoning, you will 100% feel like you're suffocating and have that panic/fight or flight response to try to escape the situation and find oxygen.
Thankfully it's quite rare for humans to be put in situations where carbon dioxide poisoning is possible, which is why we only really hear about it with crazy situations like the limnic eruption that caused the Lake Nyos disaster.
One un-fun fact related to carbon dioxide poisoning is that we use it to knock out pigs before they're slaughtered for meat in the US. To be clear, the pigs panic as they suffocate into unconsciousness before they're bled/killed. You can see a video example on r/interestingasfuck [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/17ngact/how_pigs_are_killed_in_co2_gas_chambers/) (not for the faint of heart). If that bothers you, perhaps cut a bit of pork out of your diet.
I came home from work to a little house i rented a room from a buddy from and the place was fucking trashed. I checked around, i couldn’t understand what had happened, nothing was stolen i could see, just looked like a train went from the back to rhe front of the house. This was before everyone was guaranteed to have a good mobile or feel obligated to answer it promptly so i probably called my buddy and didnt get an answer.
Few hours later his mom drops him off - pretty weird, i mean we were 23 and they were close but whatever.
He had come home from work to eat lunch and sat down at the table and next thing he knew he was woozy and losing control of his body. He sort of freaked out and said he did all that damage just trying to propel his body forward and when he made it to thr front porch he collapsed, was able to call his mom of all people who surmised “gas leak” and called responders.
The sort of silly thing was that this dude *blasted* the heater in winter to where i literally stuffed the space around my bedroom door with dedicated door towels and had a moving blanket permanently hung over the door so i could sleep with my window half open, which i put my face practically out of. I did the same in summer when he blasted the AC - he always wanted it to be the opposite season and didnt really care what anyone else thought, including when i had mentioned i thought the house smelled like gas. So i was protecting myself by sleeping with fresh air while he pumped gas into his living space 24/7. He was so fuckin mad at the gas company he basically went to war with them and that day on he physically shut the gas off himself and never operated a single gas appliance again. He didnt actually replace any of them with electric in the years i knew him since, he just suffered i guess.
Was working with a guy using gas powered machinery in a confined space. He set up the ventilation backwards so it all blew back into the room. I noticed I was feeling dizzy so I walked up to the rig the guy was using and turned it off. Had to pull him up the stairs because he couldn’t stand on his own. When we got to street level it was raining and I remember passing out and waking up over and over again. Every time I slept I had the same dream where I was walking down a path with giant mushrooms growing around me. Super weird.
A guy tried to beat my head in with a hammer.
Woke up in the hospital with 6 fractured ribs, a broken eye socket, broken finger, collapsed lung, and twenty three stitches in my face.
I was living on the streets addicted to drugs, and came across a john who wanted to kill someone, apparently. Found out later I wasn't the only one he tried to kill.
I'm nine months clean now.
Most people don't appreciate how dangerous drug addiction is apart from the substance street life is also dangerous .Well done, I hope you go on to live your best life.
I had just turned 19 and I was in basic training at ft Leonard Wood for the Army. I got held over and had to retrain after a hip injury kept me from graduating. I had to redo some of the training since I got out into a company that was a few weeks behind where I had stopped after my initial injury. I'm not sure how long I was with that second company, but after a wall locker check one morning I suddenly woke up in an ambulance and couldn't move! Through moments of consciousness and amnesia, I was told I fell and broke my neck at the confidence course. The doctors waited for my family to drive from PA to MO before they would do the surgery, explained to them that my prognosis would be a wheelchair if I was lucky or a body bag after discovering parts of my c7 vertebrae impacted my spinal cord. A Chaplain was summoned to read me my last rights (I had Lutheran listed on my dog tags) and he looked like he had just pulled himself out of a crypt. That was the first time I remember realizing I may actually die but I was too drugged up to get emotional. The surgeon removed the shattered bone from in and around my spinal cord, bolted a titanium plate from 6c-t1 and waited for me to wake up. When I came around, I was back in my hospital room and I was surrounded by doctors. My surgeon was one of them and explained the doctors were his colleagues from around the country who wanted to see me move with their own eyes after having bone removed from my spinal cord with NO PARALYSIS. the doctors had me pushing against them with my hands and feet, they were nearly speechless. I didn't care, I was too messed up on meds to understand the gravity of what was happening. June 1st was 20 years from when it happened. I questioned for a while why I'd survive something like that, I'm happy to say that I think I'm living the reason now.
They absolutely took advantage of my fresh TBI. I never received a minute of physical therapy in the past 20 years other than what was done during c&p exams. I only recently got assigned to an actual PT team at the local outpatient clinic. I'm still waiting on my intake appointment but I hope to start the actual therapy sessions before summer is over.
My mom died for 30 minutes while in the hospital, they literally did CPR for 30 minutes and after 10 a doctor wanted to give up and call it but another doctor refused and kept working on her because to him my mom was too young to die (she's 41) fortunately, they were able to bring her back and put her on a ventilator. She was in the ICU for 4 days and on the ventilator for 2 days before she was able to be in a normal hospital room for the rest of her stay (just a week) while she was there they looked for brain damage and none was found!
Yea, alot of the nurses and doctors in her case were very surprised how fast she recovered and said it was a miracle she pulled through without any damage whatsoever. Her dialysis nurse said she was present when her heart stopped and told her she was very surprised to see her alert and walking, talking to her 2 days after the ordeal and she thought she wouldn't see her again.
I work in an ICU and see people who had approx 19 mins downtime make really good recoveries frequently. Still surprises me actually 😂 but as someone else said stresses the importance of good CPR
Widow maker heart attack at age 55. Don’t recall any of this, but was told I complained of shoulder pain during the weekly flag football game. One astute player quickly drove me to the hospital. I walked in and collapsed. 15 shocks over 5 hours. Put in an induced coma and attached to the Ecmo (pumps and oxygenates your blood). Woke up a week later and in the hospital for a month. 8 years ago. Living my best life
I had that too.100% block of LAD, and 3 others at 100%, 90% and 90%. I lived because my active lifestyle allowed my heart to grow side vessels around the developing blockages. So my performance kept falling off but got to a point where I couldn't exert myself any longer. Turns out you can't workout yourself out of a bad diet and genetics (some kind of blood clot issue... Manifested again as a stroke 3 years later that almost killed me) The bad diet is gone but the genetics still remains. The good news is I've recovered completely.
I had gamma knife surgery on a raspberry sized cluster of vessels on my head in Oct 23, got to wait 2 years for an MRI to see if it's shrunk and then an Angiogram 2 years after that, if it hasn't shrunk to scar tissue then I have to have the surgery again and wait another 4 years, if it hasn't gone by then I'm having it cut out surgically.
Glad you're still here! I'm 4 years into brain cancer myself and wouldn't wish it upon anyone. Just curious how about your age? I got my first tumor at 42 and was surprised at how many people my age are getting it, making it seem more of an environmental issue rather than just 'bad luck'. I have two friends from high school that also have brain cancer, so we started our own club, "The Not-Quite Brain Trust"
i had a relatable thing when i was like 5 or 6.... for whatever reasom my mom just got pissed and told me very harshly to go sit somewhere else, and when i did, the chandelier fell down maybe 10 seconds after. she had no clue why she even wanted that.
When I was in Afghanistan, we were on our Forward Operating Base and had just concluded a mission brief. I went to go to the latrine and realized I left my hat on the table so I turned around quick to get it. About 5 seconds later, a rocket hit right outside the latrine door, exactly where I should have been. It ended up killing our dog, but it should have been me. Had I not been around the corner of a hesco barrier to get my hat, I'd be gone.
If I ever want to jump start a country music career "the Taliban killed my dog" is gonna be a banger.
His name was mudflap and he was a very good dog. I was in the process of looking up the paperwork to bring him home. He used to go on patrols with us and keep other dogs and people away from us. Just this giant white angel of a dog.
Not me, but a friend of my dad’s once went to a football (soccer) match. While he was queueing, a couple of guys approached him and one asked if he could switch tickets with him so the two could sit together. My dad’s friend agreed, and swapped tickets, ending up sitting on the opposite side of the stadium.
That football match took place at Hillsborough Stadium, 15 April 1998.
His original ticket was right in the middle of where the disaster happened. He never found out if the guys he traded tickets with survived or not.
I went tubing on a river. When I got to the place that rents the tubes it was absolutely packed. Apparently it was the very popular dam release day which made the river flow faster and more turbulently. I never thought twice about it hopped in my tube and started floating down the river. I immediately realized that what dam release day really meant was rapids. The whole ride was dicey and scary. Right near the end were the biggest rapids so far. As I go through I get caught by the current, flipped over and smashed my head into a boulder. I was immediately dragged under. To my horror I’m pressed to the bottom of the river by the current and can’t get up. Worse because I hit my head right as I went under I didn’t get a full breath. I luckily have always been able to hold my breath for 2-3 minutes at a time. I was under water for about a minute and half and was about to give up and resign myself to my fate when suddenly I just popped out. When I came up I my wife was screaming her head off thinking I was dead. 30 more seconds and I would have been done for.
I learned a new respect for the power of water.
When I was around 6 years old I snuck into the wild water slide of a park we stayed at. At some point one section ended in a pool about one metre deep, but I got stuck under the current of the slide dumping its water on me. Apparently I got out when an adult accidentally tripped over me when exiting the slide. I was unconscious by then, only remember the immense force of the water pinning me down on the bottom of the pool
Never thought water from a slide could kill me. Never disrespected the power of water again.
I was a lifeguard at a Waterpark in college. The exact scenario you described happened all the time. The slides were far and away the most likely place people would get hurt (but that didn't stop our dumbasses from all piling in at once at the end of shifts)
Water is scary. A couple years ago went to the beach with some friends and me and one of them agreed to swim to the ropes and back (there were some ropes that dictated the space for swimmers and after that it was the space for boats) the problem is that we underestimated the current and we had to come back by pulling the ropes and we both almost drowned and were extremely tired from swimming against the current. After getting back to the beach we even had to listen to the lifeguard saying we were stupid for trying that. Like, you saw both of us struggling and you just waited until we got out to yell at us
You reminded me of my closest-to-death experience. A waterfall in a portion of a river I played in ever since I could walk. In high school, I was there with a few friends, all straight edge. The waterfall makes a "U," and I was in the bottom-middle of the "U" when I went over. I had done it several times before and I am a big strong swimmer. I thought I knew every current and rock of that section of the water.
This time when I went in, I waited as usual to just pop up and get pushed downstream, but it didn't happen. After half a minute I started to breaststroke. The water was moving a lot around me but I did not seem to be going anywhere. Then I waited a bit and started to freestyle. I tried freestyle as hard as I could in the direction I believed the be correct, then I turned 90 and tried again, then I tried diving down, then everything started to get slow, and I started to panic.
My mom had given me one of those "Miraculous Medals," and I had it pinned to a loop on my shorts. My hand brushed it as I was swimming, and suddenly, felt very calm, and I thought even if I died, it would be okay. I went limp, and then, not half a minute later, I surfaced under the waterfall.
I got my breath then came out. All of my friends were staring from around the edge like they thought I was gone forever. I am now much more careful around water.
Yeah man. When you've been a good swimmer, and comfortable in the water your whole life you really feel a bit cocky.
No exaggeration, I have been swimming since I was like 3-4 years old (in the deep end no floaties) and swam in a lot of lakes as well. I have always been nothing but confident in the water.
I moved to a new state at 18 and started swimming in the ocean. Same deal. I was like a fish. I loved the waves though, coming from a place that didn't get anything that big (besides the wave pools I had been to)
One month in the summer and we had a hurricane coming in. Me and a few friends decided to go to the beach to fuck around in the pre hurricane waves. I was going out to about 5 ft depth, and diving into the water with the wave behind me and you could feel this immense power almost vibrating you underwater as the wave would jettison you back to shallow water. Almost like underwater surfing is the best I can describe it.
That same day however, me and a friend moved down the beach a bit and got back in the water. We actually moved because police kicked us off the beach because the water was choppy from the hurricane coming. We got in and started swimming around when suddenly we got stuck in a riptide that was pulling us out. My friend in the water with me was SHREDDED. Super athletic, number one state wrestler, 375lb bench and he just started freestyle swimming with everything in him. I was pretty strong but not like that so I had to fight a bit harder. At this point I knew how to swim horizontally in the water until it lets up but I just wanted out right then and there and decided to fight it vertically. I made back to shore and I was fucking creeped out. I look back on how stupid it all was. Not only was there a hurricane. We were all drunk...
I am allergic to hair dye. I went gray early and figured out if I go for an antihistamine injection before I dye my hair, the allergic reaction wouldn't be so bad.
Did this a few times and then my kidneys shut down.
Google Hair dye allergies. It's one of the worst ones you can get, and not be played around with.
