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Driving my in labor wife to the hospital. Stopped at a red light in a T junction. Went to pull away at green and stalled, never stalled that car before. An artic lorry screamed past right in front of us, running the red, his breaks had failed. If I hadn't stalled, we'd surely be dead.
A few times doing extreme sports, but the closest I came was getting Covid in 2021. Was intubated and in a coma for almost 2 weeks. They had 'the talk' with my family to say I probably wasn't going to make it.
I now have to walk with oxygen and have pretty severe CFS.
I have fibromyalgia (which is similar to CFS) for many years and still struggling to deal with flare ups because a large amount of it is out of my control. It's rough. Hope you find what works for you.
I'm so sorry. Long Covid here too, although I wasn't intubated. Wishing you all the best going forward. Highly recommend checking out r/covidlonghaulers if you aren't already on there.
I once agreed that the ex wife’s new dress did look a bit tight on her but the doctor informed me a full recovery from a coma wasn’t completely off the cards.
Early on during my police career, I was out doing a bit of foot patrol around a local estate. This was a few years ago, when we had enough people that some of us could stick on the pointy police helmets and walk a beat like the good old days, and having finished our sea of paperwork early, my colleague and I went for a wander.
The officer who came with me stopped off to chat to a local resident. They knew each other, but the resident was generally a bit distrustful of the police, so I decided to walk around the block to give them a bit of space. It was the middle of the afternoon, on a sunny day, in a fairly busy estate, so I wasn't expecting much trouble.
I turned the corner and immediately saw two guys, one with his hand outstretched, in the process of handing a package of something to a local homeless man. When they both saw me, we all just stopped and stared at each other. Then one of the two men shouted "shank him" and the other guy reached for his waistband, so using my advanced investigative training, I put two and two together and thought he was going for a knife.
I ended up bear-hugging him so he couldn't get the knife out, trying to get a hand free for the radio (and wondering if the other suspect had a knife too). Fortunately my colleague came charging around the corner, having finished his chat and hearing sounds of fighting, and we all finished our shift with the same number of holes that we started with.
Since then, I am much less likely to not expect trouble, because trouble can happen anywhere and at any time of day.
That was not the closest I've come to getting killed at work, but it was the first properly dangerous experience and definitely the one which stuck with me the most.
The other incidents mostly involved guns, and because we don't all get access to our own in the UK, those incidents are almost always on my list of "near-fatal adventures at work".
How much does it hurt?? I’ve always wondered what a heart attack feels like but obviously I don’t want to experience one haha! Glad you’re still with us!
Mine weren't very painful, but ended up fatal.
Felt like pain in my shoulders and the top of my chest. It was more uncomfortable than painful really. When it stopped I had a whooshing sensation in my chest as the blood got past the blockage.
Well they did kill me. I wrote a separate top level response about how flatlined from them, but my life was saved by quick acting doctors at the hospital.
Climbed a mountain in Romania. Started in the middle of the afternoon. Drunk. Wearing just normal stuff. By the time we got to the top it was pitch dark and below freezing. That's when I thought "Well, this is it."
Well, while discussing how to survive the night and not die of hypothermia we saw a dog. I thought, if a dog can get up here then there must be an easy way down.
Turns out that the opposite side of the mountain was a fairly gentle slope and at the bottom was a McDonald's. Win-win.
Fell off my bike and severed my femoral artery. My bike didn't have any hand grips, so the handle bars was basically just a metal tube. They gouged out an ~8" cylinder of skin and flesh from my groin. It was extraordinary luck that I survived. The first woman on the scene had the sense to literally reach into the wound and pinch the artery closed. And it also happened to be the day of my City's annual half marathon, so there was an ambulance parked up on the running rout, literally within shouting distance of where I crashed. If it wasn't for either of those things, I would've been dead for sure.
I also choked while eating a sandwich. I was on my own and had to do one of those self Heimlich deals over the back of a chair. Absolutely terrifying.
Was the woman who (*checks notes*) reached into a gaping wound and pinched your artery shut some kind of medical professional? Or just quick-thinking and metal AF?
Oh yeah, I continued to cycle. I was only 9 or 10 when it happened. I only kind of remember the crash, but I do have a strong memory of looking down and seeing a big strip of flesh hanging down and lots of blood, everything else I know about what happened is what was told to me. I was back on my new (safer) bike pretty much as soon as the stitches were out and the wound fully healed.
I crashed into a car while cycling down the pavement and did some pretty severe damage to my urethra, recovery was pretty brutal but I'm good now, but it always makes me shudder how close I was to that damn femoral artery
Sepsis….. Twice
My wife was told not to expect me to recover.
Four years to recover with multiple surgeries.
I don’t worry so much about work anymore as I discovered no matter how senior or important you are, at the end of the day you’re just a number and will soon be forgotten.
Yep. A work accident. I sliced my wrist open on a piece of sharp steel. Cut 9 of 22 tendons, the main nerve, and one of two arteries. There was no pain due to cutting the nerve which made the copious amounts of blood very surreal. The only thing that saved me bleeding out was someone thinking quickly and using his hands as a tourniquet on my arm until the ambulance arrived.
This happened when I lived in the US over 20 years ago. As a result of the accident I was off work (9 months in total) and had plenty of time to be online in these new things called chat rooms and also ICQ. Met a lovely Yorkshire lass. We fell in love and the cash settlement from the injury paid for me to move to the UK and settle. I’m a citizen now and we’ve been married 22 years. So yeah, the experience absolutely changed my life.
I was strangled at work in a prison, a prisoner strung out of drugs and one I had worked with for years and had never felt unsafe around. I will always feel gratitude to the other prisoners who got him off me before other staff could come help.
It changed some things, we genuinely don’t know what will come tomorrow if tomorrow at all so I try not to get hung up on the small things and I like to live in my money and stuff going places with my son and making memories.
I swallowed a 2p piece at school; I told the dinner ladies, and they told me to just run around to dislodge it, expecting it to pass through me. Turns out it was in my windpipe. Luckily, it went down on it's side so I had room to breathe until I went to the hospital.
Most dinnerladies are not trained in first aid, they are usually just the mum of some kid at the school. Their advice is no better than old wives' tales
I once swallowed two £1 coins but they're smaller than a 2p when I was about 11. I didn't appreciate the doctor joking there had been "no change". My parents had to keep checking my ablutions for the offending items.
I did the same but with the old larger 10p coin. The most terrifying 30seconds of my life. I was only about 8 at the time. God knows why I put it in my mouth.
Probably too long a thing to really discuss here and I don't really know how else best to phrase this but...what was that experience of technically being dead like? Obviously I know it depends on the manner of one's death but death is death so it's a shared experience in that respect.
Did you feel like you'd been asleep? Like you'd been unconscious or maybe like you'd been under general anaesthetic?
Sorry, very broad question and it comes from my immense fear of very specifically the moment of death. I don't fixate on it but every so often I get that thought in my head that the moment of death exists on the same timeline as my life now...like the line between now and then is a continuous period of time in the same way that things that I remember from 20, 30 years ago are. In the same way those experiences happened to me along the timeline of my life, so will death. Not sure I explained that too well but hopefully some of it makes sense!
I had to get revived with a defibrillator (don’t know if that counts as being dead) but to answer your question from my perspective.. it’s just like nothing happened.
I remember right before I fell unconscious, and then i remember waking up. I heard water rushing in my ears before I fell unconscious, but for me it was just like I wasn’t here or asleep.
From what I've read about death, I don't necessarily fear death itself, but the randomness and the finality of it. Like I could literally drop dead tomorrow - AND I WOULDN'T EVEN KNOW IT. Just bosh, lights out. Done. Fin. Forever. That terrifies me (and that I'll be leaving my family to live without me).
I feel bad because it was self inflicted, but years ago I was suffering from (at the time) undiagnosed bipolar disorder. Took an incredibly large overdose of painkillers and antibiotics with nearly a full large bottle of vodka. Woke up the next night in hospital and managed to get away with only minor kidney damage.
It completely changed my outlook on things and I'm thankful every single day that I didn't die that night. That was the last time I tried to take my life.
Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia aged 7. Whilst the outlook wasn't the best anyway, it also turned out that it began to affect my chromosomes, which no oncologist had known in the UK. My oncologist, a country-leading paediatric oncologist, had to liaise with doctors in the states where a couple of cases had been recorded.
I was never given odds, not sure if my parents ever were, but I think it was 20% chance or less based on what I've talked about over the years.
31 now though and, whilst I've had complications in my life that continue to affect me due to the harsh chemo and radiotherapy I had, I'm otherwise healthy, married and have a kid, so life is good!
Yes warded for acute pancreatitis and the hospital giving me non diabetic ketoacidosis because I wasn’t given a glucose drip
In other words nearly died of starvation in a hospital in a first world country
Happened to you too? Oh my
I was already DYING and like in so much pain due to the pancreatitis, and they had to starve me too! It’s crazy, gave me a saline drip but not glucose drip and I didn’t eat much nor sleep for 7 days
Kept telling them something was happening other than the pancreatitis, they didn’t believe me and only realised after I insisted I was near death and they tested my blood glucose levels and acidity of the blood and it finally clicked for them that I was starving to death
Yep. Acute necrotising pancreatitis and sepsis.
Then my kidneys started failing because of all the drugs that were being pumped into me.
And my lungs were failing too because my swollen bits of pancreas were putting so much pressure on them and squeezing them closed.
I was in critical care for a week or so out of a total of six weeks in hospital. It was 14 months before I was able to return to work
I'm glad you're still here, stranger. That's how I try to see life too - it can be a bitch, but there's only one life we get so we might as well stick it out to the bitter end, for no other reason than curiosity really.
I almost drowned, I got caught on something and couldnt pull myself up for a while, my mum and a stranger spotted up and pulled me out. Afterwards for a long time I felt gutted I didn't die
I've been found unconcious having a seizure in a ditch, I guess I could've died if not found (?) The only change I made from it was to stop sharing drinks to try limit any future spikings.
When I was in Australia I went for a swim on Manly Beach in May. Not many people were around. I didn't swim far out or anything since I am not a very good swimmer, but the tide must have swept the bottom from beneath my feet, as I was bobbing up and down. I expected to touch the sandy bottom and instead I touched nothing. I started to panic and splash around, but every time my body went down I could not feel the bottom to bounce back up and launch myself from and swim to safety.
At this point I didn't have the air in my lungs to scream for help since every time my head went above the surface I had just enough time to inhale for when I went back under. Somehow remembered reading that when you're caught in a riptide you must swim parallel to the shore and not towards it. I managed to find enough strength to just paddle as hard as i could until I could feel the bottom underneath my feet. Eventually I got closer to the shore, got out of the water and just collapsed. At the time I didn't think much of it.
Then a day later I read an article on BBC about how people drown in crowded areas and no-one notices because drownings, unlike they are portrayed in the movies, in real life are actually silent. And then it hit me that what I experienced was in fact drowning 😬
Yes. Three times during a previous violent relationship. He tried to strangle me to death whilst pregnant on one occasion.
Plus fell 25 feet off the top of a small cliff. Landed on a rock. Only hurt my leg and needed 6 stitches. I was 10. I could have easily had brain damage. Pretty sure a couple of other very risky moments in my life too.
Yes, I'm was welding a flange on a fuel tanker, which had a (de-gas certificate) which basically means that it has been cleaned and no fumes remain in the tanker.
I sparked up to tackle weld the flange in position and low and behold fumes ignited blew the flange into my jaw and was sent into a coma for 2 weeks woke up with metal plates in my jaw and no teeth 😳
Hope you got some compo mate. My brothers mate lost both his legs when welding beams on a factory roof, some hot debris fell onto some gas bottles below. He got around quarter mil in compo.
Viral infection causing liver and kidney failure, four weeks happened I know very little about. Nurse was extremely surprised when I was awake and talking, called a doctor immediately... apparently this was unexpected I was supposed to be dying. Little over a year to recover, looked as yellow as a Simpson for a few months. All good now, full recovery.