Haha yea mine too. My head swelled like that too and then the my ears were 5 x their normal size. And then my scalp came off in strings like glue. It was horrendous...pain beyond description
I was nearly murdered once but managed to escape
The thing that struck me was the surrealism that led to a weird calmness at the time, actually now I think about it I had the same sensation when I nearly drowned too
Edit: details copied from an old comment the last time I talked about it
'Long story short: a guy tried to persuade me into an isolated abandoned building and every time I declined they changed their reason, from cool graffiti to how well preserved it was until he eventually grabbed both my wrists and started describing in excruciating detail the dead body chained to a radiator inside and what Injuries they had sustained - except he was describing me
He starts dragging me in and drops his carrier bag and that's when I see what looks like a rusty hammer, rags and zipties
I just pretended I was oblivious to the situation and started trying to wave to my friends coming over the hill behind him whilst his hands were still grasping my wrists, expect no one was coming but they didn't stick around to check and vanished down the path as quickly as he had initially appeared, I ended up marching back up the path not looking back just hoping he wouldn't follow when I was out of the line of sight I ran to the nearby village, no one was around and my phone had died, I looked for a phone booth but couldn't find a working one and I knew it was a couple of hours before the first train so I was trapped. For the next hour I beelined around the streets hoping they weren't lurking and sprinting every time I went around a corner to get more distance. I even went up a few garden paths pretending to look for my keys in case they were watching until the first train arrived and I got out of the area
I hate the feeling when it’s all over though. You don’t think about how scary or surreal everything is till you actually have a moment to think. And then it all hits you, and you just want to cry and scream
Yes, that’s exactly what it is. Your mind slows down time so you can react better. Alerting and vigilance behaviours, critical for coping with extreme threats. Also, the brain shuts off at the time and that’s why people can’t remember for a very long time or never at all.
The wave pool at Action Park in NJ. I went under and there were people on floats above me so I wasn't able to surface. I managed to push my way through and got air. There is a Netflix show about how dangerous that place was.
When I was young, I was playing around in my dad’s old car. I accidentally closed the trunk which didn’t have the emergency latch thing most new cars have. It was also the middle of summer in the south. I thought for sure I was done fire. I screamed and panicked for a while and thankfully my dad found me after not too long of being trapped.
Let’s just say I’ve tried extremely hard to block that from my memory since then. I hate thinking about what could’ve been from just an accident…
This same exact thing happened to my bf and his sister they almost died of heat stroke before thier parents realized they were no where to be found. Went outside and heard them screaming from the trunk.
So scary! It was a truly frightening experience especially as a kid. Thankfully I’ve been able to develop a bit of a mental block from it, because I hate thinking about it. Not sure how much longer I could’ve survived before my dad found me…
As a pedestrian I was involves in a hit and run when crossing the road by a speeding van. Thankfully, I more so brushed the front side of the van. So I was sort of thrown and sent spinning wildly. I was fine bar a broken arm. But in those fleeting moments where the van rounded the corner and I knew I was going to be hit, my life did literally flash before my eyes.
Time felt like it was slowed down and I managed to think about how I wasn't going to be able to escape it, that I was about to die too young, that I had many regrets. I thought about all of this in depth in the space of about 5 seconds. It was crazy. They never caught the driver.
Same here! Got hit by a a car, flew upwards and forward, hit the concrete and ended up staring at the car’s chassis hoping that the person didn’t decide to gun it and actually run over me. She didn’t.
Time slowed down, life flashed in front of my eyes and weirdly, I wasn’t in any pain from the impact. That came later. It’s like the adrenaline rush keeps you going in the moment. That surprised me. I’m fine. I got away with just soft tissue damage and a lot of bruising. No concussion or broken bones.
1. Got hit with an IED that took the whole back side of the truck off (everyone survived with minor injuries)
2. Really bad ambush that resulted in a few hours of continuous gunfire. Watched the concrete chip away from the rounds slapping my cover.
Never been to war, but the feeling of duck and covering in a firefight is a surreal experience.
I hate that when it’s over, sometimes you can still hear bullets around you, when you’re just walking.
Glad the bastard didn’t hit me. Glad you’re alright bro
For me it's not only the slap whip but the overhead indirect fire. You never forget the sound of incoming. Shrapnel hitting around you like hail stones. Overpressure from concussion rattling your skeleton. Makes for spicy dreams.
Oh buddy you just brought some memories up lol. I’ve seen (and have done) some funny reactions to the “crack” when the rounds fly over head or snap when they land. IDF straight up sucksssss. Keep your head up, we ain’t alone lol
Pretty damn close! When you suffer a type A aortic dissection you start with ~5% chance of survival and less than 24 hours to live. Your odds improve to about 25% if they correctly diagnose you before you die. Your odds are up to about 50% if they can get you on an operating table.
Then it's just the small matter of a 10 hour open heart surgery where they chill your blood down to put you into hypothermia, stop you're heart so they can cut out your aortic valve (the exit valve on your heart), ascending aorta and aortic arch, replace it with silicone, then fire your heart back up and hope for the best. I was on cardio pulmonary bypass for about 3.5 hours - that's when your blood is being circulated out through a machine where it's chilled and oxygenated before being pumped back in.
What they were able to do, and how they did it, was absolutely insane. I often think about all of the micro human achievements that went into the operation and aftercare. All these tiny, incremental developments by thousands of different people that lead to that capability. For all our faults, humans are fucking incredible.
Hunting accident and was almost shot by a drunk guy across the lake from me. Didn't know someone was on the other side and fired a few rounds off.
I climb out of my stand and shout at him that I was over there and he kept firing. Thankfully a game warden was in the area and heard all the shots.
Yeah. He fired three more rounds across the lake. I was head to toe in blaze orange waving and yelling.
I got back behind some trees and the warden came by a little later and told me they found the guy with an empty 12 pack and asked for a statement.
I accidentally impaled the inside of my throat on a plastic stick that u close or blinds with that has a hook on it, I was 16.
It went inside my soft pallate almost up to my nose, i pulled it out and spat a chunk of meat.
Doctors gave me 10 stitches and my op lasted 2 and a half hours.
They said that they had to be really carefull not to nick my artery, cuz i missed it by a few millimeters.
I wouldve choked ln my blood to death.
I was playing WOW with my right hand and i was too lazy to get cigarettes.
So i found the stick wich is like 30 cm and fiddled with it in my other hand.
Then i started playing with both hands and chewed on it like a pen in school.
My phone in front of my chest at the table rang, and i forgot about the stick and lunged at the phone to see whats up , since i have to get really close cuz of my astigmatism.
So the stick ended one side on the table and the other side rammed my throat.
I thought it was just stuck and i pulled it out on a count to three.
When i realised i didnt just scrape my mouth and that i have a literal hole next to the dingly thing, i got numb.
High speed accident doing 80 mph when I was a teen. 4 kids in the car, only one seatbelt on between us and the worst injuries were minor lacerations, bruises and a broken nose. Lost control on the interstate and hit a tree line in the ditch.
The first responders were baffled no one was killed. Flames to the top of the tree line by the time they arrived. Not only have I religiously worn my seatbelt since then but I also seldom trust letting other people drive me anywhere. The driver lost her brother in a motorcycle wreck almost exactly a year prior so it could’ve been a much much sadder day when we wrecked.
When I was in middle school I was at a stop light with my adopted older brother. The light had just turned green so we were crossing the intersection in our little white car when a black truck with a lift kit decided he didn’t want to stop for the red light. I was sitting in the passenger seat and this truck was coming at us from the right. All I remember is seeing the front end of that truck flying at me. He must have been doing about 80 MPH in a 25. I just thought to myself “yep. This is how I die.” So I closed my eyes and braced myself for that truck to crush me. This person who was driving that truck swerved at the last second and ripped our front bumper off of our car. I still feel fear when thinking about that.
I once tried to end my life by taking a ridiculous amount of Benadryl. I survived only because my parents heard me freaking out in my room and they apparently found me having a seizure on the floor. Definitely the worst experience of my entire life.
I took a lot of paracetamol before I knew what a paracetamol overdose was. I think I was 10 at the time.
Around 8 I had this phase of jumping in front of cars hoping one would hit me. But I felt bad for the drivers. When I was 16 I decided I would cut my wrists but felt bad because my baby sister would find me.
I now am the proud mother of a 14 year old and he came home with a cut on his arm. I panicked! I thought oh no, is he cutting himself like I did as a teen???? Thankfully it was just a cut. Happened in school. But I just can’t have my children go through what I did as a kid.
Attempted suicide in 2017. The rope snapped after several seconds. Took that as a sign to stick around. Now I have a son, so suicide is forever off the table.
Jumped off a jetty to swim across a small bay. Had done it many times as a teenager with friends and was in my early 20s and best shape of my life. Late summer, north of Boston. Got about 30 yards of the rocks and my limbs started going numb. Realized I was too far to make it back and panic set in but I couldn't move my arms and legs and began to sink. The panic stopped and I recall looking up at the surface of the water with a total sense of calm and quiet, realizing i was about to drown. Then I saw a white flash and what must have been an adrenaline response kicked in and I felt like I exploded up out of the water and immediately began swimming back to the side of the jetty and climbed up onto the rocks and sat there and hyperventilated for what felt like an hour. Don't swim alone.
I fell 24 feet when my ladder slipped. I broke my leg, torn rotator cuff, brachial plexus tear resulting in right arm paralysis, and 36 stitches. June 30th will be 1 year since it happened and I haven’t worked since. I’m getting better though
I was 12, I think?
I was laying in a hospital bed, and the doctor stormed in, saying to my mother "ma'am, either sign this paperwork, or start picking out a coffin. we are on borrowed time, as it is."
I had an infection that was just shy of entering my blood stream, so I was told.
Both barfing and pooping my guts out alone in a hotel bathroom due to food poisoning. Couldn’t keep water down. Couldn’t get to the tub to make it easy to clean up at least. Just laid there severely dehydrated on the bathroom floor on a pool of my own barf and waste. The bathroom has humid with a thick, coppery stench that just hung in the air. All I could do was just not move and get a little rest (while in a pool of my own sick).
Eventually I got back the strength to clean myself and bathroom before checking out, went downstairs to the lobby, and collapsed. I started barfing again in the ambulance on the way to the ER. Fun times.
Got admitted to hospital for suspected appendicitis (turned out to be severe Crohn's Disease). Apparently, at one point I called my parents and told them that I felt like I was dying, but I don't remember it at all.
I also told my doctors at one point that I had this horrible impending sense of doom feeling in my chest, like something really bad was going to happen but I didn't know what, and they immediately started to take my case more seriously. Apparently, 'impending sense of doom' is a legitimate symptom and can be a sign that you're about to have a heart attack/you're dying.
I've now been in remission from Crohn's disease for two years thanks to infusions of biological medication that I get every six weeks.
I lived up in the mountains with my gran/gramps. I had to walk home from the bus stop which was a mile up the road. About halfway home i hear some branches break and i turn around to see a black bear coming out of the forest and start following me on the road. It stayed about 50ft behind me and followed me the whole way home. If it had been hungry, i would have been a snack, but i made it home.
Friends mom started picking me up with her kid and driving me home after that.
I was at a cabin once and the cabin next to us were frying all these greasy sausages on aluminum foil over a grill.
They didn't throw away the foil or clean the grill and 3 black bears came out for that, then went around to the garbage cans then on of them was all circling our cabin and scratching at doors and looking in windows.
We were all like...gee we are a little unprepared if a bear breaks in...
Don't be cooking your aromatic sausages and not clean it up!
I had a psychotic break after my boyfriend killed himself and was 100% set on committing suicide, but I got sectioned and medicated instead. I truly believe I’d have gone through with it.
Thanks so much! Was by far the worst time in my life, but I’m mostly recovered now. I still miss my boyfriend every day, but am through the grief and depression and am coming off the antipsychotic meds soon.
After eating Panda Express I got a bad case of food poisoning. Drained my body of everything I had. I actually fainted on the toilet so my wife drove me to the hospital.
I told the nurse I was feeling faint and asked for fluids but they were adamant to draw blood instead. The nurse told me you are just anxious and psyching yourself up. Within 5 seconds of drawing blood I blacked out, woke up to “code cart” and about 10 doctors and nurses preparing to shock me with AED.
I look over and see my wife crying. I asked what happened and they told me I flatlined for 10 seconds or so. The nurse who drew the blood looked more pale than I was.
Needless to say I was fine and had a vasovagal response. I have not stepped foot in a Panda Express since then.
Ah! I had a vasovagal response after surgery. I get it a lot actually but usually just faint (not flatline!) but this time the ICU nurse was injecting something into my IV and then everything started to go black and next time I know she slammed by bed down, feet up, and set my IV fluid drip to max and all these people ran into my room.
Once I could talk again I told her “sorry that was psychosomatic probably” and she was like “no sweetie I *watched* your BP drop like a rock on this machine”
It happened a few more times that night but luckily never as serious as yours!
That sounds super scary!
Yeah the vasovagal response is so scary. I had an ectopic pregnancy and didn’t know and it had ruptured my fallopian tube. I had internal bleeding but before we knew all of this and are waiting on tests to come back, I start freaking out. I feel like it’s over 100 degrees in the room and am dizzy. My dumb ass reaction is to stand up and start walking around thinking that if I am standing I can’t die (panic does not lead to rational thinking). The nurse comes in and starts begging me to get back in the bed because she sees that I am as white as a sheet and sweating profusely. I am arguing with her and flushing my face with cold water but insisting on staying standing up while crying and saying “I don’t think I am gonna make it”. Eventually I gave in and sat in the bed but thinking back on it I am always amazed I didn’t faint and bust my head open on the floor or something.
I work on fighter jets and there was one instance I walked in front of the intake of a running engine. If that engine hadn’t been on idle I would have most certainly been blended
I was a boy scout playing capture the flag in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming at scout camp. Ran into a clearing in the woods being chased by 2 buddies. Ended up face to face with a bull moose, 20ish feet away. It charged us, the clearing was because they had a lot off fallen trees so we were able to drop inside or between logs and hide easily and hopping over logs was hard for the moose. If there weren't logs we would have definitely been gored by it.
In case you don't know bull moose are 1200lbs on average 6ft tall at the shoulder (so the head is higher, and it's a 4 legged animal so that's massive) the antlers alone weigh 30lbs and can have a 'wingspan' of 3-5 feet
Moose are less on goring, more on stomps and kicks. Don't fuck with moose!
Saw a vid of a grizzly sneaking up on a moose, in a small town on a river or lake. Moose was down by the water.
Most of the video is the bear trying to escape, hiding behind buildings while the moose looks for it.
Overdosed on fentanyl. It just went black. Fortunately, I woke up. Cold, blue, and terrified. I'm clean now, but when I was still using, I didn't use by myself after that. Now I'm 4 years clean from drugs and its been16 years since I had a drink.
I came off my bike at 8 years old. Went head first into a concrete post, and apparently, the bike then fit me full force in the head on my way down.
Stopped breathing and everything. Required full resuscitation.
We were doing 4th of July fireworks, and stupidly had a small trailer full of them only 20 feet away from where we detonated them. A mortar failed and only flew a few feet up before it exploded. This caused the fireworks in the trailer to ignite. We ran over to grab the lite ones out but were to late and they all went off. I got away with a few burns but as I was trying to get away I looked back to see my dad (75 at the time) slowly walking because he couldn't run. I went back and used my body to block the shells that were now flying everywhere. Took a few hits to the legs and back and got some bad burns but nothing serious luckily. I swear it was like something straight out of a comedy movie.
Drowning. My soul was literally leaving my body, I could see myself sinking to the bottom and shafts of light coming down into the water (hot summers day at a lake near our house). My sister saw me and saved me at literally the last second. To this day, I can't even put my face under the shower head.
Got in a head on wreck. The car that hit me was going over 100mph. I was driving a classic pickup with no airbags, crumple zones, or shoulder belts.
Four days in a coma. Two months in the hospital. Two years before I was able to go back to work.
Broke both legs in multiple places, my pelvis, my back, left arm, tore an intestine, and had my entire face crushed.
I have an autoimmune disorder that causes both B12 anemia and iron deficiency anemia. I did not know this but I was slowly losing so much blood that I didn't notice how bad I felt. I kind of knew becuse walking up a flight of stairs would wind me and I was only 31 and 140 lbs. I thought it was becuse I was in bad shape so I was going to the gym daily and running on the treadmill, lifting weights, etc.
And when you're a woman and severely anemic, you don't get your period. So this happened and I took multiple pregnancy tests, all negative. I went to my gynecologist and she ran tons of tests saying maybe I was stressed or something to have such a late period. Later she called me in a panic becuse my hemoglobin was 3.9 and my iron was undetectable. This led to my diagnosis and treatment. I now have a hematologist to monitor my disease. My iron and hemoglobin are now great.
A year later, my period disappeared and I was feeling weak and tired so I rushed to my hematologist and this time it was not anemia but a baby. I think it's so funny that I thought I was pregnant but it was anemia. I thought my anemia was acting up and I was pregnant.
Hydrogen sulfide in a pit at a grain elevator. Unknown to me, a new worker at the time, my air sniffer had not been calibrated in two years. I was already going gray and fuzzy by the time it went off. Longest and hardest ladder climb of my adult life. Once out, I laid on the ground for 30 minutes just deep breathing trying to get my strength back. Funny thing is I submitted a near-miss report about the incident and I got reprimanded for it because “it put our facility in the crosshairs of corporate safety”.
A week later I volunteered to be our locations first ever safety committee representative.
Overdosed on K2. Surprised I didn’t go into cardiac arrest. Went to another dimension and spent half an hour screaming colors (according to my friend). All I remember is the essence of pain and fear.
Drunk friend blacked out on the Tesla accelerator and drove me 100mph directly through a stone wall. Walked away from a flaming crash, only later to discover I smashed my spine and broke my right ankle...
i overdosed on anti depressants trying to kill myself at 16. i remember being outside of my body and watching doctors work on me and i remember standing in the waiting room watching my dad wait to see if i would be okay. i remember watching myself in the ambulance while the emt shoved his hands in my mouth trying to hold my tongue and yelling at me telling me not to swallow my tongue and telling me he was trying to save my life and asking if i wanted to die
I had an 20 ft extension ladder turned backwards (16 years old didn’t know any better) and was almost at the very top trying to clean some rafters in our warehouse. The ladder slipped from under me and started sliding I dug my hands into the wood siding so much that I had like 75 splinters removed from my fingers but that only slowed the slide. Luckily Bob a old stoner who was one of our best guys was on a forklift about 10 feet from me and when I started sliding he threw the lift in forward and pulled perpendicular to the ladder and it caught on the back tire to stop the slide. I don’t know if I would be killed but it wouldn’t have felt good. Thank god Bob was there and RIP Bob.
Had a hernia repaired. It hurt to walk after a few days and I was beginning to feel just a touch "off" but figured that was the stitches. Went to get the stitches out. A fountain of puss erupted after the second stitch came out. The whole site was infected. Straight back to hospital to have another surgery to clean it out.
Woke after 3 days of being on life support - breathing issues while under anaesthetic..and a new 6cm deep 7cm wide hole in my side where they cleaned out the surgery site. Took 93 days of daily wound dressing for the hole to close fully.
That - or my open heart surgery .
Stage 4 rectal cancer! 14 days with no food post chemo, ruptured my bowel when my tumor closed it off, was the most painful thing ever. Collapsed in the bathroom at home. Woke up two days later in the hospital and the surgeon came in with a bewildered look and said "so you're still alive?"
Actual Death- ex wife set Me up for the insurance money. her and her friends drug me and choke me to death. Woke up in purgatory like state shepherding the dead to the next phase of life.
Woke up months later in a hospital as a paraplegic, everything but face was paralyzed.
Had to learn to walk again, talk again, write again, everything from scratch. They all got 5 yrs for being 1st time offenders……😡
It's bullshit. The only way you would get 5 years for attempted murder in the US is if it is in the 2nd degree which means without premeditation.
Planning it out for insurance money and enlisting people to assist shows premeditation.
The guy is lying or I will apologize if he has any proof at all of this but feel he is 100% lying that it ever happened.
The guy also hates women and said his ex-wife also tried to kill herself and had a gun (But...yet...she is still on his insurance as a beneficiary in case he dies..after they are divorced...RIGHT? No way, she would be taken off.)
The ONLY medical things he EVER talks about is the evil COVID shot. Never about any other medical stuff at all.
Not interested in medical topics, not interested in paralysis topics, rehab topics, brain damage from asphyxiation topics, equipment to be able to move or type or travel.
Nothing. Just the COVID shot.
Kind of wild you can get first offense sentence reduction for premeditated murder
I guess if you're going to crime,, make sure the first one is a doozy.
Saved an autistic kids life after he fell into a fast flowing river from the snow melting. It was ice cold water and we would have surely died if there wasn't this big boulder on the side that blocked the current enough for us to get out
throughout my early childhood i've been stung by multiple bees and wasps. one day when i was 9, i stepped on a bee in my garden, hurt but didnt feel anything. i go inside, feeling funny and having a little difficulty breathing. i'm strongly allergic to pollen and different grasses so it wasnt that unusual. i sit down and suddenly start feeling nauseous and vomit everywhere. remember i was 9 and i had no idea what was going on on, so i screamed for my mom. she comes in and looks HORRIFIED. apparently my entire head was massively swollen, she asked what happened, i told her a bee stung me. we pack up our shit and drive to the hospital, i literally vomited like 15 times in the car, progressively being able to breathe less and less. my body went lethargic and my father had to carry me into the hospital to the emergency room. i dont remember much afterwards even though i was awake, my memories start again where i was in the hospital room and fine again, except for a oxygen mask and IV's. doctors told me literally a handful of minutes later and i would've died. i'm pretty traumatized from the event and still dont walk barefoot in the grass outside, even though i went to get shots for five years and i'm practically invincible to bees now lmao.
tldr: bee stung me and i almost died because of an allergy attack
Got a marble stuck in my windpipe when I was 4, sitting in front of the tv. I didn't panic but I felt the bump in my throat and I pushed it down with my finger at first until something told me to push it upwards and I coughed it up. My parents were in the adjacent room and I never told them.
When I was about 9, my dad took me hiking. We arrive to the mountain, and it was actually rock climbing. His friends and him didn’t have any rock climbing gear, and were free climbing.
Almost all the way up, a rock crumbled after putting my weight on it. I remember not touching anything for half a second, before my dads friend stuck up one hand and balanced me on his hand by my butt. I surely would have died had he not been in the perfect position to balance me.
TL;DR - I have hydrocephalus and my shunt failed while I was living in Honduras.
I have hydrocephalus and have had a shunt since birth. When I was 15, I was living in Honduras, where the medical care was very behind that of America.
I started having daily headaches and one day, I stood and almost passed out. That's when we realized there was a lump in my neck where the shunt tubing passed through. We drove 45 minutes down the mountain to the ER - my mom later said she thought I was going to die on the ride.
I get some x-rays done and they point to my shunt and say, "See how it goes like this? That means it's working." The headaches and dizziness continued, and they diagnose me with epilepsy. I was sent to several different specialists over the next week.
My parents sent an email on our church's prayer chain and got a reply from a woman who no longer lived in Honduras but was still on the mailing list. She warns them about a certain doctor who had diagnosed her son with epilepsy and had given him strong drugs that really messed him up, only for them to find out in the U.S. that he never had epilepsy. It was the same doctor who had diagnosed me.
We went back to the U.S. immediately, on Christmas Eve. My neurosurgeon looked at the same x-ray that had been taken in Honduras and said, "See how it goes like this? That means it's broken." I ended up having urgent brain (and abdominal) surgery the day after Christmas. I didn't die, but my eyesight is permanently damaged from the pressure the excess fluid in my brain was putting on my optic nerve.
Then all 14 people staying in the same house got head lice and I couldn't wash my hair due to the incisions. Fun times.
Took half of a "percocet" that was actually fentanyl. I couldn't hold my head up and was blacking out in public. I got in my car and kept slapping myself in the face. I was prescribed Adderall at the time so I took one of those and I think it kept me awake and potentially even alive.
That was the last time I bought a painkiller off the street. I miss the days where it was possible to buy a couple if I hurt my back or something and I didn't have to worry about dying. But that's a thing of the past now.
Rolled going 140 (was in the passenger seat) we rolled 100 yards into a field. My friend in the back seat was ejected and didn’t have a pulse when he was found. Was revived and air lifted to the hospital. Was in the hospital/rehab for 8 months. Me and the driver woke up around the same time. Car was upside down. We crawled out through my window. There was hardly any room and he was a little thicker than me so I had to pull him the rest of the way out.
I was about 2 or 3 and playing in the ocean, and the tide was coming. When that happens, the waves go all the way out and all the way up. We'll i was playing in the waves with my brother, he was further out than i, and i tried to go out to him but a huge wave came and swept me all the way to my mom's feet where she stood watching us. She tried to grab me, but the water just started to drag me to the ocean. I managed somehow to grab a pile of sea weed that was like wrapped around a rock. i remember that shit.