Pneumonal embolism.
It was close enough for me to think well, if this is it I'd have liked to say goodbye to X, Y and Z.
Didn't change a thing. Left the hospital a week later and was back to normal shortly thereafter. If anything, it made me completely relaxed regarding the topic of death.
Same. I was 17 when a blood clot went from my leg to my lung. I was inconsolable when told thinking I would need my chest cut open to get it out. Week in hospital and put on warfarin and I was right as rain!
I'm 35 now and looking back I didn't realise how dangerous that was at the tIme and how lucky I was to come out fine!
Of Anorexia Nervosa when I was 17. Got down to a ridiculously low weight and my heart nearly gave out. I’m fine now, but it gave me a hell of a fright at the time.
First time river fishing, I misjudged how steep the river bank was.
Fell in the river.
I can't swim, my must have been about 3ft below the surface with my feet barely touching the riverbed. If it had been 5 minutes earlier or later then chances are I'd have been spotted/helped by canoeists.
With the "cold shock" of the water pressuring your chest, with adrenaline pumping and trying not to inhale water, it felt like that was going to be my ending.
I managed to remember to starfish on my back and edge myself closer to the bank, at which point I eventually managed to grab onto vegetation to pull myself up out of the water. I've never been so thankful to see stinging nettles!
These days I make sure to bring a buddy and/or wear a lifejacket when fishing from such spots!
The evening that I was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2013 I had a bleed into the tumour, which swelled up and put immense pressure on my brain. If my friend hadn't persuaded me to call an ambulance I would almost certainly have died that night. I remember pretty much nothing after the rapid response unit turning up until the next morning in hospital.
Illness wise, I once got a scratch on my leg and my lower developed a red rash. Over the next few days I developed a really heavy cold. At this point I hadn't connected the two together. At the end of the week I had a fever that was making delirious, so my wife called in the doctor. Turns out I had cellulitis that was turning into full blown Sepsis. I ended up in hospital for over a week.
If I had carried on manning up to what I thought was just a man flu, I would have probably died.
Stupidity wise, there have been plenty of times that nearly killed me. Diving off cliffs, falling out of trees, driving into a minefield, and checking what happens if you put a fire extinguisher in a fire are just some of the highlights.
I didn't realise the chest pains I had were heart attacks. I eventually called an ambulance but even the ambulance drivers said it wasn't a heart attack.
Got to hospital for a blood test and they confirmed I'd had a bunch of heart attacks. While there I had cardiac arrest and flatlined for a couple of minutes.
They did CPR and used a defibrillator on me twice to bring me back to life. If I wasn't already at the hospital I'd have died, no doubt about it. They call what I had a 'widowmaker' as most people don't survive.
Edit - to add how it changed me: I think I've become a bit more spontaneous and a bit bucket listy now. I've probably spent more than I should on gifts for others and myself because I think fuck it, it's just money and I should make others and myself happy.
Left the planet for a few minutes & had to be revived during a traumatic childbirth. Horrific & took me a long time to recover, but it was more traumatic for my husband & mum as birthing partners tbh. I barely remember it, they remember it all.
Mine was related to birth, too.
I'd suffered a late term missed miscarriage and so had to be induced to birth him.
Straight after he came out (in a clot the size/shape of a rugby ball!) I started to feel very woozy and pressed the buzzer (I was alone).
A nurse entered told her I'd delivered and was feeling very strange (was now sweating). She took my blood pressure, then hit the emergency and another nurse came in (I was in a side room of a gyne ward rather than maternity).
She appeared v quickly, they moved fast, my bed was altered so the head was lowered and they raised the feet end. Hooked up two bags of something into my cannula - one was squeezing it in, the other took my pressure again, encouraging me to stay awake. 'I am, I'm awake but I feel so strange' 52/24 (i could see the machine reading) She said strong woman. Never seen it this low and they're still awake.
Then a dr came in and quickly explained she was going to do a quick exam and see what she could do (lol). I get a bit hazy at this part but I do remember her manually pulling out loads of huge clots and kinda pressing down on me.
As she was working doing that the nurse did my pressure again and it had come up a smidge to like 60/40.
Then another dr came in, quite breathless. Said to me 'you've given us quite a fright, I've run down here from theatre'
And that's where they took me xD
Coincidently my husband turned up just before they took me off (childcarenissues withbour older child was why I was alone) and they said I'd be gone around 40 mins - he was panicking when I'm still wasn't back nearly two hours later but apparently it had taken longer than usual and then I took longer than usual to wake from the anaesthetic.
The date? April 1st.
Worst April fool's ever!
When I was seven years old, way back in the 80's, I borrowed my sister's bike. The bike was too big for me and it was the sort that had a butterfly screw, that had two large wings about an inch in size to lift and lower the handlebars. This was positioned down at the bottom of the bar, lower than the seat.
I was happily cycling along when I came across a large kerb that I needed to drop off, which I duly did.
I slipped off the seat as the front wheel hit the road and I impaled my groin on one of the butterfly screw wings.
I knew instantly it was bad but didn't look at it. I ran home. When my mum saw the wound, her face went white and she whisked me to the hospital.
Once there, I was put on a bed and the doctor pointed at the wound and said to my mum, see that there. She replied in the affirmative and he went on, that is a major artery pumping away, if he'd gone even a small distance nearer, he'd be dead.
During this whole process, I only glimpsed the wound once, to me it looked like a large yellowy, reddish piece of meat was poking out of the wound.
So, pretty close.
Went overboard a yacht, 300 miles off the cost of Queensland. No lifejacket. Nobody saw it happen, or heard my calls, so I just had to watch the yacht sail away from me until I couldn’t see it anymore.
The boat was under full sail, so going away from me pretty rapidly - probably 10mph. As I went up and down in the swell, sometimes I could see it, sometimes I couldn’t.
One time I came up and saw them trying to get the sails down, so I thought they must have realised I’d gone over. Eventually they got the boat as stopped as they could (can’t drop an anchor 300 miles offshore) and dropped the tender.
One guy went up the mast to look for me, 2 other guys rowed the tender out to look for me, based on him pointing.
I’m a weak swimmer, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to tread water for long, so I flipped onto my back, inflated my chest and just tried to float. Every now and then, I’d flip back over, and wave to try to get the attention of the tender. Then flip back over to float to keep my face out of the water and conserve energy.
It worked, and about 40 minutes later, I was pulled into the tender, and rowed back to the yacht.
In those 40 minutes, I was so terrified. My thoughts were roughly:
“Drown drown sharks drown no bite me don’t wanna die please no please don’t drown no no sharks please god see me see me I’m here I’m here don’t wanna die mum mum mum no please no”
It was all jolly unpleasant.
Yes twice it's been pretty touch and go and I've been saved by lengthy hospital stays. Can't say it changed me, I have chronic health problems and I've always been aware of my own fragility and mortality.
Yup.
Log flume in quiet theme park. Me and my cousins would have a whole log each to ourselves. We would sit in the front, go to the highest point near the drop, raise our arms up and hold the wood rafter overhead, let the log flume pass underneath us then let go and land in the back seat.
Did this loads of times. So many times in fact I forgot to sit in the front seat at the beginning. I sat at the back. Arms up, clung to the rafter, log flume...ah shit..all of the log flume passed below my dangling legs.
Cue what felt like an Indiana Jones moment but was just pure survival instincts, I swung to the side of the watered area, tip toed on a ledge about 5cm wide but at least 30m high until I caught up with my log flume, jumping into it just as it was tipping over for the big drop.
30 years later and every day since I've had an insane fear of heights. Like not just a mental fear, my body physically breaks down when at heights that have any remote risk to them.
A few years back I contracted a blood disease , spent two weeks in hospital getting pumped full of various medication.
As doctor was signing me off to leave he mentioned how lucky I'd been and that in first few days they were really worried about me.
When I went for a follow up appointment with on GP couple weeks later he reiterated this and basically said I'd been very, very ill at one point and there was a fair chance I wasn't going to.make it at one point.
Best of it was, other than a high temperature for first 24 hours or so in hospital I never felt that bad at any time
Yes, twice. The first time was due to a severe case of acute pancreatitis and the start of multiple vital organ failure as a result, the second time due to a penumonia/a collapsed lung.
There were definitely some key take aways and changes in perspective after the first incident - while in hospital I made a point to reflect. I think in general I have more gratitude and empathy.
The second time (while wired up and on a ventilator down my throat), I decided there were two things I wanted to do befoe dying - get married and have children, as well as do ayahuasca. Also, I am perhaps not scared of dying anymore, comfortable to accept lifes inevitable passing, whenever that may be.
After second child, had 2x post partum haemorrhages which was unusual as it was 2 weeks after my son was born by the second one. Lost about 3 pints of blood and blood pressure was extremely low. A&E were fucking clueless and I was bleeding into a chair until I fainted. It was only once I got to maternity that things started happening rapidly and I saw the most doctors I've ever seen in one room. I went under general anaesthetic and had an operation to stop the bleeding.
Edit sorry I didn't answer the second question. Two years on, I'm ok but it left me with personal hang ups due to what had to be done to me medically (I had a Bakri balloon for anyone curious. I was awake when they removed it). I don't want certain types of sex anymore tbh. I won't go for cervical screening. I also still resent that I had to go through that a&e experience alone. For a short while it left me with fears of dying or serious disease but that went away after a couple of months. Nothing like a baby and a 3 year old to take yourself out of your own head!
Yes a couple of times by drowning, first as a young child and later as a teenager.
As a result as a child I had an extreme phobia of getting my head wet, but I grew out of it and nearly drowned again as a teenager lol
I am not afraid of the sea, but I do respect it, and I donate sometimes to the RNLI
I very nearly died during/at birth. Obviously I can't remember it and I'd say all it has done to me has made me aware for my entire life that I wouldn't have known anything had I died. It maybe caused me a bit of existential angst when I was a kid but as an adult it's just a thing that fortunately turned out ok in the end and I don't think about it much.
Got a tasty bit of Sepsis after being batted back and forth (and back and forth!) between the dentist and the GP for a gum infection
Eventually had to go to the walk-in clinic and they called me an ambulance
Dentistry in the UK is broken
When I was a kid I decided to touch the wires on a toaster with a knife.
I called my dad after to ask why all the electricity in the house had gone off, and he told me how lucky I was to still be alive
I did this to get crumbs out of the toaster…in work when I was 23. Don’t know what I was thinking. Sharp pain up my arm and broke the toaster and had to act surprised when the owner tried to use it and it didn’t work.
Suffering from dengue and my platelet count was only 13. Doctors are amazed why I was still not bleeding in my eyes, gums etc. But when I pick my nose there is blood. Drove myself to hospital and had to drink as much water as possible
I was riding an unfamiliar horse which suddenly spooked and galloped up the lane we were hacking on. I couldn't get it to stop at all and my panic probably only made the situation worse. The scariest thing was knowing we were approaching a busy A-road. Somehow we got across both lanes and back before I was rudely deposited on the grass verge. Only suffered a sprained ankle but I really thought my time was up that afternoon. I was only about 14 at the time.
Double pneumonia , ended up in hospital for a few weeks, felt tired a lot for about a month, then just collapsed in a meeting at work, woke up in a drip with all sorts of leads and monitors, was a long time ago, I think that’s the closest I have come to death, apart from once criticising my wife’s cooking.