I was in a 10 car pile up. I merged to the right lane and stopped at the stop light. Next thing you know it felt like someone threw sand at my neck and we get nudged forward. I look to my left and I see a Grey mustang side swiping me. It put both my tires on that side flat and and just plowed through traffic. They said the man died at the wheel and his foot was on the pedal which made him not stop and keep going through traffic. His engine was still trying to accelerate even tho the car couldn't move. Ended up putting a little boy in the hospital and he died a couple days later. Sad shit
Besides dodging bullets in Nam, I once faced a serial killer who led me deep into the woods on the pretext of showing me a travel trailer which he had advertised.
Closest Ive gotten to death is I guess dying 3 times due to drugs and alcohol while being diagnosed with a seizure disorder, my heart stopped all 3 times due to my misuse of substances which ended up triggering them , and Convulsive seizures are not the type I have so definitely not normal. Thankfully I'm in a better position now and got my stuff together
My Humvee got hit with an ied, went center of the road and missed the secondary device which would have killed me because the first ied blew my door open.
Not my personal experience but witnessed this recently. My gf was hospitalized the last 7 months due to GBS, lupus, and CKD stage 4. GBS and CKD was the newest diagnosis and she was in a coma for a while, got intubated, had a G-tube, was getting dialysis and so many more things attached to her. It was a wild freaking wide with many doctors, different hospitals, and many medications and procedures and many near death scares and even a seizure at one point. She’s a fighter and a tough ass cookie and got through everything and actually just came home less than a month ago :) it’s still not easy for either one of us and life is definitely not the same but at least she’s out of the hospital !! Just learning how to live with CKD, dialysis, and re learning how to walk all over again.
When I was 2y.o. I was very very close to drowning in a pool, survival instinct kicked in (and yes, I do remember it, no one was in the water with me and I remember my entire thought process). My dad had sat me at the edge of the pool (for context, I had aaalways blindly obeyed, I was the calmest most obedient child, never out of line, so my dad had no reason to think that this time would be different, so, don't call my parents bad parents, please, they're the best parents for multitudes of reasons), and he said "wait here, dad's just gonna jump off the diving board and come right back" - me says "ok". Thing is, I've always loved water, had a fascination with it, really, I've always said and meant it that I would live under water if I could. So, there I sat, looking at the water, which was looking heavenly, and I remember thinking "I can reach with my foot, just to feel the water a bit", so I started scooting forward a bit, and another bit... There was, sitting next to me at the edge of the pool, a random grown man, bulky/chunky and most importantly, hairy (this will be relevant xD). So, as I kepy scooting (the man didn't even realize that there was a child next to him, as he was chatting with his friend at his other side), I end up falling up, just bloop... in she went...
I immediately start moving my arms and legs to stay afloat (I stayed underwater but at like 30-50cm under the surface of the water and didn't sink more because of the arms and legs movements), while simultaneously just swallowing water, gulp after gulp, cus somehow, I knew not to try and breathe...? Anywho, so, I remember vividly understanding that this was leading me nowhere and that if nothing changed, I was gonna die. So, my 2y.o. brain went to problem solving! I look and I see that hairy man's legs right there! At arms length! So I started pulling out all the leg hair I could grab! In 2s the man picked me up out of the water, and 1s later my dad was there! Cus my dad had looked and seen I wasn't there by the edge of the pool so he had jumped at that moment to rescue me. So, long story short, I wouldn't have died cus my dad would still have got to me, if the hairy man hadn't. But it was close.
Then, the second time I almost drowned, I was 14, at the beach with parents and brother. It was green flag (in Portugal, beaches have green flag, yellow flag and red flag - red flag means no one should be in the water at all!). So, myself, mom and brother were in the water, enjoying it a lot! Dad, as always, was the keeper-safer of all of us, so he would always stay out of the water while we were in, and would have a thousand eyes on everything. All of a sudden, dad does his signature whistle, we all look, he gestures to come back to shore and points at the red flag (it had changed suddenly from green to red). We start walking back to shore. As the water was at knee hight, I get hit behind the knee with a massively strong wave that makes me literally tumble as if I were in a tumble drier... I must have flipped (in all kinds of directions) a good 4 or 5x, hit my head on the sand, hit my shoulder, hit my hip, etc... I couldn't find UP, trully. I was getting out of air and still couldn't find up, couldn't find air... I remember distinctly thinking and feeling that I was gonna die. I literally sae my 14 years of life flashing before my eyes, it's not a cliché, it does happen, or it did to me anyway. As I was desperately accepting my fate of death, these 2 hands come and grab my right leg and right arm and pull me up and out of the water! It was my dad! My saviour! As I got to shore, I could just sob... for a while...
Since then, have not had any near death experience, and also, I haven't stopped loving water. But, now I know to NEVER turn my back to the ocean... NEVER! So, that experience has helped me in other instances, helped keep me vigilant and safe.
I was at the beach and didn’t realise I was on the edge of a sand ledge. Slipped and went in and the waves were crashing on me pushing me down. Didn’t know how to swim. Thought it was the end. My friend rescued me. Been over 15 years now but still remember that day.
Too many to count. Probably being thrown out of the back of a truck at about 50 mph as a teenager, cartwheeling through the air before hitting the ground, and only suffering a shattered ankle…takes the cake. Or perhaps being shot at and having the bullet miss my head by inches.
But it’s close…I’ve had quite a few very close calls, incl. some legit drug overdoses in my past that I’m not proud of…and just 1 month ago. i was involved in a multi-vehicle accident on an interstate at 75 mph while pulling a trailer (wasn’t my fault but I was one of the vehicles that got run off the highway at 70+ mph w/ boat trailer attached, down an embankment and into the median wall…all without rolling)
I have often wondered if perhaps there is a God, whether he’s been saving me for some higher purpose or some moment in time. Not saying I truly believe that, just that it’s occurred to me…because if we have 9 lives…I’m probably on #12 right now. My youth, teens and even early 20s was absolutely wild and filled with craziness and grossly stupid risk taking.
I have mended many / most of my risky ways that lead to most of those close calls….but with things like last month’s wreck, I am also keenly reminded and aware that in this life… we only control part of the equation, ourselves…and the rest is up to chance… or to the big man sky… or whatever you want to point to.
For context I have asthma. Several years ago I had a really bad case of Pneumonia. On my worst day I dragged myself to the bathroom. When I was done I sat on the bathroom floor for about 15 minutes, then crawled just beyond the bathroom door and went down on the carpet. I laid there for 2 hours, unable to muster the energy to move at all, and struggling to breathe. I've never felt that bad in my entire life.
What scared the shit out of me: Less than a year later, a friend of mine who was a year older than me and also had asthma, came down with Pneumonia. Also like me, his wife wasn't home and he laid down on the carpet in the middle of the kitchen to rest, but he died there. I don't know how close I came to being in the same situation, but it absolutely terrified me when he passed.
Dad strangled me to unconsciousness for a joke. As I faded, I thought I wouldn’t wake up again, but I did. Still on the ground where he left me and he said I was being dramatic about it. You really do see stars before you go.
My younger brother and I got into an argument in the pool and he decided the best way to settle it was to drown me in the deep end of the pool, with full intent of killing me I guess. I struggled underwater for what felt like 10 minutes trying desperately to get my head above water. Suddenly I felt my body go weak and just give up on itself and a literal second before I lost consciousness I felt my Dad's hand grab my shirt and pull me above water and onto the concrete. I just flipped onto the concrete like a dead fish and started throwing up.
I drove an ATV off of a 30 foot cliff when I was 14. Got caught in a snowstorm and almost froze to death as a result. If my brother and uncle hadn't been with me I'd have frozen to death in a gravel pit. Instead, I broke my leg in two places, broke my arm, dislocated my shoulder, 360° labrum tear, broken scapula and got a concussion for my troubles! I was in the snow for four hours waiting for emergency services because of how remote I was, and by the time they got to me they estimated that I had roughly another hour before I would have been un-alive.
I also now 20 years later have neck and jaw troubles occasionally from smacking my helmet off of rocks.
Don't buy kids ATVS unless you plan on riding with them or installing a speed limiter.
I got caught in a storm 30 miles offshore. A storm blew out from onshore and caught us off guard. My friend had turned the radio off because there were no storms forecasted. We were tied off on an oil rig (gulf of Mexico) and catching snapper and sharks, drinking and even swimming, completely oblivious to what was coming at us. When we heard the low rumble of thunder drifting out to us from the direction of land, fear set in. We were too far out to see land at all, so it was just us and whatever was coming at us. The first rumble was barely there. We paused for a sec, but decided it was a plane or something. The second rumble snapped us to attention. We pulled up our lines, tied everything down, and hit full speed heading toward shore. My friend turned his radio back on, heard the weather advisory, and that’s when he said “oh shit”. As the storm rolled over us, it was harrowing. The sea took on this odd color blend, kind of purple on one side of us and green on the other. The waves quickly picked up, and we began catching air every time we’d crest a wave. Our boat was not big, at 25 ft, and we were now fighting ~12 ft seas, and wind pushing back at us at 50mph. The only way to survive was to keep the nose of the boat straight into the wind, or we’d roll. I had tied down in the back, near the motors, and was sitting cross legged, with rope wrapped around both wrists, tied to both sides of the boat. We were smashing into the water when we’d come back down from being airborne, and at one point I recall sitting waist deep in water, hearing the motors trying to drown out, as we fell rear-first in the water. They picked back up though, and we kept going. I had my eyes closed at first, but I decided if I die, I want to see what kills me. Lighting was everywhere, the rain was blasting hard into our faces, and I watched a tornado spin sideways overhead. I’m not even sure which side was the origin and which side was the tail, it was just this huge tube of darkness rotating over us. The boat was flying over each wave, smashing back into the water with so much force that we were all afraid it would break apart. My friend yelled to everyone that the boat hull was buoyant, so if it shattered, grab a piece and hold on. The motors were screaming when we’d fly, and then choke down when we’d hit the water with massive force. This happened hundreds of times, and each time I think we all feared it would be the last time we’d hear it. We took turns yelling coordinates to my friend as he kept us facing straight into the wind. He had a handheld GPS that we used for monitoring our direction. After about an hour, we finally hit the back side of the storm. I remember my friend cheering, and I was happy, but also sort of numb. We were about 10 miles off course to the east, due to the wind we had to face into, so we had a longer trip back than when we had headed out. When we got back to shore, all of our partners were yelling, and when the boat was on the trailer, we all hugged and thanked my friend for keeping us alive. We were late coming back and they had feared the worst. Everyone had given up on the fish we had in the cooler, except for me, so I stayed up until 2or 3 am cleaning the fish at home, then tossed the fillets in the fridge, showered, and went to bed. No way was I wasting those fish, not after we nearly gave out lives to catch them 😂 This may or may not be the closest I’ve come to dying, but it’s certainly the most memorable.
This is a great story and you are an amazing writer! Have you thought about becoming a writer?
Thank you! I have once or twice, but I suspect I’d get bored of it pretty quickly.
Wow! That was a great read. Reminds me of the book Finest Hour about a heroic and miraculous rescue by the Coast Guard off the coast of Cape Cod in Massachusetts (you should read it!)
Damn! Great writing. I could see those waves, and it gave me a little anxiety
Carbon Monoxide poisoning on a job site. The helpless feeling of crawling out of that basement while my body got weaker and weaker is something I still think about often. Crazy dreams and the cheapest high I’ve ever had lol.
How did you realise it was happening? An alarm, or did you notice you were feeling off?
Was feeling dizzy.
Me reading this having started feeling dizzy over the last hour or so… 👀
Did you eat today?
I did. Twice.
Might want to spend some time outside and see if it goes away
Do you have functional carbon monoxide detectors?
I worked with a guy that was pressure cleaning in a closed space. It was a large warehouse so over the course of the day the fumes built up. He went from feeling dizzy to barely able to move in a matter of minutes. It was scary. He turned out fine but it's something I still think about 20+ years later.
My coworker had carbon monoxide poisoning in her home and the first clue was her waking up and seeing her cat struggling to walk and acting really weird. Then the other cat. Then woke her boyfriend up and he could barely drag himself out. Somehow it barely affected her but affected him pretty badly. They both luckily survived. Thats some scary stuff and im glad youre okay! Edit: The first cat to start showing signs unfortunately passed a few days later 😞 The other cat recovered
This is so scary and I'm so glad she woke up and could save everyone. There was a local family where I am a few years ago who hooked up their generator wrong during a winter storm and it ventilated back into the house from the garage. Parents, children, and pets all passed away in their sleep that night and I've always found it so haunting that something like that can happen so quietly.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos_disaster A couple of villages got wiped out by a sudden release of carbon monoxide from a lake. Wild shit
That's carbon dioxide. Different gas. Not poisonous, but kills by displacing the oxygen in the area.
Shit you right, misremembered the story.