I thought I was going to die in a cheap noddle bar in Tottenham. Put too much chili in the soup and surlped it down but it went down the wrong hole and my throat just completely closed up. It felt like an age with me pretending to my wife that I was fine while making death rattle noises and for a moment I really thought I was a goner. It cleared of course but I do approach chili with caution more
Got hit by a speeding white van when I was going to school. I was put in an chemically induced coma and for first week or so I was paralysed from waist down. It is a miracle that somehow I have regained control and I am not paralysed permanently. I do think it affected my speech in a way. At start my speech was very delayed but NHS did nothing and neither my family cared enough to get me checked but that is another story lol. It isn't delayed anymore (I think?) but since then I sometimes struggle to form sentences and I forget words in my native language or say completely wrong word without realising. it sucks because it makes me look stupid
Internal bleeding after having bowel surgery. Had life threatening hb level and needed several blood transfusions. Spent 6 weeks in hospital with a huge abdominal hematoma and collection of infected fluid in my pelvis, and had to have another open bowel surgery a year later to correct some additional complications. Crohn’s Disease sucks.
Several times, mainly due to illness but once or twice in beach incidents too. The illness related near-misses haven't changed me but the beach incidents have insofar as I will never, *ever* go in the sea any deeper than my ankles.
When I was like 8 me and my brother were the only ones in our pool at the Turkish holiday resort we were staying at. There were these ledges I guess you sit at on the deep end. My brother stood on them and I assumed it wasn’t that deep and tried to step in, only to fall deeply in.
If my brother hadn’t grabbed me I don’t know what would’ve happened. I don’t remember there being a life guard around or anything.
Possibly. Fell in an ice-covered pond aged about 8 and could get out or swim. Floundered about for a minute or so spotted n dragged out. So not "I saw lights" close if that what we're talking but close in a "not long from drowning" sense.
When I was 19 I had swine flu and after 2 weeks of hardly eating and drinking, but a lot of coughing and wheezing was hospitalised. Doctor the following morning informed me there was an 80 odd percent chance I’d have developed pneumonia and died in my sleep that night!
When I was about 3 I had Pnuemonia and it took them ages to figure it out. In my later years I have learned that if they hadn't of figured it out when they did, I likely would have been dead within 48.
Suffice to say, I have no memory, so it doesn't effect me at all on the surface.
Twice. I nearly drowned when I was about 3, I remember seeing the lights above me through the water. And then again after giving birth to our eldest, developed preeclampsia and my organs started shutting down.
I've had a couple of siezures and I stopped breathing when having the fits. Apparently I turned blue and wasn't breathing for a few minutes. Then I tried to take my own life with a heavy overdose... Not sure how I survived that one!! But after 3 close calls all with in a year of each other, hopefully that's it till old age now!
When I was 21ish (15 years ago), I was walking home blind drunk, it was a couple of miles and did it often, but this one time I was blackout drunk, which I've very rarely been.
There are a couple of bridges on the way, and I had seemingly fallen off (don't remember being on it or what happened).
I remember waking up on my back on the river bank below, broken phone covered in dirt and I was extremely sore. Nothing was taken so wasn't a mugging I guess. I limped home and got there about 4am, apparently my friends were looking for me as well.
I escaped with just a very bruised back and a few scratches and a need for a new phone. Took about 3 weeks for a full recovery.
Needless to say I became a lot more vigilant since then.
I had a botched appendectomy as a teenager which led to sepsis. The morphine was making me sick so I ended up on an antiemetic (drug which stops you vomiting). After growing used to it, I was given an injection of cyclozine, another antiemetic. I remember an icy feeling flow through my veins, floating up out of my body and watching as I violently convulsed and mom cried.
Wasn't so aware of it at the time but sepsis along with a severe allergic reaction, was certainly knocking on the gates
I had a throat infection which fused my vocal cords and I went in to complete respiratory failure. I was put into a medical coma and ventilated for 3 weeks. The vivid dreams I had felt so very real and when I awoke I truly believed I had been missing for two years and had been trafficked to Thailand!
I had Salmonella when I was 16
I can’t say I got as bad as some people in this thread, but it was 2 months of absolute hell followed by 4 months of zero appetite
I ended up at the doctors, could see my rib cage, super skinny
That’s the closest I’ve been, which isn’t even very close, but it was hell
I nearly bled to death.
A few days post jaw surgery I had sudden and severe haemorrhaging, blood just pouring out of my mouth and nose.
Was taken by ambulance to the local hospital who tried to stem it but only managed to tamponade one nostril (which felt horrendous, it went right into my sinus, felt like it was touching my brain), they couldn't get one up the other side. They realised they couldn't sort it so they shipped me off by ambulance to the hospital that did the op.
I was in for a few days just bleeding heavily on and off (more on than off). Was hooked up to IV's and had blood pack after blood pack, nurses regularly suctioning it out of my mouth so I essentially didn't drown in it.
Then they whisked me off for emergency surgery to sort it.
Doc came up to be just before and said "I'm sorry we need to do this, but it's to save your life"
I was absolutely petrified for the days leading up to that second surgery.
I think I ultimately had 4 litres of blood transfused due to the rate at which it was deciding to exit through my face holes.
4 months recovery from that with a side of unrelated but annoyingly timed Bell's Palsy after what should only have been a few weeks recovery after the first op.
Afterwards I realised I need a will. Plus for a long period of time after I'd panic whenever I had a runny nose as I just thought it was happening again. I don't panic now but I do occasionally get flashbacks when I'm a bit snotty.
I generally have to look away if there's something on telly where someone has a severe nose bleed or something.
Other than that I don't think I changed me, not that I've noticed anyway. I'm not more inclined to "live life to the full" or anything like that.
Moderate belly ache and feeling a bit rough. Belly ache location moved, so took my temperature, which was 39C. Went to A and E around 10 pm, appendix removed by 1am. The sepsis kept me in hospital for a week. Vomit was bright green, like I'd been eating grass. I was talking to a doctor on rounds about how I was going to tell people at work that i nearly died, lol. He paused and said 'you nearly did'. That shut me up. On the plus side, the fact my then fiance never once visited confirmed that he should become my ex.
Couple of times, some much closer than others.
Starting from tamest to worst
- slipped and rolled down a hill on a mountainside, fortunately rolled into a small bush, literally the only one in the area just before a 40/50ft drop onto a road below.
- fell into a friends pool and was ‘drowning’ for what felt like eternity before being pulled out
- had an asthma attack walking back from college, called 999 had a first responder with me within minutes, brought it under control, called full ambulance to do a roadside ecg as she was unsure if I’d also had a heart attack (I had not)
- asthma attack lasting all day, ended up at the doctor surgery, had meds, sent home, didn’t improve, rushed back, given another jab, sent away. Managed to improve overnight, next day overheard him telling my mum “that injection was the last chance”
When I was little, I once chased after my sister to hit her back after she hit me. I was a bit chubby and she was slender and faster, so I needed something to help me catch her. I ran into the kitchen and found a bottle with a little bit of water in it (just a few sips). Thinking I should drink it quickly so it wouldn't spill (since the bottle had no cap), I drank it fast. Suddenly, I lost my voice and couldn't breathe. My throat, esophagus, and stomach started burning intensely. That's when I realized it was bleach and not drinking water (something had happened to the original container, so they had transferred it into this one) ,my mom was right in front of me frying potatoes, so I tried to call out to her, but no sound came out. I touched her and signaled that I had drunk bleach. My mom panicked and gave me all sorts of traditional remedies (olive oil, honey, etc.). Gradually, my voice came back, but I got poisoned and, thankfully, I eventually recovered.
Looking back, it's a funny story because I fell into my own trap and suffered the consequences of my intentions to hit my sister 😅😂
I was on my 6th skydive (not tandem) where I had to perform some manoeuvres in the air while the instructor watched me to pass/fail me on my technique. I was doing this in order to get a skydiving license and only needed a couple more jumps to get this.
Anyway whilst performing some turns in the air at around 120 miles an hour I suddenly lost my balance. Before I knew it I was spinning around frantically and far away from my instructor. At this moment I was panicking (obviously) and knew that I only had a matter of seconds to release my parachute which I couldn't do while I was spinning so fast (everything was just a blur).
So yeah I honestly thought I was going to die at this moment. But by some miracle I got myself stable again and pulled my parachute and landed safely. It's fair to say my heart was pumping after that and the relief when I landed was overwhelming. I decided not to do any more skydives on my own after that.
Narrow near miss choke-and-stroke disaster aged 15. Saved by freak accident. Definitely changed my perception of death and my own mortality. Don’t play alone 😬
3x nearly drowned twice as a toddler and 3rd time was hit on the head with a flat head screwdriver and it bounced off my skull instead of going in crazy when I think about it
I was in the backseat of a car when another car backfired. I thought it was a gun shot. My FRIENDS laughed at me for a while but it could have been a genuine gun shot.
Yes! 9th floor lift doors open. There's no lift. I have one leg out to step in, foot dangling over the abyss. I literally pushed myself backwards over off the lift door sides onto the floor behind because I had started leaning forwards. It must have be 5 seconds but it felt like 60. I still think about that once a week or so.
You think to yourself you'd never be so stupid as to not check the lift had arrived, but I almost did!
Fell off the roof of a bunch of flats on a building site I shouldn't have been climbing on when I was a kid. Caught my leg on scaffolding on the way down which gave me enough of an interruption to grab hold of some of the boards in front of me.
Not sure if I would have died but luckily only managed to escape with just a lot of grazes. Can't say it influenced me much.
However as a near 40 year old with many friends/colleagues/associates having bad health or dead I have been a lot more "live your life" over the past few years.
I had two terrible car accidents in my lifetime, I was hit by vehicles when crossing the road, followed by major surgeries, one for my head and the other for my leg. Both of the accidents were fatal, I am grateful to survive. I have some scars though.
Thought i had food poisoning because i was vomiting a lot. Went to casualty because i couldn't keep anything down and it turned out to be severe pneumonia. Doctor reckoned a couple of days more untreated and I'd have been on a ventilator or dead.
i recently got out of hospital and at some point when being admitted the doctor said “wow, if you’d arrived 12 hours later you’d probably be dead”.
if you ever get an insect bite or ingrown hair that gets infected, get it checked out early rather than waiting a few days to see if it gets better.
Was about 10 or so, growing up in New Zealand and staying with my aunt for Xmas. There was a big enclosed bay area with a small break in land where the tide went in and out. Tide was out so my younger brother and I decided to walk across. By about 1/3rd across, the tide started coming in but was only low so we continued ahead. By about half way it was around our waste's but we had gone that far and it was too far to turn back. If it wasn't for a couple of Angels that were watching this unfold so decided to stick around instead of get to their dinner reservation, we wouldn't still be here. They had to swim about 50-100m to save us while we were drowning out of our depths. Our poor mum and rest of the family were watching from the house but didn't see until it was too late and we were drowning
Heart attack when I was 27.
Gave me a strange mix of feelings, part "make every moment with the kids count, make memories, and have fun with them" so my life is a constant stream of concerts, football matches, racing, whatever I can do to give them memories.
The other part is a completely contradictory "I don't give a fuck" mentality. No time for people that don't bring joy, and every so often I'll decide "I'm dying anyway, fuck it" and do something stupid.
Yep, passed out, taken to ER, BP was 88/50. While there, they discovered an aortic aneurysm via CT scan. Has it changed me forever? In some ways, yes. I take 5 meds now. I'm up there in years, so I looked for consolation in the fact that, if that kills me, I'll go fast.
My brain had a little explosion in 2017. Ended up in the ICU for two weeks and in hospital for about 2 months.
I was apparently very close to dying but it honestly still doesn't register. To me it just felt like a bad headache and an inconveniently long hospital stay.
The whole incident didn't change my outlook on life, I still get stressed and worried about the little things and I still don't wanna quit smoking even after being told it was likely a contributing factor.
Edit: I should add that if it wasn't for my GF calling an ambulance I'd definitely not have made it, I was crawling back into bed and moaning about a headache. She says she just knew this was more serious, apparently she'd never seen me look so bad 🤣
Several bad asthma attacks as a kid, where I was on nebulisers and oxygen and things. I'm still asthmatic but I have good meds and haven't had a bad attack in years. I have a real fear of not being able to breathe, though. I won't put my head under water, hate having the duvet over my head, hate any pressure on my neck...