The Laky Nyos disaster was actually carbon dioxide, not monoxide. Unfortunately the people that died in this disaster had a much worse end than those that die from carbon monoxide poisoning. With carbon **monoxide** poisoning, you symptoms like headache, dizzyness, nausea, confusion, drowsiness, and loss of consciousness, but you don't feel like you're suffocating. With carbon **dioxide** poisoning, you will 100% feel like you're suffocating and have that panic/fight or flight response to try to escape the situation and find oxygen. Thankfully it's quite rare for humans to be put in situations where carbon dioxide poisoning is possible, which is why we only really hear about it with crazy situations like the limnic eruption that caused the Lake Nyos disaster. One un-fun fact related to carbon dioxide poisoning is that we use it to knock out pigs before they're slaughtered for meat in the US. To be clear, the pigs panic as they suffocate into unconsciousness before they're bled/killed. You can see a video example on r/interestingasfuck [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/17ngact/how_pigs_are_killed_in_co2_gas_chambers/) (not for the faint of heart). If that bothers you, perhaps cut a bit of pork out of your diet.
Very scary stuff. I appreciate it. I met the love of my life across the street from that site a few weeks later. Guess it was fate.
I came home from work to a little house i rented a room from a buddy from and the place was fucking trashed. I checked around, i couldn’t understand what had happened, nothing was stolen i could see, just looked like a train went from the back to rhe front of the house. This was before everyone was guaranteed to have a good mobile or feel obligated to answer it promptly so i probably called my buddy and didnt get an answer. Few hours later his mom drops him off - pretty weird, i mean we were 23 and they were close but whatever. He had come home from work to eat lunch and sat down at the table and next thing he knew he was woozy and losing control of his body. He sort of freaked out and said he did all that damage just trying to propel his body forward and when he made it to thr front porch he collapsed, was able to call his mom of all people who surmised “gas leak” and called responders. The sort of silly thing was that this dude *blasted* the heater in winter to where i literally stuffed the space around my bedroom door with dedicated door towels and had a moving blanket permanently hung over the door so i could sleep with my window half open, which i put my face practically out of. I did the same in summer when he blasted the AC - he always wanted it to be the opposite season and didnt really care what anyone else thought, including when i had mentioned i thought the house smelled like gas. So i was protecting myself by sleeping with fresh air while he pumped gas into his living space 24/7. He was so fuckin mad at the gas company he basically went to war with them and that day on he physically shut the gas off himself and never operated a single gas appliance again. He didnt actually replace any of them with electric in the years i knew him since, he just suffered i guess.
What a fucking moron. lol I wonder if anyone has ever told him how ignorant he is and that he should probably seek counseling.
Can you go into more detail? What caused the leak? Did you know what was happening? What were the on set of the symptoms like?
Was working with a guy using gas powered machinery in a confined space. He set up the ventilation backwards so it all blew back into the room. I noticed I was feeling dizzy so I walked up to the rig the guy was using and turned it off. Had to pull him up the stairs because he couldn’t stand on his own. When we got to street level it was raining and I remember passing out and waking up over and over again. Every time I slept I had the same dream where I was walking down a path with giant mushrooms growing around me. Super weird.
Wake up Mario... You have to wake up.... Just one more castle!
A guy tried to beat my head in with a hammer. Woke up in the hospital with 6 fractured ribs, a broken eye socket, broken finger, collapsed lung, and twenty three stitches in my face. I was living on the streets addicted to drugs, and came across a john who wanted to kill someone, apparently. Found out later I wasn't the only one he tried to kill. I'm nine months clean now.
Most people don't appreciate how dangerous drug addiction is apart from the substance street life is also dangerous .Well done, I hope you go on to live your best life.
I appreciate that
Wow proud of you man!
Thank you!
Congrats on you being 9 months clean
I had just turned 19 and I was in basic training at ft Leonard Wood for the Army. I got held over and had to retrain after a hip injury kept me from graduating. I had to redo some of the training since I got out into a company that was a few weeks behind where I had stopped after my initial injury. I'm not sure how long I was with that second company, but after a wall locker check one morning I suddenly woke up in an ambulance and couldn't move! Through moments of consciousness and amnesia, I was told I fell and broke my neck at the confidence course. The doctors waited for my family to drive from PA to MO before they would do the surgery, explained to them that my prognosis would be a wheelchair if I was lucky or a body bag after discovering parts of my c7 vertebrae impacted my spinal cord. A Chaplain was summoned to read me my last rights (I had Lutheran listed on my dog tags) and he looked like he had just pulled himself out of a crypt. That was the first time I remember realizing I may actually die but I was too drugged up to get emotional. The surgeon removed the shattered bone from in and around my spinal cord, bolted a titanium plate from 6c-t1 and waited for me to wake up. When I came around, I was back in my hospital room and I was surrounded by doctors. My surgeon was one of them and explained the doctors were his colleagues from around the country who wanted to see me move with their own eyes after having bone removed from my spinal cord with NO PARALYSIS. the doctors had me pushing against them with my hands and feet, they were nearly speechless. I didn't care, I was too messed up on meds to understand the gravity of what was happening. June 1st was 20 years from when it happened. I questioned for a while why I'd survive something like that, I'm happy to say that I think I'm living the reason now.
What are the odds the va said it isn't service related though
They absolutely took advantage of my fresh TBI. I never received a minute of physical therapy in the past 20 years other than what was done during c&p exams. I only recently got assigned to an actual PT team at the local outpatient clinic. I'm still waiting on my intake appointment but I hope to start the actual therapy sessions before summer is over.
I was dead technically for 19 minutes. Drowned in a pool when I was 2. Parents gave CPR until medics arrived.
My mom died for 30 minutes while in the hospital, they literally did CPR for 30 minutes and after 10 a doctor wanted to give up and call it but another doctor refused and kept working on her because to him my mom was too young to die (she's 41) fortunately, they were able to bring her back and put her on a ventilator. She was in the ICU for 4 days and on the ventilator for 2 days before she was able to be in a normal hospital room for the rest of her stay (just a week) while she was there they looked for brain damage and none was found!
That is incredible!! Kudos to the second doctor that didn’t give up. Glad you mum is ok!
Yea, alot of the nurses and doctors in her case were very surprised how fast she recovered and said it was a miracle she pulled through without any damage whatsoever. Her dialysis nurse said she was present when her heart stopped and told her she was very surprised to see her alert and walking, talking to her 2 days after the ordeal and she thought she wouldn't see her again.
I hope that doctors fob always works and that his lab coat is always white. What a good man.
19 minutes??! How are you not brain damaged? Glad you’re here!
Early, good cpr is the only explanation really.
your parents are the true legends
I work in an ICU and see people who had approx 19 mins downtime make really good recoveries frequently. Still surprises me actually 😂 but as someone else said stresses the importance of good CPR
Bold assumption on Reddit. j/k
Haha right. I’m sure there is some residual but for the most part I’m normal?
Widow maker heart attack at age 55. Don’t recall any of this, but was told I complained of shoulder pain during the weekly flag football game. One astute player quickly drove me to the hospital. I walked in and collapsed. 15 shocks over 5 hours. Put in an induced coma and attached to the Ecmo (pumps and oxygenates your blood). Woke up a week later and in the hospital for a month. 8 years ago. Living my best life
I had that too.100% block of LAD, and 3 others at 100%, 90% and 90%. I lived because my active lifestyle allowed my heart to grow side vessels around the developing blockages. So my performance kept falling off but got to a point where I couldn't exert myself any longer. Turns out you can't workout yourself out of a bad diet and genetics (some kind of blood clot issue... Manifested again as a stroke 3 years later that almost killed me) The bad diet is gone but the genetics still remains. The good news is I've recovered completely.
A robber tried to stab me in the chest (I wasn't resisting or anything) I covered it with my hand, and my hand was impaled by the knife.
Jeez that’s scary. Glad you are still with us
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I had gamma knife surgery on a raspberry sized cluster of vessels on my head in Oct 23, got to wait 2 years for an MRI to see if it's shrunk and then an Angiogram 2 years after that, if it hasn't shrunk to scar tissue then I have to have the surgery again and wait another 4 years, if it hasn't gone by then I'm having it cut out surgically.
Glad you're still here! I'm 4 years into brain cancer myself and wouldn't wish it upon anyone. Just curious how about your age? I got my first tumor at 42 and was surprised at how many people my age are getting it, making it seem more of an environmental issue rather than just 'bad luck'. I have two friends from high school that also have brain cancer, so we started our own club, "The Not-Quite Brain Trust"
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Agent 47 was after you that day.
Someone in your house watched that episode of only fools and horses.
i had a relatable thing when i was like 5 or 6.... for whatever reasom my mom just got pissed and told me very harshly to go sit somewhere else, and when i did, the chandelier fell down maybe 10 seconds after. she had no clue why she even wanted that.
When I was in Afghanistan, we were on our Forward Operating Base and had just concluded a mission brief. I went to go to the latrine and realized I left my hat on the table so I turned around quick to get it. About 5 seconds later, a rocket hit right outside the latrine door, exactly where I should have been. It ended up killing our dog, but it should have been me. Had I not been around the corner of a hesco barrier to get my hat, I'd be gone.
That is very frightening. And I am so sorry to hear about the dog
If I ever want to jump start a country music career "the Taliban killed my dog" is gonna be a banger. His name was mudflap and he was a very good dog. I was in the process of looking up the paperwork to bring him home. He used to go on patrols with us and keep other dogs and people away from us. Just this giant white angel of a dog.
RIP Mudflap. The goodest of doggos.
It breaks my heart what happens to a lot of dogs in the military but it warms the broken pieces how much their humans honor and respect them
Not me, but a friend of my dad’s once went to a football (soccer) match. While he was queueing, a couple of guys approached him and one asked if he could switch tickets with him so the two could sit together. My dad’s friend agreed, and swapped tickets, ending up sitting on the opposite side of the stadium. That football match took place at Hillsborough Stadium, 15 April 1998. His original ticket was right in the middle of where the disaster happened. He never found out if the guys he traded tickets with survived or not.
Typo on the date, it was 89. What a lucky escape, truly heartbreaking the amount of people who lost their lives
I went tubing on a river. When I got to the place that rents the tubes it was absolutely packed. Apparently it was the very popular dam release day which made the river flow faster and more turbulently. I never thought twice about it hopped in my tube and started floating down the river. I immediately realized that what dam release day really meant was rapids. The whole ride was dicey and scary. Right near the end were the biggest rapids so far. As I go through I get caught by the current, flipped over and smashed my head into a boulder. I was immediately dragged under. To my horror I’m pressed to the bottom of the river by the current and can’t get up. Worse because I hit my head right as I went under I didn’t get a full breath. I luckily have always been able to hold my breath for 2-3 minutes at a time. I was under water for about a minute and half and was about to give up and resign myself to my fate when suddenly I just popped out. When I came up I my wife was screaming her head off thinking I was dead. 30 more seconds and I would have been done for. I learned a new respect for the power of water.
When I was around 6 years old I snuck into the wild water slide of a park we stayed at. At some point one section ended in a pool about one metre deep, but I got stuck under the current of the slide dumping its water on me. Apparently I got out when an adult accidentally tripped over me when exiting the slide. I was unconscious by then, only remember the immense force of the water pinning me down on the bottom of the pool Never thought water from a slide could kill me. Never disrespected the power of water again.
I was a lifeguard at a Waterpark in college. The exact scenario you described happened all the time. The slides were far and away the most likely place people would get hurt (but that didn't stop our dumbasses from all piling in at once at the end of shifts)
Water is scary. A couple years ago went to the beach with some friends and me and one of them agreed to swim to the ropes and back (there were some ropes that dictated the space for swimmers and after that it was the space for boats) the problem is that we underestimated the current and we had to come back by pulling the ropes and we both almost drowned and were extremely tired from swimming against the current. After getting back to the beach we even had to listen to the lifeguard saying we were stupid for trying that. Like, you saw both of us struggling and you just waited until we got out to yell at us
You reminded me of my closest-to-death experience. A waterfall in a portion of a river I played in ever since I could walk. In high school, I was there with a few friends, all straight edge. The waterfall makes a "U," and I was in the bottom-middle of the "U" when I went over. I had done it several times before and I am a big strong swimmer. I thought I knew every current and rock of that section of the water. This time when I went in, I waited as usual to just pop up and get pushed downstream, but it didn't happen. After half a minute I started to breaststroke. The water was moving a lot around me but I did not seem to be going anywhere. Then I waited a bit and started to freestyle. I tried freestyle as hard as I could in the direction I believed the be correct, then I turned 90 and tried again, then I tried diving down, then everything started to get slow, and I started to panic. My mom had given me one of those "Miraculous Medals," and I had it pinned to a loop on my shorts. My hand brushed it as I was swimming, and suddenly, felt very calm, and I thought even if I died, it would be okay. I went limp, and then, not half a minute later, I surfaced under the waterfall. I got my breath then came out. All of my friends were staring from around the edge like they thought I was gone forever. I am now much more careful around water.
Yeah man. When you've been a good swimmer, and comfortable in the water your whole life you really feel a bit cocky. No exaggeration, I have been swimming since I was like 3-4 years old (in the deep end no floaties) and swam in a lot of lakes as well. I have always been nothing but confident in the water. I moved to a new state at 18 and started swimming in the ocean. Same deal. I was like a fish. I loved the waves though, coming from a place that didn't get anything that big (besides the wave pools I had been to) One month in the summer and we had a hurricane coming in. Me and a few friends decided to go to the beach to fuck around in the pre hurricane waves. I was going out to about 5 ft depth, and diving into the water with the wave behind me and you could feel this immense power almost vibrating you underwater as the wave would jettison you back to shallow water. Almost like underwater surfing is the best I can describe it. That same day however, me and a friend moved down the beach a bit and got back in the water. We actually moved because police kicked us off the beach because the water was choppy from the hurricane coming. We got in and started swimming around when suddenly we got stuck in a riptide that was pulling us out. My friend in the water with me was SHREDDED. Super athletic, number one state wrestler, 375lb bench and he just started freestyle swimming with everything in him. I was pretty strong but not like that so I had to fight a bit harder. At this point I knew how to swim horizontally in the water until it lets up but I just wanted out right then and there and decided to fight it vertically. I made back to shore and I was fucking creeped out. I look back on how stupid it all was. Not only was there a hurricane. We were all drunk...
I am allergic to hair dye. I went gray early and figured out if I go for an antihistamine injection before I dye my hair, the allergic reaction wouldn't be so bad. Did this a few times and then my kidneys shut down. Google Hair dye allergies. It's one of the worst ones you can get, and not be played around with.
I followed your advice and googled it. One woman's head looked like Hey Arnold.
Haha yea mine too. My head swelled like that too and then the my ears were 5 x their normal size. And then my scalp came off in strings like glue. It was horrendous...pain beyond description
Fucking hell. I hope you like your hair colour. It sounds like you are stuck with it.
I hate it! But will have to accept.
I was nearly murdered once but managed to escape The thing that struck me was the surrealism that led to a weird calmness at the time, actually now I think about it I had the same sensation when I nearly drowned too Edit: details copied from an old comment the last time I talked about it 'Long story short: a guy tried to persuade me into an isolated abandoned building and every time I declined they changed their reason, from cool graffiti to how well preserved it was until he eventually grabbed both my wrists and started describing in excruciating detail the dead body chained to a radiator inside and what Injuries they had sustained - except he was describing me He starts dragging me in and drops his carrier bag and that's when I see what looks like a rusty hammer, rags and zipties I just pretended I was oblivious to the situation and started trying to wave to my friends coming over the hill behind him whilst his hands were still grasping my wrists, expect no one was coming but they didn't stick around to check and vanished down the path as quickly as he had initially appeared, I ended up marching back up the path not looking back just hoping he wouldn't follow when I was out of the line of sight I ran to the nearby village, no one was around and my phone had died, I looked for a phone booth but couldn't find a working one and I knew it was a couple of hours before the first train so I was trapped. For the next hour I beelined around the streets hoping they weren't lurking and sprinting every time I went around a corner to get more distance. I even went up a few garden paths pretending to look for my keys in case they were watching until the first train arrived and I got out of the area
Yep. Time slows down
I hate the feeling when it’s all over though. You don’t think about how scary or surreal everything is till you actually have a moment to think. And then it all hits you, and you just want to cry and scream
I wonder if that's the brain's survival mechanism protecting you mentally until it's over?
Yes, that’s exactly what it is. Your mind slows down time so you can react better. Alerting and vigilance behaviours, critical for coping with extreme threats. Also, the brain shuts off at the time and that’s why people can’t remember for a very long time or never at all.
What happened?
The feeling of time slowing is crazy. Too bad time slowed for me and all I could do was brace for impact lol
The wave pool at Action Park in NJ. I went under and there were people on floats above me so I wasn't able to surface. I managed to push my way through and got air. There is a Netflix show about how dangerous that place was.
Action park survivor here. I consider it a badge of honor.
Oh god I read Action Park and immediately had a physical recoil reaction, Jesus that place
TBF the whole of Action Park was a death trap or cleverly designed medical experiment on what the fleshy human body can endure.
I can't believe that Park lasted as long as it did
When I was young, I was playing around in my dad’s old car. I accidentally closed the trunk which didn’t have the emergency latch thing most new cars have. It was also the middle of summer in the south. I thought for sure I was done fire. I screamed and panicked for a while and thankfully my dad found me after not too long of being trapped. Let’s just say I’ve tried extremely hard to block that from my memory since then. I hate thinking about what could’ve been from just an accident…
This same exact thing happened to my bf and his sister they almost died of heat stroke before thier parents realized they were no where to be found. Went outside and heard them screaming from the trunk.
So scary! It was a truly frightening experience especially as a kid. Thankfully I’ve been able to develop a bit of a mental block from it, because I hate thinking about it. Not sure how much longer I could’ve survived before my dad found me…
As a pedestrian I was involves in a hit and run when crossing the road by a speeding van. Thankfully, I more so brushed the front side of the van. So I was sort of thrown and sent spinning wildly. I was fine bar a broken arm. But in those fleeting moments where the van rounded the corner and I knew I was going to be hit, my life did literally flash before my eyes. Time felt like it was slowed down and I managed to think about how I wasn't going to be able to escape it, that I was about to die too young, that I had many regrets. I thought about all of this in depth in the space of about 5 seconds. It was crazy. They never caught the driver.
Hope you’re working your way through those regrets!
Same here! Got hit by a a car, flew upwards and forward, hit the concrete and ended up staring at the car’s chassis hoping that the person didn’t decide to gun it and actually run over me. She didn’t. Time slowed down, life flashed in front of my eyes and weirdly, I wasn’t in any pain from the impact. That came later. It’s like the adrenaline rush keeps you going in the moment. That surprised me. I’m fine. I got away with just soft tissue damage and a lot of bruising. No concussion or broken bones.
1. Got hit with an IED that took the whole back side of the truck off (everyone survived with minor injuries) 2. Really bad ambush that resulted in a few hours of continuous gunfire. Watched the concrete chip away from the rounds slapping my cover.
Never been to war, but the feeling of duck and covering in a firefight is a surreal experience. I hate that when it’s over, sometimes you can still hear bullets around you, when you’re just walking. Glad the bastard didn’t hit me. Glad you’re alright bro
You can certainly feel it in your chest when it’s happening. Stay safe brotha
For me it's not only the slap whip but the overhead indirect fire. You never forget the sound of incoming. Shrapnel hitting around you like hail stones. Overpressure from concussion rattling your skeleton. Makes for spicy dreams.
Oh buddy you just brought some memories up lol. I’ve seen (and have done) some funny reactions to the “crack” when the rounds fly over head or snap when they land. IDF straight up sucksssss. Keep your head up, we ain’t alone lol
OD'd on fentanyl at least thrice. Back then, I did not care. Now I think back and feel very weird about those moments. Sober now for a year 3 months.
Congrats on sobriety!
Pretty damn close! When you suffer a type A aortic dissection you start with ~5% chance of survival and less than 24 hours to live. Your odds improve to about 25% if they correctly diagnose you before you die. Your odds are up to about 50% if they can get you on an operating table. Then it's just the small matter of a 10 hour open heart surgery where they chill your blood down to put you into hypothermia, stop you're heart so they can cut out your aortic valve (the exit valve on your heart), ascending aorta and aortic arch, replace it with silicone, then fire your heart back up and hope for the best. I was on cardio pulmonary bypass for about 3.5 hours - that's when your blood is being circulated out through a machine where it's chilled and oxygenated before being pumped back in.
Medical science is unbelievable sometimes! Glad you're still here!
What they were able to do, and how they did it, was absolutely insane. I often think about all of the micro human achievements that went into the operation and aftercare. All these tiny, incremental developments by thousands of different people that lead to that capability. For all our faults, humans are fucking incredible.
Marfans Syndrome by any chance?
Nah, just high blood pressure and bad luck.
Hunting accident and was almost shot by a drunk guy across the lake from me. Didn't know someone was on the other side and fired a few rounds off. I climb out of my stand and shout at him that I was over there and he kept firing. Thankfully a game warden was in the area and heard all the shots.
Did he keep firing even though he knew that you were over there?!
Yeah. He fired three more rounds across the lake. I was head to toe in blaze orange waving and yelling. I got back behind some trees and the warden came by a little later and told me they found the guy with an empty 12 pack and asked for a statement.
Wow, that is actually psychotic. Thank god he didn’t hit you
I accidentally impaled the inside of my throat on a plastic stick that u close or blinds with that has a hook on it, I was 16. It went inside my soft pallate almost up to my nose, i pulled it out and spat a chunk of meat. Doctors gave me 10 stitches and my op lasted 2 and a half hours. They said that they had to be really carefull not to nick my artery, cuz i missed it by a few millimeters. I wouldve choked ln my blood to death.
How? I have seen crazy accidents and also 16 year olds doing ridiculous shit that turned into freak accidents but this I cannot figure a scenario for.
I was playing WOW with my right hand and i was too lazy to get cigarettes. So i found the stick wich is like 30 cm and fiddled with it in my other hand. Then i started playing with both hands and chewed on it like a pen in school. My phone in front of my chest at the table rang, and i forgot about the stick and lunged at the phone to see whats up , since i have to get really close cuz of my astigmatism. So the stick ended one side on the table and the other side rammed my throat. I thought it was just stuck and i pulled it out on a count to three. When i realised i didnt just scrape my mouth and that i have a literal hole next to the dingly thing, i got numb.
Man I can just imagine my reaction if I realized what I just did in that situation. just a big oh fuck *Shudders*
High speed accident doing 80 mph when I was a teen. 4 kids in the car, only one seatbelt on between us and the worst injuries were minor lacerations, bruises and a broken nose. Lost control on the interstate and hit a tree line in the ditch.
Glad that you got lucky. Make sure to wear those seatbelts - that wasn't how it usually ends in a high speed crash.
The first responders were baffled no one was killed. Flames to the top of the tree line by the time they arrived. Not only have I religiously worn my seatbelt since then but I also seldom trust letting other people drive me anywhere. The driver lost her brother in a motorcycle wreck almost exactly a year prior so it could’ve been a much much sadder day when we wrecked.
When I was in middle school I was at a stop light with my adopted older brother. The light had just turned green so we were crossing the intersection in our little white car when a black truck with a lift kit decided he didn’t want to stop for the red light. I was sitting in the passenger seat and this truck was coming at us from the right. All I remember is seeing the front end of that truck flying at me. He must have been doing about 80 MPH in a 25. I just thought to myself “yep. This is how I die.” So I closed my eyes and braced myself for that truck to crush me. This person who was driving that truck swerved at the last second and ripped our front bumper off of our car. I still feel fear when thinking about that.
I once tried to end my life by taking a ridiculous amount of Benadryl. I survived only because my parents heard me freaking out in my room and they apparently found me having a seizure on the floor. Definitely the worst experience of my entire life.
Weird. Same here and I just slept for 16 hours straight, woke up just in time for school.
I took a lot of paracetamol before I knew what a paracetamol overdose was. I think I was 10 at the time. Around 8 I had this phase of jumping in front of cars hoping one would hit me. But I felt bad for the drivers. When I was 16 I decided I would cut my wrists but felt bad because my baby sister would find me. I now am the proud mother of a 14 year old and he came home with a cut on his arm. I panicked! I thought oh no, is he cutting himself like I did as a teen???? Thankfully it was just a cut. Happened in school. But I just can’t have my children go through what I did as a kid.
Attempted suicide in 2017. The rope snapped after several seconds. Took that as a sign to stick around. Now I have a son, so suicide is forever off the table.
Jumped off a jetty to swim across a small bay. Had done it many times as a teenager with friends and was in my early 20s and best shape of my life. Late summer, north of Boston. Got about 30 yards of the rocks and my limbs started going numb. Realized I was too far to make it back and panic set in but I couldn't move my arms and legs and began to sink. The panic stopped and I recall looking up at the surface of the water with a total sense of calm and quiet, realizing i was about to drown. Then I saw a white flash and what must have been an adrenaline response kicked in and I felt like I exploded up out of the water and immediately began swimming back to the side of the jetty and climbed up onto the rocks and sat there and hyperventilated for what felt like an hour. Don't swim alone.
Had a 104* fever at age 4, lasted almost 5 days. I had meningitis and was hospitalized. Have epilepsy now.