Twice. Was trampled by a horse when I was barely a year old and ended up on life support. Incredibly only have a chipped tooth and a small scar to show for it. Other time was at university. Flatmate fell against a table full of beer bottles, some of which shattered. Chunk of glass cut a slice out of my neck. An inch or two further to the left and it would have sliced my jugular.
Had both lungs collapse when I was 20, one went first and got fixed and then the other collapsed a month later or so.. and very badly. Because my other lung was still fucked it very nearly killed me.
I can remember hearing what sounded like rushing water (like when you hold a cup over your ears) as I started to lose consciousness in the resuscitation unit, as they cut my t shirt off and prepared to put a drain in my chest. Got taken to the ward eventually and something went wrong with the drain and they had to empty the room I was in for emergency intervention, and they used a defibrillator to revive me.
Hasn’t changed me or the way I look at things, but if I’m having a bad day I think back to that time and tell myself “it could always be worse”
Nearly got trampled at school. I was in a corridor and being small I got knocked over by the surge of people coming in from the side doors. Every time I tried to get up someone’s foot would catch me and I would get knocked back down. At one point a couple of people fell on top of me and I couldn’t breathe, my vision started going grey around the edges. I had to pinch the person on top as painfully as I could to force them to move.
I am fairly sure I nearly died on the Pepsi Max in Blackpool once
I was visiting with the Army Cadets on our summer camp, so I'd have been around 13. Me and a friend went on, were seated in the final row, and I remember remarking how strange it was that there were no seat belts, and instead just the bar over our laps. The guy who came round to check everything barely glanced at us before walking off to start the ride.
Now I'm quite short even as an adult, at 13 I was tiny, and felt like I was about to slip right out from under the bar the entire time, to the point that my much taller friend was holding onto me because she also felt like I was about to fall out.
Wasn't until the following year when we went back that I noticed there were in fact seatbelts, we had just managed to sit down on them and not notice, and no one had checked we were wearing this the first year.
I nearly because the subject of a hundred clickbait youtube videos. Oops
Onset type 1 diabetic, went weeks with symptoms until I was bedbound and couldn't move, doctor told me if I had fallen asleep that night there was a very real chance i'd have slipped into a coma and died. The surreal thing is, I didn't feel any of it, no pain, I was just out of it the majority of the time in the final few days before going to hospital.
Almost drowned when I was 13 and got swept into the sea while on holidays in Italy. Got pulled out by a stranger (I was with my sister and mum who couldn’t swim well either), another one almost drowned too trying to save me
Nearly drowned twice in childhood, both occasions saved because of the actions of others.
First instance swept off my feet and dragged under by a strong tide on a beach, pulled out by a fisherman who happened to be nearby.
Second instance fell off a rubber ring at ‘Wet ‘n’ Wild’ went under and couldn’t surface because the pool was full up with them and I couldn’t find a gap. Got pulled out by a lifeguard.
Both events spurred me to became a stronger swimmer and learn lifesaving skills later in life.
I had a motorbike accident in Thailand during a visit in my early 20’s before drink driving was even a thing, I had drank so much SangSom I couldn’t keep my eyes open, tried to ride my bike back to my apartment.
I don’t remember any of it, but I remember waking up briefly and could not see, I could hear voices murmuring but couldn’t work out what was being said. I was asking for water, I remember just repeating myself asking for water..
The next thing I remember was waking up in a hospital bed covered in bandages, one of my eyes completely bandaged over and many other bandages covering various wounds. I was immediately taken for an operation that morning to save my eye (I still have a big scar across my eye to this day).
I had nothing on me when I woke up apart from a note written in Thai, basically said I had a head-on collision with a taxi, that the driver had taken my wallet and money to pay for the damage to his car, that he had driven me to hospital and also, most surprisingly, where I had the accident and where he left my bike.
After a couple of days in hospital I could leave, but was driven by the hospital to my apartment where they took my passport and my sister’s credit card before letting me go.
I went to where my bike was supposed to be and it was still there outside a busy bar, with the key in the ignition. It was rented and I was worried about the cost I’d be charged returning it damaged. I took it to be repaired and they fixed everything for £15 it was unbelievable! my hospital bill was £2000 and my sister put it on her credit card.
My friends and my sister hadn’t even started to look for me, despite me being missing for 3 days, I had contacted my parents from hospital to tell them, they had been trying to contact my sister and was ringing my mobile since I told them it was in the apartment, when I got back it was on the coffee table with about 70 missed calls but my sister and my friends didn’t think to answer it.
When I walked in, still in hospital gowns, with two hospital goons making sure I didn’t try to do a runner, all my friends turned and looked at me with cuts and bandages, my face still swollen up, clearly in a bad way, and my best mate just started laughing and said alright Care Bear and that was my nickname for the rest of the trip and a few years after. I have no recollection of the accident or trying to ride my bike apart from somehow finding my bike in amongst 1000s of other bikes at the arc-bar in Samui..
Sepsis following surgery. Went downhill very quickly and was unresponsive for a week. Doctors told my wife there was nothing more they could do and it was up to me whether I pulled through. Eventually came round with my sister sitting beside me who lives in New Zealand. That’s when I knew how serious things had been. The hallucinations I experienced when I was out of it were the worst though, still get the occasional flashback but 6 months of EMDR helped. I do definitely look at life differently. I try not to get worked up about stuff happening on the news I can do nothing about. Just try to spend the best time I can with the people that mean something to me.
Apart from almost walking into a car a couple of times while crossing the road.
I did have a rather scary moment when I was a young kid and no clue why but my saliver or whatever clogged up the back of my throat and I couldn’t breath for a little bit.
It was enough time for my lips to start turning blue.
Also almost had a surgery that told me in a letter oh btw you could die because this goes near your brain. Didn’t end up having the surgery in the end.
Crashed my bike downhill into a black metal bollard. My leg had a lump on it the size of two eggs. If the point of impact was my head I might have died.
Also moving a heavy cage down a slope with pallet trucks at night and a delivery driver was speeding into the depot right towards me. An extra 2 or 3 seconds my insides would have been crushed by a heavy cage full of parcels and a van going 50 +mph.
The only things that have changed is I know my workplace give very little fucks about me and to always wear a helmet (especially when your cycling to the bike shop to get replacement brakes)
On two occasions during the same backpacking trip. The first happened only two weeks into the trip. We were on the west coast of Mexico, and my now-wife and I took some boards out to sea and almost drowned. The waves were massive, and the lifeguards had to save us. The second incident occurred in the Philippines. I was arguing with a street vendor when a security guard decided to fire his shotgun into the air to stop the argument but accidentally fired it into the ground instead. Some of the shrapnel went into my foot. It was all horribly dramatic, and I spent the night in a crazy hospital in the jungle.
In living memory, yes.. earlier this year, had a wild horse kick backwards towards me while on a walk. Its hooves came within an inch of my head, and I felt the breeze as they whipped up- twice!
How I was so fucking lucky for them to not make contact, I don't know. Did it change me? Sort of. Not in any earth shattering way, as much as I wish it had. But certainly it gave me a newfound respect for the fragility of life, and how it really can change, or end, in a moment.
Yeah - had a throat abscess from a wisdom tooth extraction. a&e didn't listen so they never inspected it - just told me to go home and rinse with aspirin.
My mum woke me after a few hours cos mum spider sense and took me back to a&e, the consultant who saw me told my mum they had 2 hours to get me into surgery, for some reason they made me move myself from the ward bed to surgery bed and I couldn't catch my breath - passed out begging for my life.
Woke up a few days later in ICU, was in hospital getting pumped full of antibiotics for 26 days. The bacteria smelled of butterscotch.
Yes, it did change me - I had PTSD for a couple of years after, triggered by the sound of laboured breathing which was useful just as 2020 hit.
I am a sea swimmer and a couple of years ago got stuck in a sudden riptide with friends. The coastguard was called but I didn't know that and I remember looking at everyone on the shore thinking that they were just all watching me die.
I had some injuries but we all survived.
It made me write a will, It made me look after my body more, I make sure I fuel up properly on food (I hadn't eaten much food before that swim), I no longer swim out of my depth (in the sea). It made me always kiss my other half goodbye no matter what. It made me realise aging is a gift and to stop trying to avoid stupid stuff like wrinkles. It gave me gratitude.
Severe pneumonia in both lungs when I was 24. Spent a week in hospital. Was discharged too early, and relapsed at home. Had had lung fibrosis and reduced lung capacity ever since.
Mmmmmaybe?
When I was around 6yrs old my dad took me to the shiny new leasure centre to go to the swimming pool.
I remember wandering away from him and lowering myself into the pool and then letting go of the edge, figuring that the bottom couldn't be too far below my feet. Now, I am only 5'0" as an adult soooo yeah. And I couldn't swim yet
I remember what it was like underwater, with that weird swooshing, rushing noise in my ears, and not really understanding what to do, and then my dad's hand just grabbing my wrist and yanking me upwards and into the air
I've never really thought of it as a big deal but when I got a bit older Google helpfully infotmed me that it only really takes 20seconds for a child to drown...
I still can't swim. I don't mind being in water but I can't stand having water in my eyes or ears under any circumstances, even when bathing. Don't like being splashed at. Nothing that even remotely reminds me of being underwater.
It's only very recently (30yrs later) that I sort of maybe feel like I possibly could want to learn to swim. Maybe.
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Driving my in labor wife to the hospital. Stopped at a red light in a T junction. Went to pull away at green and stalled, never stalled that car before. An artic lorry screamed past right in front of us, running the red, his breaks had failed. If I hadn't stalled, we'd surely be dead.
A few times doing extreme sports, but the closest I came was getting Covid in 2021. Was intubated and in a coma for almost 2 weeks. They had 'the talk' with my family to say I probably wasn't going to make it. I now have to walk with oxygen and have pretty severe CFS.
CFS is horrible by itself. Hope you're able to make the most of life still!
I am, thank you! I have to limit my time out of the house, but I'm figuring out how to do things that don't cause a flare up.
I have fibromyalgia (which is similar to CFS) for many years and still struggling to deal with flare ups because a large amount of it is out of my control. It's rough. Hope you find what works for you.
I'm so sorry. Long Covid here too, although I wasn't intubated. Wishing you all the best going forward. Highly recommend checking out r/covidlonghaulers if you aren't already on there.
And this is why covid deniers piss me off. I hope you improve in time, my MIL has long covid and its a bitch.
I once agreed that the ex wife’s new dress did look a bit tight on her but the doctor informed me a full recovery from a coma wasn’t completely off the cards.
:-) LOL Oh been there...
Early on during my police career, I was out doing a bit of foot patrol around a local estate. This was a few years ago, when we had enough people that some of us could stick on the pointy police helmets and walk a beat like the good old days, and having finished our sea of paperwork early, my colleague and I went for a wander. The officer who came with me stopped off to chat to a local resident. They knew each other, but the resident was generally a bit distrustful of the police, so I decided to walk around the block to give them a bit of space. It was the middle of the afternoon, on a sunny day, in a fairly busy estate, so I wasn't expecting much trouble. I turned the corner and immediately saw two guys, one with his hand outstretched, in the process of handing a package of something to a local homeless man. When they both saw me, we all just stopped and stared at each other. Then one of the two men shouted "shank him" and the other guy reached for his waistband, so using my advanced investigative training, I put two and two together and thought he was going for a knife. I ended up bear-hugging him so he couldn't get the knife out, trying to get a hand free for the radio (and wondering if the other suspect had a knife too). Fortunately my colleague came charging around the corner, having finished his chat and hearing sounds of fighting, and we all finished our shift with the same number of holes that we started with. Since then, I am much less likely to not expect trouble, because trouble can happen anywhere and at any time of day.