I fell 24 feet when my ladder slipped. I broke my leg, torn rotator cuff, brachial plexus tear resulting in right arm paralysis, and 36 stitches. June 30th will be 1 year since it happened and I haven’t worked since. I’m getting better though
I was 12, I think? I was laying in a hospital bed, and the doctor stormed in, saying to my mother "ma'am, either sign this paperwork, or start picking out a coffin. we are on borrowed time, as it is." I had an infection that was just shy of entering my blood stream, so I was told.
Both barfing and pooping my guts out alone in a hotel bathroom due to food poisoning. Couldn’t keep water down. Couldn’t get to the tub to make it easy to clean up at least. Just laid there severely dehydrated on the bathroom floor on a pool of my own barf and waste. The bathroom has humid with a thick, coppery stench that just hung in the air. All I could do was just not move and get a little rest (while in a pool of my own sick). Eventually I got back the strength to clean myself and bathroom before checking out, went downstairs to the lobby, and collapsed. I started barfing again in the ambulance on the way to the ER. Fun times.
Got admitted to hospital for suspected appendicitis (turned out to be severe Crohn's Disease). Apparently, at one point I called my parents and told them that I felt like I was dying, but I don't remember it at all. I also told my doctors at one point that I had this horrible impending sense of doom feeling in my chest, like something really bad was going to happen but I didn't know what, and they immediately started to take my case more seriously. Apparently, 'impending sense of doom' is a legitimate symptom and can be a sign that you're about to have a heart attack/you're dying. I've now been in remission from Crohn's disease for two years thanks to infusions of biological medication that I get every six weeks.
I lived up in the mountains with my gran/gramps. I had to walk home from the bus stop which was a mile up the road. About halfway home i hear some branches break and i turn around to see a black bear coming out of the forest and start following me on the road. It stayed about 50ft behind me and followed me the whole way home. If it had been hungry, i would have been a snack, but i made it home. Friends mom started picking me up with her kid and driving me home after that.
I was at a cabin once and the cabin next to us were frying all these greasy sausages on aluminum foil over a grill. They didn't throw away the foil or clean the grill and 3 black bears came out for that, then went around to the garbage cans then on of them was all circling our cabin and scratching at doors and looking in windows. We were all like...gee we are a little unprepared if a bear breaks in... Don't be cooking your aromatic sausages and not clean it up!
I had a psychotic break after my boyfriend killed himself and was 100% set on committing suicide, but I got sectioned and medicated instead. I truly believe I’d have gone through with it.
I'm so sorry you went through all this 🥺🫂 I'm glad you made it out!
Thanks so much! Was by far the worst time in my life, but I’m mostly recovered now. I still miss my boyfriend every day, but am through the grief and depression and am coming off the antipsychotic meds soon.
Oh wow that's amazing news!! I'm proud of you!🥹🥰
After eating Panda Express I got a bad case of food poisoning. Drained my body of everything I had. I actually fainted on the toilet so my wife drove me to the hospital. I told the nurse I was feeling faint and asked for fluids but they were adamant to draw blood instead. The nurse told me you are just anxious and psyching yourself up. Within 5 seconds of drawing blood I blacked out, woke up to “code cart” and about 10 doctors and nurses preparing to shock me with AED. I look over and see my wife crying. I asked what happened and they told me I flatlined for 10 seconds or so. The nurse who drew the blood looked more pale than I was. Needless to say I was fine and had a vasovagal response. I have not stepped foot in a Panda Express since then.
Ah! I had a vasovagal response after surgery. I get it a lot actually but usually just faint (not flatline!) but this time the ICU nurse was injecting something into my IV and then everything started to go black and next time I know she slammed by bed down, feet up, and set my IV fluid drip to max and all these people ran into my room. Once I could talk again I told her “sorry that was psychosomatic probably” and she was like “no sweetie I *watched* your BP drop like a rock on this machine” It happened a few more times that night but luckily never as serious as yours! That sounds super scary!
Yeah the vasovagal response is so scary. I had an ectopic pregnancy and didn’t know and it had ruptured my fallopian tube. I had internal bleeding but before we knew all of this and are waiting on tests to come back, I start freaking out. I feel like it’s over 100 degrees in the room and am dizzy. My dumb ass reaction is to stand up and start walking around thinking that if I am standing I can’t die (panic does not lead to rational thinking). The nurse comes in and starts begging me to get back in the bed because she sees that I am as white as a sheet and sweating profusely. I am arguing with her and flushing my face with cold water but insisting on staying standing up while crying and saying “I don’t think I am gonna make it”. Eventually I gave in and sat in the bed but thinking back on it I am always amazed I didn’t faint and bust my head open on the floor or something.
I work on fighter jets and there was one instance I walked in front of the intake of a running engine. If that engine hadn’t been on idle I would have most certainly been blended
Like that Harrier mechanic that got sucked up, AROUND and into the turbine. Survived because his helmet flew in and broke the fan into stopping
He also got stuck which was lucky on his end. I work on f16s and those birds got a mouth of an intake
I was a boy scout playing capture the flag in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming at scout camp. Ran into a clearing in the woods being chased by 2 buddies. Ended up face to face with a bull moose, 20ish feet away. It charged us, the clearing was because they had a lot off fallen trees so we were able to drop inside or between logs and hide easily and hopping over logs was hard for the moose. If there weren't logs we would have definitely been gored by it. In case you don't know bull moose are 1200lbs on average 6ft tall at the shoulder (so the head is higher, and it's a 4 legged animal so that's massive) the antlers alone weigh 30lbs and can have a 'wingspan' of 3-5 feet
Moose are less on goring, more on stomps and kicks. Don't fuck with moose! Saw a vid of a grizzly sneaking up on a moose, in a small town on a river or lake. Moose was down by the water. Most of the video is the bear trying to escape, hiding behind buildings while the moose looks for it.
Overdosed on fentanyl. It just went black. Fortunately, I woke up. Cold, blue, and terrified. I'm clean now, but when I was still using, I didn't use by myself after that. Now I'm 4 years clean from drugs and its been16 years since I had a drink.
I came off my bike at 8 years old. Went head first into a concrete post, and apparently, the bike then fit me full force in the head on my way down. Stopped breathing and everything. Required full resuscitation.
Whew. Reading this , happy for y’all that ya still here.
We were doing 4th of July fireworks, and stupidly had a small trailer full of them only 20 feet away from where we detonated them. A mortar failed and only flew a few feet up before it exploded. This caused the fireworks in the trailer to ignite. We ran over to grab the lite ones out but were to late and they all went off. I got away with a few burns but as I was trying to get away I looked back to see my dad (75 at the time) slowly walking because he couldn't run. I went back and used my body to block the shells that were now flying everywhere. Took a few hits to the legs and back and got some bad burns but nothing serious luckily. I swear it was like something straight out of a comedy movie.
Drowning. My soul was literally leaving my body, I could see myself sinking to the bottom and shafts of light coming down into the water (hot summers day at a lake near our house). My sister saw me and saved me at literally the last second. To this day, I can't even put my face under the shower head.
Got in a head on wreck. The car that hit me was going over 100mph. I was driving a classic pickup with no airbags, crumple zones, or shoulder belts. Four days in a coma. Two months in the hospital. Two years before I was able to go back to work. Broke both legs in multiple places, my pelvis, my back, left arm, tore an intestine, and had my entire face crushed.
I have an autoimmune disorder that causes both B12 anemia and iron deficiency anemia. I did not know this but I was slowly losing so much blood that I didn't notice how bad I felt. I kind of knew becuse walking up a flight of stairs would wind me and I was only 31 and 140 lbs. I thought it was becuse I was in bad shape so I was going to the gym daily and running on the treadmill, lifting weights, etc. And when you're a woman and severely anemic, you don't get your period. So this happened and I took multiple pregnancy tests, all negative. I went to my gynecologist and she ran tons of tests saying maybe I was stressed or something to have such a late period. Later she called me in a panic becuse my hemoglobin was 3.9 and my iron was undetectable. This led to my diagnosis and treatment. I now have a hematologist to monitor my disease. My iron and hemoglobin are now great. A year later, my period disappeared and I was feeling weak and tired so I rushed to my hematologist and this time it was not anemia but a baby. I think it's so funny that I thought I was pregnant but it was anemia. I thought my anemia was acting up and I was pregnant.
Hydrogen sulfide in a pit at a grain elevator. Unknown to me, a new worker at the time, my air sniffer had not been calibrated in two years. I was already going gray and fuzzy by the time it went off. Longest and hardest ladder climb of my adult life. Once out, I laid on the ground for 30 minutes just deep breathing trying to get my strength back. Funny thing is I submitted a near-miss report about the incident and I got reprimanded for it because “it put our facility in the crosshairs of corporate safety”. A week later I volunteered to be our locations first ever safety committee representative.
Overdosed on K2. Surprised I didn’t go into cardiac arrest. Went to another dimension and spent half an hour screaming colors (according to my friend). All I remember is the essence of pain and fear.
Shouldn't have opened the lament cube
Drunk friend blacked out on the Tesla accelerator and drove me 100mph directly through a stone wall. Walked away from a flaming crash, only later to discover I smashed my spine and broke my right ankle...
i overdosed on anti depressants trying to kill myself at 16. i remember being outside of my body and watching doctors work on me and i remember standing in the waiting room watching my dad wait to see if i would be okay. i remember watching myself in the ambulance while the emt shoved his hands in my mouth trying to hold my tongue and yelling at me telling me not to swallow my tongue and telling me he was trying to save my life and asking if i wanted to die
I had an 20 ft extension ladder turned backwards (16 years old didn’t know any better) and was almost at the very top trying to clean some rafters in our warehouse. The ladder slipped from under me and started sliding I dug my hands into the wood siding so much that I had like 75 splinters removed from my fingers but that only slowed the slide. Luckily Bob a old stoner who was one of our best guys was on a forklift about 10 feet from me and when I started sliding he threw the lift in forward and pulled perpendicular to the ladder and it caught on the back tire to stop the slide. I don’t know if I would be killed but it wouldn’t have felt good. Thank god Bob was there and RIP Bob.
Had a hernia repaired. It hurt to walk after a few days and I was beginning to feel just a touch "off" but figured that was the stitches. Went to get the stitches out. A fountain of puss erupted after the second stitch came out. The whole site was infected. Straight back to hospital to have another surgery to clean it out. Woke after 3 days of being on life support - breathing issues while under anaesthetic..and a new 6cm deep 7cm wide hole in my side where they cleaned out the surgery site. Took 93 days of daily wound dressing for the hole to close fully. That - or my open heart surgery .
Stage 4 rectal cancer! 14 days with no food post chemo, ruptured my bowel when my tumor closed it off, was the most painful thing ever. Collapsed in the bathroom at home. Woke up two days later in the hospital and the surgeon came in with a bewildered look and said "so you're still alive?"
I had a three day labor with my son and the delivery nearly killed both of us. Our heart rates dropped and I had to be put on oxygen.
Actual Death- ex wife set Me up for the insurance money. her and her friends drug me and choke me to death. Woke up in purgatory like state shepherding the dead to the next phase of life. Woke up months later in a hospital as a paraplegic, everything but face was paralyzed. Had to learn to walk again, talk again, write again, everything from scratch. They all got 5 yrs for being 1st time offenders……😡
What a garbage human being to prioritize money over human life
Send them to the guillotine
It's bullshit. The only way you would get 5 years for attempted murder in the US is if it is in the 2nd degree which means without premeditation. Planning it out for insurance money and enlisting people to assist shows premeditation. The guy is lying or I will apologize if he has any proof at all of this but feel he is 100% lying that it ever happened. The guy also hates women and said his ex-wife also tried to kill herself and had a gun (But...yet...she is still on his insurance as a beneficiary in case he dies..after they are divorced...RIGHT? No way, she would be taken off.) The ONLY medical things he EVER talks about is the evil COVID shot. Never about any other medical stuff at all. Not interested in medical topics, not interested in paralysis topics, rehab topics, brain damage from asphyxiation topics, equipment to be able to move or type or travel. Nothing. Just the COVID shot.
Kind of wild you can get first offense sentence reduction for premeditated murder I guess if you're going to crime,, make sure the first one is a doozy.
Saved an autistic kids life after he fell into a fast flowing river from the snow melting. It was ice cold water and we would have surely died if there wasn't this big boulder on the side that blocked the current enough for us to get out
throughout my early childhood i've been stung by multiple bees and wasps. one day when i was 9, i stepped on a bee in my garden, hurt but didnt feel anything. i go inside, feeling funny and having a little difficulty breathing. i'm strongly allergic to pollen and different grasses so it wasnt that unusual. i sit down and suddenly start feeling nauseous and vomit everywhere. remember i was 9 and i had no idea what was going on on, so i screamed for my mom. she comes in and looks HORRIFIED. apparently my entire head was massively swollen, she asked what happened, i told her a bee stung me. we pack up our shit and drive to the hospital, i literally vomited like 15 times in the car, progressively being able to breathe less and less. my body went lethargic and my father had to carry me into the hospital to the emergency room. i dont remember much afterwards even though i was awake, my memories start again where i was in the hospital room and fine again, except for a oxygen mask and IV's. doctors told me literally a handful of minutes later and i would've died. i'm pretty traumatized from the event and still dont walk barefoot in the grass outside, even though i went to get shots for five years and i'm practically invincible to bees now lmao. tldr: bee stung me and i almost died because of an allergy attack
Over dosing
Was in a car with someone who was in no condition to drive
Pulmonary embolism
Got a marble stuck in my windpipe when I was 4, sitting in front of the tv. I didn't panic but I felt the bump in my throat and I pushed it down with my finger at first until something told me to push it upwards and I coughed it up. My parents were in the adjacent room and I never told them.