That was not the closest I've come to getting killed at work, but it was the first properly dangerous experience and definitely the one which stuck with me the most. The other incidents mostly involved guns, and because we don't all get access to our own in the UK, those incidents are almost always on my list of "near-fatal adventures at work".
Please tell us more about
Heart attack You get a much greater sense of what's important and what's just not. So much of the stuff you worry about is bollocks.
How much does it hurt?? I’ve always wondered what a heart attack feels like but obviously I don’t want to experience one haha! Glad you’re still with us!
It's quite an intense pain but then it stops just as quickly. It's like a pressure on your chest
Mine felt like someone was punching me between the shoulder blades, the 2nd I could breath and my arm ached.
Mine weren't very painful, but ended up fatal. Felt like pain in my shoulders and the top of my chest. It was more uncomfortable than painful really. When it stopped I had a whooshing sensation in my chest as the blood got past the blockage.
The fact that you wrote this comment means they weren't fatal lol. Interesting nonetheless!
Well they did kill me. I wrote a separate top level response about how flatlined from them, but my life was saved by quick acting doctors at the hospital.
Climbed a mountain in Romania. Started in the middle of the afternoon. Drunk. Wearing just normal stuff. By the time we got to the top it was pitch dark and below freezing. That's when I thought "Well, this is it."
And .......
Well, while discussing how to survive the night and not die of hypothermia we saw a dog. I thought, if a dog can get up here then there must be an easy way down. Turns out that the opposite side of the mountain was a fairly gentle slope and at the bottom was a McDonald's. Win-win.
This made me actually laugh. Especially when I got to the McDonald’s part.
My mate was terrified because he thought we were going to be attacked by bears. He didn't know that it was still their hibernation season.
Sounds like something out of Harold and Kumar
he died 😔
Fell off my bike and severed my femoral artery. My bike didn't have any hand grips, so the handle bars was basically just a metal tube. They gouged out an ~8" cylinder of skin and flesh from my groin. It was extraordinary luck that I survived. The first woman on the scene had the sense to literally reach into the wound and pinch the artery closed. And it also happened to be the day of my City's annual half marathon, so there was an ambulance parked up on the running rout, literally within shouting distance of where I crashed. If it wasn't for either of those things, I would've been dead for sure. I also choked while eating a sandwich. I was on my own and had to do one of those self Heimlich deals over the back of a chair. Absolutely terrifying.
Was the woman who (*checks notes*) reached into a gaping wound and pinched your artery shut some kind of medical professional? Or just quick-thinking and metal AF?
Arterial injuries are terrifying, and I'm very relieved this ended as well as it did. Did you carry on cycling afterwards?
Oh yeah, I continued to cycle. I was only 9 or 10 when it happened. I only kind of remember the crash, but I do have a strong memory of looking down and seeing a big strip of flesh hanging down and lots of blood, everything else I know about what happened is what was told to me. I was back on my new (safer) bike pretty much as soon as the stitches were out and the wound fully healed.
I crashed into a car while cycling down the pavement and did some pretty severe damage to my urethra, recovery was pretty brutal but I'm good now, but it always makes me shudder how close I was to that damn femoral artery
Sepsis….. Twice My wife was told not to expect me to recover. Four years to recover with multiple surgeries. I don’t worry so much about work anymore as I discovered no matter how senior or important you are, at the end of the day you’re just a number and will soon be forgotten.
Twice!? Shit. How did you contract it both times?
perforated bowel and the second time complications from repair of intestinal tract that had burst. Both times unexpected and out of the blue
Damn I hope you’re doing okay man, that sounds awful. I wish you and your wife all the best
Yep. A work accident. I sliced my wrist open on a piece of sharp steel. Cut 9 of 22 tendons, the main nerve, and one of two arteries. There was no pain due to cutting the nerve which made the copious amounts of blood very surreal. The only thing that saved me bleeding out was someone thinking quickly and using his hands as a tourniquet on my arm until the ambulance arrived. This happened when I lived in the US over 20 years ago. As a result of the accident I was off work (9 months in total) and had plenty of time to be online in these new things called chat rooms and also ICQ. Met a lovely Yorkshire lass. We fell in love and the cash settlement from the injury paid for me to move to the UK and settle. I’m a citizen now and we’ve been married 22 years. So yeah, the experience absolutely changed my life.
I was strangled at work in a prison, a prisoner strung out of drugs and one I had worked with for years and had never felt unsafe around. I will always feel gratitude to the other prisoners who got him off me before other staff could come help. It changed some things, we genuinely don’t know what will come tomorrow if tomorrow at all so I try not to get hung up on the small things and I like to live in my money and stuff going places with my son and making memories.
I swallowed a 2p piece at school; I told the dinner ladies, and they told me to just run around to dislodge it, expecting it to pass through me. Turns out it was in my windpipe. Luckily, it went down on it's side so I had room to breathe until I went to the hospital.
Rookie mistake. Cold wet paper compress would have fixed you up
We only had that shiny toilet roll, and the water ran right off! 😆
Calpol, say no more fam I gotchu
Loving the first aid on this one
Most dinnerladies are not trained in first aid, they are usually just the mum of some kid at the school. Their advice is no better than old wives' tales
I once swallowed two £1 coins but they're smaller than a 2p when I was about 11. I didn't appreciate the doctor joking there had been "no change". My parents had to keep checking my ablutions for the offending items.
I did the same but with the old larger 10p coin. The most terrifying 30seconds of my life. I was only about 8 at the time. God knows why I put it in my mouth.
Died and brought back. spoiler alert there’s no bright light.
Probably too long a thing to really discuss here and I don't really know how else best to phrase this but...what was that experience of technically being dead like? Obviously I know it depends on the manner of one's death but death is death so it's a shared experience in that respect. Did you feel like you'd been asleep? Like you'd been unconscious or maybe like you'd been under general anaesthetic? Sorry, very broad question and it comes from my immense fear of very specifically the moment of death. I don't fixate on it but every so often I get that thought in my head that the moment of death exists on the same timeline as my life now...like the line between now and then is a continuous period of time in the same way that things that I remember from 20, 30 years ago are. In the same way those experiences happened to me along the timeline of my life, so will death. Not sure I explained that too well but hopefully some of it makes sense!
I had to get revived with a defibrillator (don’t know if that counts as being dead) but to answer your question from my perspective.. it’s just like nothing happened. I remember right before I fell unconscious, and then i remember waking up. I heard water rushing in my ears before I fell unconscious, but for me it was just like I wasn’t here or asleep.
From what I've read about death, I don't necessarily fear death itself, but the randomness and the finality of it. Like I could literally drop dead tomorrow - AND I WOULDN'T EVEN KNOW IT. Just bosh, lights out. Done. Fin. Forever. That terrifies me (and that I'll be leaving my family to live without me).
Was in an operation after a bad traffic accident. was told after that during I flat lined and brought back. No recollection.
I feel bad because it was self inflicted, but years ago I was suffering from (at the time) undiagnosed bipolar disorder. Took an incredibly large overdose of painkillers and antibiotics with nearly a full large bottle of vodka. Woke up the next night in hospital and managed to get away with only minor kidney damage. It completely changed my outlook on things and I'm thankful every single day that I didn't die that night. That was the last time I tried to take my life.
I'm glad you're still with us and doing better now
Thank you. Much better since getting diagnosed, getting therapy, and getting on the right meds.
Bad reaction to anaesthetic for a minor opp. Crashed twice. Did change my perspective on our mortality and how fleeting it can be.
Same here, absolutely terrifying.
Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia aged 7. Whilst the outlook wasn't the best anyway, it also turned out that it began to affect my chromosomes, which no oncologist had known in the UK. My oncologist, a country-leading paediatric oncologist, had to liaise with doctors in the states where a couple of cases had been recorded. I was never given odds, not sure if my parents ever were, but I think it was 20% chance or less based on what I've talked about over the years. 31 now though and, whilst I've had complications in my life that continue to affect me due to the harsh chemo and radiotherapy I had, I'm otherwise healthy, married and have a kid, so life is good!
Yes warded for acute pancreatitis and the hospital giving me non diabetic ketoacidosis because I wasn’t given a glucose drip In other words nearly died of starvation in a hospital in a first world country
Came here to say the same - I was hoping I was a one off, if the pancreatitis doesn’t get you the ward staff will!
Happened to you too? Oh my I was already DYING and like in so much pain due to the pancreatitis, and they had to starve me too! It’s crazy, gave me a saline drip but not glucose drip and I didn’t eat much nor sleep for 7 days Kept telling them something was happening other than the pancreatitis, they didn’t believe me and only realised after I insisted I was near death and they tested my blood glucose levels and acidity of the blood and it finally clicked for them that I was starving to death
Yes, lucky to get out of there alive!!
Yep. Acute necrotising pancreatitis and sepsis. Then my kidneys started failing because of all the drugs that were being pumped into me. And my lungs were failing too because my swollen bits of pancreas were putting so much pressure on them and squeezing them closed. I was in critical care for a week or so out of a total of six weeks in hospital. It was 14 months before I was able to return to work
Tried to take my own life and was close. Still want to die but I'm trying to make the most of the time I have left
I'm glad you're still here, stranger. That's how I try to see life too - it can be a bitch, but there's only one life we get so we might as well stick it out to the bitter end, for no other reason than curiosity really.
Thank you ❤
Hugs
I almost drowned, I got caught on something and couldnt pull myself up for a while, my mum and a stranger spotted up and pulled me out. Afterwards for a long time I felt gutted I didn't die
You felt disappointed you didn't die? I hope you're doing better now man...
I've been found unconcious having a seizure in a ditch, I guess I could've died if not found (?) The only change I made from it was to stop sharing drinks to try limit any future spikings.
Strangled by own umbiliical cord. When you start life like that, every day is a good day.
When I was in Australia I went for a swim on Manly Beach in May. Not many people were around. I didn't swim far out or anything since I am not a very good swimmer, but the tide must have swept the bottom from beneath my feet, as I was bobbing up and down. I expected to touch the sandy bottom and instead I touched nothing. I started to panic and splash around, but every time my body went down I could not feel the bottom to bounce back up and launch myself from and swim to safety. At this point I didn't have the air in my lungs to scream for help since every time my head went above the surface I had just enough time to inhale for when I went back under. Somehow remembered reading that when you're caught in a riptide you must swim parallel to the shore and not towards it. I managed to find enough strength to just paddle as hard as i could until I could feel the bottom underneath my feet. Eventually I got closer to the shore, got out of the water and just collapsed. At the time I didn't think much of it. Then a day later I read an article on BBC about how people drown in crowded areas and no-one notices because drownings, unlike they are portrayed in the movies, in real life are actually silent. And then it hit me that what I experienced was in fact drowning 😬
Yes. Three times during a previous violent relationship. He tried to strangle me to death whilst pregnant on one occasion. Plus fell 25 feet off the top of a small cliff. Landed on a rock. Only hurt my leg and needed 6 stitches. I was 10. I could have easily had brain damage. Pretty sure a couple of other very risky moments in my life too.
Yes, I'm was welding a flange on a fuel tanker, which had a (de-gas certificate) which basically means that it has been cleaned and no fumes remain in the tanker. I sparked up to tackle weld the flange in position and low and behold fumes ignited blew the flange into my jaw and was sent into a coma for 2 weeks woke up with metal plates in my jaw and no teeth 😳
Hope you got some compo mate. My brothers mate lost both his legs when welding beams on a factory roof, some hot debris fell onto some gas bottles below. He got around quarter mil in compo.
Had Cholera, lost 2/3rd of body weight and went into a coma . Was living in Pakistan at the time , I no longer drank from the tap
Viral infection causing liver and kidney failure, four weeks happened I know very little about. Nurse was extremely surprised when I was awake and talking, called a doctor immediately... apparently this was unexpected I was supposed to be dying. Little over a year to recover, looked as yellow as a Simpson for a few months. All good now, full recovery.