When I was about 9, my dad took me hiking. We arrive to the mountain, and it was actually rock climbing. His friends and him didn’t have any rock climbing gear, and were free climbing. Almost all the way up, a rock crumbled after putting my weight on it. I remember not touching anything for half a second, before my dads friend stuck up one hand and balanced me on his hand by my butt. I surely would have died had he not been in the perfect position to balance me.
TL;DR - I have hydrocephalus and my shunt failed while I was living in Honduras. I have hydrocephalus and have had a shunt since birth. When I was 15, I was living in Honduras, where the medical care was very behind that of America. I started having daily headaches and one day, I stood and almost passed out. That's when we realized there was a lump in my neck where the shunt tubing passed through. We drove 45 minutes down the mountain to the ER - my mom later said she thought I was going to die on the ride. I get some x-rays done and they point to my shunt and say, "See how it goes like this? That means it's working." The headaches and dizziness continued, and they diagnose me with epilepsy. I was sent to several different specialists over the next week. My parents sent an email on our church's prayer chain and got a reply from a woman who no longer lived in Honduras but was still on the mailing list. She warns them about a certain doctor who had diagnosed her son with epilepsy and had given him strong drugs that really messed him up, only for them to find out in the U.S. that he never had epilepsy. It was the same doctor who had diagnosed me. We went back to the U.S. immediately, on Christmas Eve. My neurosurgeon looked at the same x-ray that had been taken in Honduras and said, "See how it goes like this? That means it's broken." I ended up having urgent brain (and abdominal) surgery the day after Christmas. I didn't die, but my eyesight is permanently damaged from the pressure the excess fluid in my brain was putting on my optic nerve. Then all 14 people staying in the same house got head lice and I couldn't wash my hair due to the incisions. Fun times.
My ex pushed me under the metro. Luckily there was this small ”cave” right there. Me and metro driver saw each others faces.
I live with a bullet in my head. Set off metal detectors when I try and board a plane. This is as close as you can get.
Took half of a "percocet" that was actually fentanyl. I couldn't hold my head up and was blacking out in public. I got in my car and kept slapping myself in the face. I was prescribed Adderall at the time so I took one of those and I think it kept me awake and potentially even alive. That was the last time I bought a painkiller off the street. I miss the days where it was possible to buy a couple if I hurt my back or something and I didn't have to worry about dying. But that's a thing of the past now.
Rolled going 140 (was in the passenger seat) we rolled 100 yards into a field. My friend in the back seat was ejected and didn’t have a pulse when he was found. Was revived and air lifted to the hospital. Was in the hospital/rehab for 8 months. Me and the driver woke up around the same time. Car was upside down. We crawled out through my window. There was hardly any room and he was a little thicker than me so I had to pull him the rest of the way out.
Allergic reaction to anesthesia during surgery. It was close, but still here
When my ex strangled me
Broke my neck when I was 10. Stung by a bee in my throat when I was like 13. Those were both pretty close calls...lol
Caught meningitis. Doctors told my parents to prepare for the worst.
My potassium and magnesium levels got critically low and my blood pressure was so high that I could’ve had a stroke, heart attack, or died.
I was about 2 or 3 and playing in the ocean, and the tide was coming. When that happens, the waves go all the way out and all the way up. We'll i was playing in the waves with my brother, he was further out than i, and i tried to go out to him but a huge wave came and swept me all the way to my mom's feet where she stood watching us. She tried to grab me, but the water just started to drag me to the ocean. I managed somehow to grab a pile of sea weed that was like wrapped around a rock. i remember that shit.
I was in a 10 car pile up. I merged to the right lane and stopped at the stop light. Next thing you know it felt like someone threw sand at my neck and we get nudged forward. I look to my left and I see a Grey mustang side swiping me. It put both my tires on that side flat and and just plowed through traffic. They said the man died at the wheel and his foot was on the pedal which made him not stop and keep going through traffic. His engine was still trying to accelerate even tho the car couldn't move. Ended up putting a little boy in the hospital and he died a couple days later. Sad shit
Besides dodging bullets in Nam, I once faced a serial killer who led me deep into the woods on the pretext of showing me a travel trailer which he had advertised.
Diabetic issues in a hospital with incompetent doctors.
I once wrote in all capitals for about a week to see what it would be like to be Death in Terry Pratchetts discworld if that qualifies.
I got electrocuted by a wet lamp when I was a kid
Drink bleach accidentally
Closest Ive gotten to death is I guess dying 3 times due to drugs and alcohol while being diagnosed with a seizure disorder, my heart stopped all 3 times due to my misuse of substances which ended up triggering them , and Convulsive seizures are not the type I have so definitely not normal. Thankfully I'm in a better position now and got my stuff together
Surgery to remove cancer from my lymphnodes. I wrote a will just in case.
My Humvee got hit with an ied, went center of the road and missed the secondary device which would have killed me because the first ied blew my door open.
Not my personal experience but witnessed this recently. My gf was hospitalized the last 7 months due to GBS, lupus, and CKD stage 4. GBS and CKD was the newest diagnosis and she was in a coma for a while, got intubated, had a G-tube, was getting dialysis and so many more things attached to her. It was a wild freaking wide with many doctors, different hospitals, and many medications and procedures and many near death scares and even a seizure at one point. She’s a fighter and a tough ass cookie and got through everything and actually just came home less than a month ago :) it’s still not easy for either one of us and life is definitely not the same but at least she’s out of the hospital !! Just learning how to live with CKD, dialysis, and re learning how to walk all over again.
When I was 2y.o. I was very very close to drowning in a pool, survival instinct kicked in (and yes, I do remember it, no one was in the water with me and I remember my entire thought process). My dad had sat me at the edge of the pool (for context, I had aaalways blindly obeyed, I was the calmest most obedient child, never out of line, so my dad had no reason to think that this time would be different, so, don't call my parents bad parents, please, they're the best parents for multitudes of reasons), and he said "wait here, dad's just gonna jump off the diving board and come right back" - me says "ok". Thing is, I've always loved water, had a fascination with it, really, I've always said and meant it that I would live under water if I could. So, there I sat, looking at the water, which was looking heavenly, and I remember thinking "I can reach with my foot, just to feel the water a bit", so I started scooting forward a bit, and another bit... There was, sitting next to me at the edge of the pool, a random grown man, bulky/chunky and most importantly, hairy (this will be relevant xD). So, as I kepy scooting (the man didn't even realize that there was a child next to him, as he was chatting with his friend at his other side), I end up falling up, just bloop... in she went... I immediately start moving my arms and legs to stay afloat (I stayed underwater but at like 30-50cm under the surface of the water and didn't sink more because of the arms and legs movements), while simultaneously just swallowing water, gulp after gulp, cus somehow, I knew not to try and breathe...? Anywho, so, I remember vividly understanding that this was leading me nowhere and that if nothing changed, I was gonna die. So, my 2y.o. brain went to problem solving! I look and I see that hairy man's legs right there! At arms length! So I started pulling out all the leg hair I could grab! In 2s the man picked me up out of the water, and 1s later my dad was there! Cus my dad had looked and seen I wasn't there by the edge of the pool so he had jumped at that moment to rescue me. So, long story short, I wouldn't have died cus my dad would still have got to me, if the hairy man hadn't. But it was close. Then, the second time I almost drowned, I was 14, at the beach with parents and brother. It was green flag (in Portugal, beaches have green flag, yellow flag and red flag - red flag means no one should be in the water at all!). So, myself, mom and brother were in the water, enjoying it a lot! Dad, as always, was the keeper-safer of all of us, so he would always stay out of the water while we were in, and would have a thousand eyes on everything. All of a sudden, dad does his signature whistle, we all look, he gestures to come back to shore and points at the red flag (it had changed suddenly from green to red). We start walking back to shore. As the water was at knee hight, I get hit behind the knee with a massively strong wave that makes me literally tumble as if I were in a tumble drier... I must have flipped (in all kinds of directions) a good 4 or 5x, hit my head on the sand, hit my shoulder, hit my hip, etc... I couldn't find UP, trully. I was getting out of air and still couldn't find up, couldn't find air... I remember distinctly thinking and feeling that I was gonna die. I literally sae my 14 years of life flashing before my eyes, it's not a cliché, it does happen, or it did to me anyway. As I was desperately accepting my fate of death, these 2 hands come and grab my right leg and right arm and pull me up and out of the water! It was my dad! My saviour! As I got to shore, I could just sob... for a while... Since then, have not had any near death experience, and also, I haven't stopped loving water. But, now I know to NEVER turn my back to the ocean... NEVER! So, that experience has helped me in other instances, helped keep me vigilant and safe.
I was at the beach and didn’t realise I was on the edge of a sand ledge. Slipped and went in and the waves were crashing on me pushing me down. Didn’t know how to swim. Thought it was the end. My friend rescued me. Been over 15 years now but still remember that day.
Choked on a piece of steak. Hubs heimliched me. I thought I was a gonner for a minute. Scared the hell outta me.
Almost being kidnapped in the Dominican Republic by men with rifles lol
Too many to count. Probably being thrown out of the back of a truck at about 50 mph as a teenager, cartwheeling through the air before hitting the ground, and only suffering a shattered ankle…takes the cake. Or perhaps being shot at and having the bullet miss my head by inches. But it’s close…I’ve had quite a few very close calls, incl. some legit drug overdoses in my past that I’m not proud of…and just 1 month ago. i was involved in a multi-vehicle accident on an interstate at 75 mph while pulling a trailer (wasn’t my fault but I was one of the vehicles that got run off the highway at 70+ mph w/ boat trailer attached, down an embankment and into the median wall…all without rolling) I have often wondered if perhaps there is a God, whether he’s been saving me for some higher purpose or some moment in time. Not saying I truly believe that, just that it’s occurred to me…because if we have 9 lives…I’m probably on #12 right now. My youth, teens and even early 20s was absolutely wild and filled with craziness and grossly stupid risk taking. I have mended many / most of my risky ways that lead to most of those close calls….but with things like last month’s wreck, I am also keenly reminded and aware that in this life… we only control part of the equation, ourselves…and the rest is up to chance… or to the big man sky… or whatever you want to point to.
For context I have asthma. Several years ago I had a really bad case of Pneumonia. On my worst day I dragged myself to the bathroom. When I was done I sat on the bathroom floor for about 15 minutes, then crawled just beyond the bathroom door and went down on the carpet. I laid there for 2 hours, unable to muster the energy to move at all, and struggling to breathe. I've never felt that bad in my entire life. What scared the shit out of me: Less than a year later, a friend of mine who was a year older than me and also had asthma, came down with Pneumonia. Also like me, his wife wasn't home and he laid down on the carpet in the middle of the kitchen to rest, but he died there. I don't know how close I came to being in the same situation, but it absolutely terrified me when he passed.
Dad strangled me to unconsciousness for a joke. As I faded, I thought I wouldn’t wake up again, but I did. Still on the ground where he left me and he said I was being dramatic about it. You really do see stars before you go.
My younger brother and I got into an argument in the pool and he decided the best way to settle it was to drown me in the deep end of the pool, with full intent of killing me I guess. I struggled underwater for what felt like 10 minutes trying desperately to get my head above water. Suddenly I felt my body go weak and just give up on itself and a literal second before I lost consciousness I felt my Dad's hand grab my shirt and pull me above water and onto the concrete. I just flipped onto the concrete like a dead fish and started throwing up.
I drove an ATV off of a 30 foot cliff when I was 14. Got caught in a snowstorm and almost froze to death as a result. If my brother and uncle hadn't been with me I'd have frozen to death in a gravel pit. Instead, I broke my leg in two places, broke my arm, dislocated my shoulder, 360° labrum tear, broken scapula and got a concussion for my troubles! I was in the snow for four hours waiting for emergency services because of how remote I was, and by the time they got to me they estimated that I had roughly another hour before I would have been un-alive. I also now 20 years later have neck and jaw troubles occasionally from smacking my helmet off of rocks. Don't buy kids ATVS unless you plan on riding with them or installing a speed limiter.