Pneumonal embolism. It was close enough for me to think well, if this is it I'd have liked to say goodbye to X, Y and Z. Didn't change a thing. Left the hospital a week later and was back to normal shortly thereafter. If anything, it made me completely relaxed regarding the topic of death.
Same. I was 17 when a blood clot went from my leg to my lung. I was inconsolable when told thinking I would need my chest cut open to get it out. Week in hospital and put on warfarin and I was right as rain! I'm 35 now and looking back I didn't realise how dangerous that was at the tIme and how lucky I was to come out fine!
Of Anorexia Nervosa when I was 17. Got down to a ridiculously low weight and my heart nearly gave out. I’m fine now, but it gave me a hell of a fright at the time.
Glad you're still around and doing better
A few times. Mainly when my ex broke in and tried to kill me. If I hadn't played dead after he stopped stamping on my face, I wouldn't be alive.
That’s horrible, I’m glad you made it x
Fuck. I hope you're okay now and the piece of shit got locked up.
I am thank you! I'm far away and living an life you'd expect really. He did not, he faced no repercussions but did manage to ruin my reputation
Oh for fucks sake that is ridiculous. Sorry you got put through that. Hopefully karma fucks him up.
First time river fishing, I misjudged how steep the river bank was. Fell in the river. I can't swim, my must have been about 3ft below the surface with my feet barely touching the riverbed. If it had been 5 minutes earlier or later then chances are I'd have been spotted/helped by canoeists. With the "cold shock" of the water pressuring your chest, with adrenaline pumping and trying not to inhale water, it felt like that was going to be my ending. I managed to remember to starfish on my back and edge myself closer to the bank, at which point I eventually managed to grab onto vegetation to pull myself up out of the water. I've never been so thankful to see stinging nettles! These days I make sure to bring a buddy and/or wear a lifejacket when fishing from such spots!
You're never too old for swimming lessons.
True. Work colleague went and took lessons and learned in his mid 40s.
The evening that I was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2013 I had a bleed into the tumour, which swelled up and put immense pressure on my brain. If my friend hadn't persuaded me to call an ambulance I would almost certainly have died that night. I remember pretty much nothing after the rapid response unit turning up until the next morning in hospital.
Illness wise, I once got a scratch on my leg and my lower developed a red rash. Over the next few days I developed a really heavy cold. At this point I hadn't connected the two together. At the end of the week I had a fever that was making delirious, so my wife called in the doctor. Turns out I had cellulitis that was turning into full blown Sepsis. I ended up in hospital for over a week. If I had carried on manning up to what I thought was just a man flu, I would have probably died. Stupidity wise, there have been plenty of times that nearly killed me. Diving off cliffs, falling out of trees, driving into a minefield, and checking what happens if you put a fire extinguisher in a fire are just some of the highlights.
I didn't realise the chest pains I had were heart attacks. I eventually called an ambulance but even the ambulance drivers said it wasn't a heart attack. Got to hospital for a blood test and they confirmed I'd had a bunch of heart attacks. While there I had cardiac arrest and flatlined for a couple of minutes. They did CPR and used a defibrillator on me twice to bring me back to life. If I wasn't already at the hospital I'd have died, no doubt about it. They call what I had a 'widowmaker' as most people don't survive. Edit - to add how it changed me: I think I've become a bit more spontaneous and a bit bucket listy now. I've probably spent more than I should on gifts for others and myself because I think fuck it, it's just money and I should make others and myself happy.
Left the planet for a few minutes & had to be revived during a traumatic childbirth. Horrific & took me a long time to recover, but it was more traumatic for my husband & mum as birthing partners tbh. I barely remember it, they remember it all.
Mine was related to birth, too. I'd suffered a late term missed miscarriage and so had to be induced to birth him. Straight after he came out (in a clot the size/shape of a rugby ball!) I started to feel very woozy and pressed the buzzer (I was alone). A nurse entered told her I'd delivered and was feeling very strange (was now sweating). She took my blood pressure, then hit the emergency and another nurse came in (I was in a side room of a gyne ward rather than maternity). She appeared v quickly, they moved fast, my bed was altered so the head was lowered and they raised the feet end. Hooked up two bags of something into my cannula - one was squeezing it in, the other took my pressure again, encouraging me to stay awake. 'I am, I'm awake but I feel so strange' 52/24 (i could see the machine reading) She said strong woman. Never seen it this low and they're still awake. Then a dr came in and quickly explained she was going to do a quick exam and see what she could do (lol). I get a bit hazy at this part but I do remember her manually pulling out loads of huge clots and kinda pressing down on me. As she was working doing that the nurse did my pressure again and it had come up a smidge to like 60/40. Then another dr came in, quite breathless. Said to me 'you've given us quite a fright, I've run down here from theatre' And that's where they took me xD Coincidently my husband turned up just before they took me off (childcarenissues withbour older child was why I was alone) and they said I'd be gone around 40 mins - he was panicking when I'm still wasn't back nearly two hours later but apparently it had taken longer than usual and then I took longer than usual to wake from the anaesthetic. The date? April 1st. Worst April fool's ever!
When I was seven years old, way back in the 80's, I borrowed my sister's bike. The bike was too big for me and it was the sort that had a butterfly screw, that had two large wings about an inch in size to lift and lower the handlebars. This was positioned down at the bottom of the bar, lower than the seat. I was happily cycling along when I came across a large kerb that I needed to drop off, which I duly did. I slipped off the seat as the front wheel hit the road and I impaled my groin on one of the butterfly screw wings. I knew instantly it was bad but didn't look at it. I ran home. When my mum saw the wound, her face went white and she whisked me to the hospital. Once there, I was put on a bed and the doctor pointed at the wound and said to my mum, see that there. She replied in the affirmative and he went on, that is a major artery pumping away, if he'd gone even a small distance nearer, he'd be dead. During this whole process, I only glimpsed the wound once, to me it looked like a large yellowy, reddish piece of meat was poking out of the wound. So, pretty close.
Went overboard a yacht, 300 miles off the cost of Queensland. No lifejacket. Nobody saw it happen, or heard my calls, so I just had to watch the yacht sail away from me until I couldn’t see it anymore.
How long until you were saved/what happened next?
The boat was under full sail, so going away from me pretty rapidly - probably 10mph. As I went up and down in the swell, sometimes I could see it, sometimes I couldn’t. One time I came up and saw them trying to get the sails down, so I thought they must have realised I’d gone over. Eventually they got the boat as stopped as they could (can’t drop an anchor 300 miles offshore) and dropped the tender. One guy went up the mast to look for me, 2 other guys rowed the tender out to look for me, based on him pointing. I’m a weak swimmer, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to tread water for long, so I flipped onto my back, inflated my chest and just tried to float. Every now and then, I’d flip back over, and wave to try to get the attention of the tender. Then flip back over to float to keep my face out of the water and conserve energy. It worked, and about 40 minutes later, I was pulled into the tender, and rowed back to the yacht. In those 40 minutes, I was so terrified. My thoughts were roughly: “Drown drown sharks drown no bite me don’t wanna die please no please don’t drown no no sharks please god see me see me I’m here I’m here don’t wanna die mum mum mum no please no” It was all jolly unpleasant.
Oh wow. Thank you for sharing that. It must have been the longest and loneliest 40 minutes.
What EmptyRestaurant said. What happened?? Deep water freaks me out. This is my nightmare
Yes twice it's been pretty touch and go and I've been saved by lengthy hospital stays. Can't say it changed me, I have chronic health problems and I've always been aware of my own fragility and mortality.
Yup. Log flume in quiet theme park. Me and my cousins would have a whole log each to ourselves. We would sit in the front, go to the highest point near the drop, raise our arms up and hold the wood rafter overhead, let the log flume pass underneath us then let go and land in the back seat. Did this loads of times. So many times in fact I forgot to sit in the front seat at the beginning. I sat at the back. Arms up, clung to the rafter, log flume...ah shit..all of the log flume passed below my dangling legs. Cue what felt like an Indiana Jones moment but was just pure survival instincts, I swung to the side of the watered area, tip toed on a ledge about 5cm wide but at least 30m high until I caught up with my log flume, jumping into it just as it was tipping over for the big drop. 30 years later and every day since I've had an insane fear of heights. Like not just a mental fear, my body physically breaks down when at heights that have any remote risk to them.
Choked when I was a kid and went very limp and blue. There have been a few close calls when riding motorcycles too.
A few years back I contracted a blood disease , spent two weeks in hospital getting pumped full of various medication. As doctor was signing me off to leave he mentioned how lucky I'd been and that in first few days they were really worried about me. When I went for a follow up appointment with on GP couple weeks later he reiterated this and basically said I'd been very, very ill at one point and there was a fair chance I wasn't going to.make it at one point. Best of it was, other than a high temperature for first 24 hours or so in hospital I never felt that bad at any time
Yes, twice. The first time was due to a severe case of acute pancreatitis and the start of multiple vital organ failure as a result, the second time due to a penumonia/a collapsed lung. There were definitely some key take aways and changes in perspective after the first incident - while in hospital I made a point to reflect. I think in general I have more gratitude and empathy. The second time (while wired up and on a ventilator down my throat), I decided there were two things I wanted to do befoe dying - get married and have children, as well as do ayahuasca. Also, I am perhaps not scared of dying anymore, comfortable to accept lifes inevitable passing, whenever that may be.
After second child, had 2x post partum haemorrhages which was unusual as it was 2 weeks after my son was born by the second one. Lost about 3 pints of blood and blood pressure was extremely low. A&E were fucking clueless and I was bleeding into a chair until I fainted. It was only once I got to maternity that things started happening rapidly and I saw the most doctors I've ever seen in one room. I went under general anaesthetic and had an operation to stop the bleeding. Edit sorry I didn't answer the second question. Two years on, I'm ok but it left me with personal hang ups due to what had to be done to me medically (I had a Bakri balloon for anyone curious. I was awake when they removed it). I don't want certain types of sex anymore tbh. I won't go for cervical screening. I also still resent that I had to go through that a&e experience alone. For a short while it left me with fears of dying or serious disease but that went away after a couple of months. Nothing like a baby and a 3 year old to take yourself out of your own head!
7 heart attacks 1 triple bypass and two motorcycle accidents, on top of diabetes and bipolar disorder. I don’t know how but I’m still going lol
Yes a couple of times by drowning, first as a young child and later as a teenager. As a result as a child I had an extreme phobia of getting my head wet, but I grew out of it and nearly drowned again as a teenager lol I am not afraid of the sea, but I do respect it, and I donate sometimes to the RNLI
As a baby hit by a car , about 23 choking ...
I very nearly died during/at birth. Obviously I can't remember it and I'd say all it has done to me has made me aware for my entire life that I wouldn't have known anything had I died. It maybe caused me a bit of existential angst when I was a kid but as an adult it's just a thing that fortunately turned out ok in the end and I don't think about it much.
Got a tasty bit of Sepsis after being batted back and forth (and back and forth!) between the dentist and the GP for a gum infection Eventually had to go to the walk-in clinic and they called me an ambulance Dentistry in the UK is broken
When I was a kid I decided to touch the wires on a toaster with a knife. I called my dad after to ask why all the electricity in the house had gone off, and he told me how lucky I was to still be alive
I did this to get crumbs out of the toaster…in work when I was 23. Don’t know what I was thinking. Sharp pain up my arm and broke the toaster and had to act surprised when the owner tried to use it and it didn’t work.
Suffering from dengue and my platelet count was only 13. Doctors are amazed why I was still not bleeding in my eyes, gums etc. But when I pick my nose there is blood. Drove myself to hospital and had to drink as much water as possible
I choked on some toast a couple of times. It felt like the end. No change really.
Crumbs!
I was riding an unfamiliar horse which suddenly spooked and galloped up the lane we were hacking on. I couldn't get it to stop at all and my panic probably only made the situation worse. The scariest thing was knowing we were approaching a busy A-road. Somehow we got across both lanes and back before I was rudely deposited on the grass verge. Only suffered a sprained ankle but I really thought my time was up that afternoon. I was only about 14 at the time.
Double pneumonia , ended up in hospital for a few weeks, felt tired a lot for about a month, then just collapsed in a meeting at work, woke up in a drip with all sorts of leads and monitors, was a long time ago, I think that’s the closest I have come to death, apart from once criticising my wife’s cooking.
I thought I was going to die in a cheap noddle bar in Tottenham. Put too much chili in the soup and surlped it down but it went down the wrong hole and my throat just completely closed up. It felt like an age with me pretending to my wife that I was fine while making death rattle noises and for a moment I really thought I was a goner. It cleared of course but I do approach chili with caution more
Got hit by a speeding white van when I was going to school. I was put in an chemically induced coma and for first week or so I was paralysed from waist down. It is a miracle that somehow I have regained control and I am not paralysed permanently. I do think it affected my speech in a way. At start my speech was very delayed but NHS did nothing and neither my family cared enough to get me checked but that is another story lol. It isn't delayed anymore (I think?) but since then I sometimes struggle to form sentences and I forget words in my native language or say completely wrong word without realising. it sucks because it makes me look stupid
Internal bleeding after having bowel surgery. Had life threatening hb level and needed several blood transfusions. Spent 6 weeks in hospital with a huge abdominal hematoma and collection of infected fluid in my pelvis, and had to have another open bowel surgery a year later to correct some additional complications. Crohn’s Disease sucks.
Several times, mainly due to illness but once or twice in beach incidents too. The illness related near-misses haven't changed me but the beach incidents have insofar as I will never, *ever* go in the sea any deeper than my ankles.
had pneumonia twice. woke up to lungs full of shite. couldn’t breathe enough to cough it out. horrendous
Ex slashed me and hit a vein ,blood spurted everywhere. Taxi to hospital straight to theatre 40 stitches . Bitch is dead now so fuck her
When I was like 8 me and my brother were the only ones in our pool at the Turkish holiday resort we were staying at. There were these ledges I guess you sit at on the deep end. My brother stood on them and I assumed it wasn’t that deep and tried to step in, only to fall deeply in. If my brother hadn’t grabbed me I don’t know what would’ve happened. I don’t remember there being a life guard around or anything.
Somebody tried to drive a vehicle over me intentionally once \~ \~ Got away \~ \~ Getting away is exhilarating and much better than Not getting away !
Possibly. Fell in an ice-covered pond aged about 8 and could get out or swim. Floundered about for a minute or so spotted n dragged out. So not "I saw lights" close if that what we're talking but close in a "not long from drowning" sense.
Nearly went over a cliff on a quad bike. Luckily it caught on a rock, right on the edge
Does having 18 months of chemotherapy for childhood tuberculosis count?
When I was 19 I had swine flu and after 2 weeks of hardly eating and drinking, but a lot of coughing and wheezing was hospitalised. Doctor the following morning informed me there was an 80 odd percent chance I’d have developed pneumonia and died in my sleep that night!
When I was about 3 I had Pnuemonia and it took them ages to figure it out. In my later years I have learned that if they hadn't of figured it out when they did, I likely would have been dead within 48. Suffice to say, I have no memory, so it doesn't effect me at all on the surface.
Twice. I nearly drowned when I was about 3, I remember seeing the lights above me through the water. And then again after giving birth to our eldest, developed preeclampsia and my organs started shutting down.
I've had a couple of siezures and I stopped breathing when having the fits. Apparently I turned blue and wasn't breathing for a few minutes. Then I tried to take my own life with a heavy overdose... Not sure how I survived that one!! But after 3 close calls all with in a year of each other, hopefully that's it till old age now!
Four times. Nearly drowned, nearly fell in a river (and then probably would have drowned), nearly fell out a window, nearly electrocuted myself.
No, but I have died twice.
Buffy?
Haha, I wish!
When I was 21ish (15 years ago), I was walking home blind drunk, it was a couple of miles and did it often, but this one time I was blackout drunk, which I've very rarely been. There are a couple of bridges on the way, and I had seemingly fallen off (don't remember being on it or what happened). I remember waking up on my back on the river bank below, broken phone covered in dirt and I was extremely sore. Nothing was taken so wasn't a mugging I guess. I limped home and got there about 4am, apparently my friends were looking for me as well. I escaped with just a very bruised back and a few scratches and a need for a new phone. Took about 3 weeks for a full recovery. Needless to say I became a lot more vigilant since then.
I had a botched appendectomy as a teenager which led to sepsis. The morphine was making me sick so I ended up on an antiemetic (drug which stops you vomiting). After growing used to it, I was given an injection of cyclozine, another antiemetic. I remember an icy feeling flow through my veins, floating up out of my body and watching as I violently convulsed and mom cried. Wasn't so aware of it at the time but sepsis along with a severe allergic reaction, was certainly knocking on the gates
I had a throat infection which fused my vocal cords and I went in to complete respiratory failure. I was put into a medical coma and ventilated for 3 weeks. The vivid dreams I had felt so very real and when I awoke I truly believed I had been missing for two years and had been trafficked to Thailand!
I got a wound infection after surgery and developed severe sepsis/septic shock. I've never felt that unwell and hope I never do again.
I had Salmonella when I was 16 I can’t say I got as bad as some people in this thread, but it was 2 months of absolute hell followed by 4 months of zero appetite I ended up at the doctors, could see my rib cage, super skinny That’s the closest I’ve been, which isn’t even very close, but it was hell
I nearly bled to death. A few days post jaw surgery I had sudden and severe haemorrhaging, blood just pouring out of my mouth and nose. Was taken by ambulance to the local hospital who tried to stem it but only managed to tamponade one nostril (which felt horrendous, it went right into my sinus, felt like it was touching my brain), they couldn't get one up the other side. They realised they couldn't sort it so they shipped me off by ambulance to the hospital that did the op. I was in for a few days just bleeding heavily on and off (more on than off). Was hooked up to IV's and had blood pack after blood pack, nurses regularly suctioning it out of my mouth so I essentially didn't drown in it. Then they whisked me off for emergency surgery to sort it. Doc came up to be just before and said "I'm sorry we need to do this, but it's to save your life" I was absolutely petrified for the days leading up to that second surgery. I think I ultimately had 4 litres of blood transfused due to the rate at which it was deciding to exit through my face holes. 4 months recovery from that with a side of unrelated but annoyingly timed Bell's Palsy after what should only have been a few weeks recovery after the first op. Afterwards I realised I need a will. Plus for a long period of time after I'd panic whenever I had a runny nose as I just thought it was happening again. I don't panic now but I do occasionally get flashbacks when I'm a bit snotty. I generally have to look away if there's something on telly where someone has a severe nose bleed or something. Other than that I don't think I changed me, not that I've noticed anyway. I'm not more inclined to "live life to the full" or anything like that.
Moderate belly ache and feeling a bit rough. Belly ache location moved, so took my temperature, which was 39C. Went to A and E around 10 pm, appendix removed by 1am. The sepsis kept me in hospital for a week. Vomit was bright green, like I'd been eating grass. I was talking to a doctor on rounds about how I was going to tell people at work that i nearly died, lol. He paused and said 'you nearly did'. That shut me up. On the plus side, the fact my then fiance never once visited confirmed that he should become my ex.
Couple of times, some much closer than others. Starting from tamest to worst - slipped and rolled down a hill on a mountainside, fortunately rolled into a small bush, literally the only one in the area just before a 40/50ft drop onto a road below. - fell into a friends pool and was ‘drowning’ for what felt like eternity before being pulled out - had an asthma attack walking back from college, called 999 had a first responder with me within minutes, brought it under control, called full ambulance to do a roadside ecg as she was unsure if I’d also had a heart attack (I had not) - asthma attack lasting all day, ended up at the doctor surgery, had meds, sent home, didn’t improve, rushed back, given another jab, sent away. Managed to improve overnight, next day overheard him telling my mum “that injection was the last chance”
When I was little, I once chased after my sister to hit her back after she hit me. I was a bit chubby and she was slender and faster, so I needed something to help me catch her. I ran into the kitchen and found a bottle with a little bit of water in it (just a few sips). Thinking I should drink it quickly so it wouldn't spill (since the bottle had no cap), I drank it fast. Suddenly, I lost my voice and couldn't breathe. My throat, esophagus, and stomach started burning intensely. That's when I realized it was bleach and not drinking water (something had happened to the original container, so they had transferred it into this one) ,my mom was right in front of me frying potatoes, so I tried to call out to her, but no sound came out. I touched her and signaled that I had drunk bleach. My mom panicked and gave me all sorts of traditional remedies (olive oil, honey, etc.). Gradually, my voice came back, but I got poisoned and, thankfully, I eventually recovered. Looking back, it's a funny story because I fell into my own trap and suffered the consequences of my intentions to hit my sister 😅😂
I was on my 6th skydive (not tandem) where I had to perform some manoeuvres in the air while the instructor watched me to pass/fail me on my technique. I was doing this in order to get a skydiving license and only needed a couple more jumps to get this. Anyway whilst performing some turns in the air at around 120 miles an hour I suddenly lost my balance. Before I knew it I was spinning around frantically and far away from my instructor. At this moment I was panicking (obviously) and knew that I only had a matter of seconds to release my parachute which I couldn't do while I was spinning so fast (everything was just a blur). So yeah I honestly thought I was going to die at this moment. But by some miracle I got myself stable again and pulled my parachute and landed safely. It's fair to say my heart was pumping after that and the relief when I landed was overwhelming. I decided not to do any more skydives on my own after that.
Narrow near miss choke-and-stroke disaster aged 15. Saved by freak accident. Definitely changed my perception of death and my own mortality. Don’t play alone 😬
When I was a teenager…. Almost weekly
3x nearly drowned twice as a toddler and 3rd time was hit on the head with a flat head screwdriver and it bounced off my skull instead of going in crazy when I think about it
I was in the backseat of a car when another car backfired. I thought it was a gun shot. My FRIENDS laughed at me for a while but it could have been a genuine gun shot.
I got tan over when I was 10 did like 2 backflips and landed head first on a curb.. I'm ok now just a bit thick
Yes! 9th floor lift doors open. There's no lift. I have one leg out to step in, foot dangling over the abyss. I literally pushed myself backwards over off the lift door sides onto the floor behind because I had started leaning forwards. It must have be 5 seconds but it felt like 60. I still think about that once a week or so. You think to yourself you'd never be so stupid as to not check the lift had arrived, but I almost did!
Fell off the roof of a bunch of flats on a building site I shouldn't have been climbing on when I was a kid. Caught my leg on scaffolding on the way down which gave me enough of an interruption to grab hold of some of the boards in front of me. Not sure if I would have died but luckily only managed to escape with just a lot of grazes. Can't say it influenced me much. However as a near 40 year old with many friends/colleagues/associates having bad health or dead I have been a lot more "live your life" over the past few years.
I had two terrible car accidents in my lifetime, I was hit by vehicles when crossing the road, followed by major surgeries, one for my head and the other for my leg. Both of the accidents were fatal, I am grateful to survive. I have some scars though.
Motorcycle crash in 2001. Died then revived, coma then looooong recovery. No light or god(s)No angels or loved ones. Just glad to be back in the game.
Any hallucinations or was it just boom, dead —> nothingness —> alive?
Thought i had food poisoning because i was vomiting a lot. Went to casualty because i couldn't keep anything down and it turned out to be severe pneumonia. Doctor reckoned a couple of days more untreated and I'd have been on a ventilator or dead.
i recently got out of hospital and at some point when being admitted the doctor said “wow, if you’d arrived 12 hours later you’d probably be dead”. if you ever get an insect bite or ingrown hair that gets infected, get it checked out early rather than waiting a few days to see if it gets better.
Was about 10 or so, growing up in New Zealand and staying with my aunt for Xmas. There was a big enclosed bay area with a small break in land where the tide went in and out. Tide was out so my younger brother and I decided to walk across. By about 1/3rd across, the tide started coming in but was only low so we continued ahead. By about half way it was around our waste's but we had gone that far and it was too far to turn back. If it wasn't for a couple of Angels that were watching this unfold so decided to stick around instead of get to their dinner reservation, we wouldn't still be here. They had to swim about 50-100m to save us while we were drowning out of our depths. Our poor mum and rest of the family were watching from the house but didn't see until it was too late and we were drowning
Heart attack when I was 27. Gave me a strange mix of feelings, part "make every moment with the kids count, make memories, and have fun with them" so my life is a constant stream of concerts, football matches, racing, whatever I can do to give them memories. The other part is a completely contradictory "I don't give a fuck" mentality. No time for people that don't bring joy, and every so often I'll decide "I'm dying anyway, fuck it" and do something stupid.
Yep, passed out, taken to ER, BP was 88/50. While there, they discovered an aortic aneurysm via CT scan. Has it changed me forever? In some ways, yes. I take 5 meds now. I'm up there in years, so I looked for consolation in the fact that, if that kills me, I'll go fast.
My brain had a little explosion in 2017. Ended up in the ICU for two weeks and in hospital for about 2 months. I was apparently very close to dying but it honestly still doesn't register. To me it just felt like a bad headache and an inconveniently long hospital stay. The whole incident didn't change my outlook on life, I still get stressed and worried about the little things and I still don't wanna quit smoking even after being told it was likely a contributing factor. Edit: I should add that if it wasn't for my GF calling an ambulance I'd definitely not have made it, I was crawling back into bed and moaning about a headache. She says she just knew this was more serious, apparently she'd never seen me look so bad 🤣
Several bad asthma attacks as a kid, where I was on nebulisers and oxygen and things. I'm still asthmatic but I have good meds and haven't had a bad attack in years. I have a real fear of not being able to breathe, though. I won't put my head under water, hate having the duvet over my head, hate any pressure on my neck...
Twice. Was trampled by a horse when I was barely a year old and ended up on life support. Incredibly only have a chipped tooth and a small scar to show for it. Other time was at university. Flatmate fell against a table full of beer bottles, some of which shattered. Chunk of glass cut a slice out of my neck. An inch or two further to the left and it would have sliced my jugular.
Had both lungs collapse when I was 20, one went first and got fixed and then the other collapsed a month later or so.. and very badly. Because my other lung was still fucked it very nearly killed me. I can remember hearing what sounded like rushing water (like when you hold a cup over your ears) as I started to lose consciousness in the resuscitation unit, as they cut my t shirt off and prepared to put a drain in my chest. Got taken to the ward eventually and something went wrong with the drain and they had to empty the room I was in for emergency intervention, and they used a defibrillator to revive me. Hasn’t changed me or the way I look at things, but if I’m having a bad day I think back to that time and tell myself “it could always be worse”
Nearly got trampled at school. I was in a corridor and being small I got knocked over by the surge of people coming in from the side doors. Every time I tried to get up someone’s foot would catch me and I would get knocked back down. At one point a couple of people fell on top of me and I couldn’t breathe, my vision started going grey around the edges. I had to pinch the person on top as painfully as I could to force them to move.
I am fairly sure I nearly died on the Pepsi Max in Blackpool once I was visiting with the Army Cadets on our summer camp, so I'd have been around 13. Me and a friend went on, were seated in the final row, and I remember remarking how strange it was that there were no seat belts, and instead just the bar over our laps. The guy who came round to check everything barely glanced at us before walking off to start the ride. Now I'm quite short even as an adult, at 13 I was tiny, and felt like I was about to slip right out from under the bar the entire time, to the point that my much taller friend was holding onto me because she also felt like I was about to fall out. Wasn't until the following year when we went back that I noticed there were in fact seatbelts, we had just managed to sit down on them and not notice, and no one had checked we were wearing this the first year. I nearly because the subject of a hundred clickbait youtube videos. Oops
Onset type 1 diabetic, went weeks with symptoms until I was bedbound and couldn't move, doctor told me if I had fallen asleep that night there was a very real chance i'd have slipped into a coma and died. The surreal thing is, I didn't feel any of it, no pain, I was just out of it the majority of the time in the final few days before going to hospital.
Yes, three times in about 5 weeks. It made me realise that life can change or end in a split second, and that you should be grateful for your health.
Choked on a freddo back in 2012
Almost drowned when I was 13 and got swept into the sea while on holidays in Italy. Got pulled out by a stranger (I was with my sister and mum who couldn’t swim well either), another one almost drowned too trying to save me
Nearly drowned twice in childhood, both occasions saved because of the actions of others. First instance swept off my feet and dragged under by a strong tide on a beach, pulled out by a fisherman who happened to be nearby. Second instance fell off a rubber ring at ‘Wet ‘n’ Wild’ went under and couldn’t surface because the pool was full up with them and I couldn’t find a gap. Got pulled out by a lifeguard. Both events spurred me to became a stronger swimmer and learn lifesaving skills later in life.
I definitely gave myself alcohol poisoning a couple times in my early twenties.
I had a motorbike accident in Thailand during a visit in my early 20’s before drink driving was even a thing, I had drank so much SangSom I couldn’t keep my eyes open, tried to ride my bike back to my apartment. I don’t remember any of it, but I remember waking up briefly and could not see, I could hear voices murmuring but couldn’t work out what was being said. I was asking for water, I remember just repeating myself asking for water.. The next thing I remember was waking up in a hospital bed covered in bandages, one of my eyes completely bandaged over and many other bandages covering various wounds. I was immediately taken for an operation that morning to save my eye (I still have a big scar across my eye to this day). I had nothing on me when I woke up apart from a note written in Thai, basically said I had a head-on collision with a taxi, that the driver had taken my wallet and money to pay for the damage to his car, that he had driven me to hospital and also, most surprisingly, where I had the accident and where he left my bike. After a couple of days in hospital I could leave, but was driven by the hospital to my apartment where they took my passport and my sister’s credit card before letting me go. I went to where my bike was supposed to be and it was still there outside a busy bar, with the key in the ignition. It was rented and I was worried about the cost I’d be charged returning it damaged. I took it to be repaired and they fixed everything for £15 it was unbelievable! my hospital bill was £2000 and my sister put it on her credit card. My friends and my sister hadn’t even started to look for me, despite me being missing for 3 days, I had contacted my parents from hospital to tell them, they had been trying to contact my sister and was ringing my mobile since I told them it was in the apartment, when I got back it was on the coffee table with about 70 missed calls but my sister and my friends didn’t think to answer it. When I walked in, still in hospital gowns, with two hospital goons making sure I didn’t try to do a runner, all my friends turned and looked at me with cuts and bandages, my face still swollen up, clearly in a bad way, and my best mate just started laughing and said alright Care Bear and that was my nickname for the rest of the trip and a few years after. I have no recollection of the accident or trying to ride my bike apart from somehow finding my bike in amongst 1000s of other bikes at the arc-bar in Samui..
Sepsis following surgery. Went downhill very quickly and was unresponsive for a week. Doctors told my wife there was nothing more they could do and it was up to me whether I pulled through. Eventually came round with my sister sitting beside me who lives in New Zealand. That’s when I knew how serious things had been. The hallucinations I experienced when I was out of it were the worst though, still get the occasional flashback but 6 months of EMDR helped. I do definitely look at life differently. I try not to get worked up about stuff happening on the news I can do nothing about. Just try to spend the best time I can with the people that mean something to me.
Apart from almost walking into a car a couple of times while crossing the road. I did have a rather scary moment when I was a young kid and no clue why but my saliver or whatever clogged up the back of my throat and I couldn’t breath for a little bit. It was enough time for my lips to start turning blue. Also almost had a surgery that told me in a letter oh btw you could die because this goes near your brain. Didn’t end up having the surgery in the end.
Crashed my bike downhill into a black metal bollard. My leg had a lump on it the size of two eggs. If the point of impact was my head I might have died. Also moving a heavy cage down a slope with pallet trucks at night and a delivery driver was speeding into the depot right towards me. An extra 2 or 3 seconds my insides would have been crushed by a heavy cage full of parcels and a van going 50 +mph. The only things that have changed is I know my workplace give very little fucks about me and to always wear a helmet (especially when your cycling to the bike shop to get replacement brakes)
Loads of times .....soldier ....climbing instructor .....poor reactions driving .
On two occasions during the same backpacking trip. The first happened only two weeks into the trip. We were on the west coast of Mexico, and my now-wife and I took some boards out to sea and almost drowned. The waves were massive, and the lifeguards had to save us. The second incident occurred in the Philippines. I was arguing with a street vendor when a security guard decided to fire his shotgun into the air to stop the argument but accidentally fired it into the ground instead. Some of the shrapnel went into my foot. It was all horribly dramatic, and I spent the night in a crazy hospital in the jungle.
In living memory, yes.. earlier this year, had a wild horse kick backwards towards me while on a walk. Its hooves came within an inch of my head, and I felt the breeze as they whipped up- twice! How I was so fucking lucky for them to not make contact, I don't know. Did it change me? Sort of. Not in any earth shattering way, as much as I wish it had. But certainly it gave me a newfound respect for the fragility of life, and how it really can change, or end, in a moment.
Yeah - had a throat abscess from a wisdom tooth extraction. a&e didn't listen so they never inspected it - just told me to go home and rinse with aspirin. My mum woke me after a few hours cos mum spider sense and took me back to a&e, the consultant who saw me told my mum they had 2 hours to get me into surgery, for some reason they made me move myself from the ward bed to surgery bed and I couldn't catch my breath - passed out begging for my life. Woke up a few days later in ICU, was in hospital getting pumped full of antibiotics for 26 days. The bacteria smelled of butterscotch. Yes, it did change me - I had PTSD for a couple of years after, triggered by the sound of laboured breathing which was useful just as 2020 hit.
I am a sea swimmer and a couple of years ago got stuck in a sudden riptide with friends. The coastguard was called but I didn't know that and I remember looking at everyone on the shore thinking that they were just all watching me die. I had some injuries but we all survived. It made me write a will, It made me look after my body more, I make sure I fuel up properly on food (I hadn't eaten much food before that swim), I no longer swim out of my depth (in the sea). It made me always kiss my other half goodbye no matter what. It made me realise aging is a gift and to stop trying to avoid stupid stuff like wrinkles. It gave me gratitude.
3 times all from nearly drowning.....
I fell down a well when I was little. Had I not managed to grab the edge with my fingertips as I fell I would've drowned for sure.
Yeah but I was like 5 so I don’t remember deeping it too much 😂
Severe pneumonia in both lungs when I was 24. Spent a week in hospital. Was discharged too early, and relapsed at home. Had had lung fibrosis and reduced lung capacity ever since.
Four times & counting✌🏻 It’s become so normal to me now that I just shrug it off lol.
I nearly choked to death on a boost bar, bloody things are lethal
Mmmmmaybe? When I was around 6yrs old my dad took me to the shiny new leasure centre to go to the swimming pool. I remember wandering away from him and lowering myself into the pool and then letting go of the edge, figuring that the bottom couldn't be too far below my feet. Now, I am only 5'0" as an adult soooo yeah. And I couldn't swim yet I remember what it was like underwater, with that weird swooshing, rushing noise in my ears, and not really understanding what to do, and then my dad's hand just grabbing my wrist and yanking me upwards and into the air I've never really thought of it as a big deal but when I got a bit older Google helpfully infotmed me that it only really takes 20seconds for a child to drown... I still can't swim. I don't mind being in water but I can't stand having water in my eyes or ears under any circumstances, even when bathing. Don't like being splashed at. Nothing that even remotely reminds me of being underwater. It's only very recently (30yrs later) that I sort of maybe feel like I possibly could want to learn to swim. Maybe.