Having recently had a near death experience it got me thinking about how many other times in my life I almost died or were killed. I don’t mean things like fender benders or just having gun pointed at you, I mean real honest to goodness I could have or should have died from what just happened and yet I didn’t. Really bad car crashes count. A round with cancer counts.
I count five times I almost died. One was when I had my appendix burst at 14 and I was in the hospital for three week with an infection. Second is when I was 21 and was thrown into the deep end of a pool by drunken buddies when I couldn’t swim. Third time was when I was rear ended by truck going 60 mph while I was waiting to turn left and was thrown into on coming traffic. And finally the fourth time is the incident I linked to.
Twice. Once a large piece of shale almost as big as me just missed falling on me, and later on in the same hike, the entire rockface next to it also fell.
Second time, I skidded on ice in the mountains on a blind pass and the only things that saved me were the fact I slowed down to 20 mph because it was a blind pass, and the inward curve of the road assured that I would curve away from the cliff edge.
Three. I was a “blue baby” back in the '50s, and later I was in a terrible car wreck that should have been fatal, and once I very nearly achieved a successful suicide.
When I was hit on my bicycle. I lost over half my blood volume at the scene and the paramedics didn’t think I would live long enough for the helicopter to arrive. I received 89 units of blood over the next few days.
Didn’t scare me in the least as I couldn’t see my injuries and had no idea how bad it was. Plus being in shock and all.
High speed accident that should have killed me, straight up. Pair of scissors held to my throat by violent man, yes he was in earnest. Stepped off a curb in a foreign country in front of a bus, companions quick thinking snatched me out of harms way. Medical intervention saved me from death or stroke.
I’m pretty sure there are others too, but these I remember most clearly!
My favorite one was when I was riding my motorcycle. I was preparing to turn left at an intersection. Coming toward me was a big truck. I thought about just turning as I normally would have had plenty of time. Instead I waited for the truck, and when I turned I spun out in a patch of oil and went down right where that truck would have creamed me.
Another was during my powered paragliding days. They’re the safest aircraft in existence if you follow the rules, the main one being- never fly over where you can’t safely land. Once, I went to make a landing, but was coming in too high, so decided to go around. Like an idiot, I crossed over some power lines a little too low. Just after clearing them my engine quit, and I landed in a cornfield. Had it quit a few seconds earlier I would have been toast.
8 1/2 in the Puerto Rican surf-last thing I remember was my mom rushing back and forth frantically on the beach as I got pulled out by a runout. Some local surfer amigos saved me and my dad-I came to while on a surfboard, just popped up like it was nothing. A dry drowning they call it.
I added a second one for almost leaping from my parent’s condo balcony-something stayed me, in which case the wonders I see daily would have never come about.
Definitely twice due to illness, and one of them I was too young to remember. Pretty close other times, but those are more like narrow escapes instead of near death experiences.
Was almost scraped off the womb because the doctor claimed it was impossible for my mother to be pregnant; the nurse reminded him that the protocol called for a pregnancy test anyway; he still wanted to scrape; the nurse reminded him that the patient was a niece by marriage of a doctor well-known around town for his superb diagnostic ability and complete inability to accept fools (upon getting the conversation reported, my uncle called the ObGyn and “the cleanest thing he called the ObGyn was ‘murderer’”). Months later they stopped the delivery because that same doctor said it was too early (I was on time, damnit, the one who couldn’t count was the doctor), then they tried to induce but as it didn’t seem to be working they sent her back home, then during the delivery my heart stopped (adrenaline shot through the uterine wall) and I was born blue and with the cord wrapped around my neck.
After that it’s been mostly uneventful. The only other time I’ve been close to dying was that time I almost jumped 8 floors down, but I decided I couldn’t be as useless as everybody was making me feel, there had to be something I was good at and I just had to find it.
Hard to say. I can think back to a number of instances where in retrospect I was within a hairsbreadth of disaster, but nothing happened and I didn’t realize the peril at the time.
Perhaps the closest I have ever come to imminent death or grave injury was when I walked out of a bank at about 10 pm into a very large semi-circle of cops - maybe 15? - who didn’t know that shaggy, jeans-wearing technicians with large tool cases worked that late. It was startling and unexpected and one completely inadvertent and innocent move could have acquired me a severe case of lead poisoning.
Probably not fatal, but in my electronics design days I had a large transformer overheat and blow a seal, spraying red-hot tarry oil all over my bench. It was simply luck that the failed seal was pointing away from me and my face, which had been quite close to the setup just moments before. I would likely be blind and grotesquely scarred from the event but for that luck.
Other than almost getting run down by idiots several times in the past year (including one where I could see the driver and he actually appeared to be asleep at the wheel) there was the time I ran into a wall. Being drunk and very determined I ran into the wall again. Then I fell over.
Surgery. Subdural Hematoma. I came close that time.
Twice. I’ve had malaria twice. For Westerners, people don’t often know just how bad malaria is. The first time I had it I was two, and my aunt came home to find my mom engrossed in a novel. I was hiding under the stove (note: stoves in India often don’t have ovens and thus are just a foot or so off the ground), shivering. My lips were blue. I was trying to warm myself with the pilot light. (My mother, the wonderful caretaker).
The second time I had it I was fifteen. I am sure I probably would not have died…but I dropped twenty pounds in two weeks. I went from a healthy 117 pounds to 98 pounds at 5’5". I was sick all the time and couldn’t even kep down 7Up. I’d sit there and cry and then my (adopted) mom would go into the other room and cry. I found that latter part out later.
Other than that, no broken bones or anything like that.
I’m not sure if I should count the car that sideswiped me when we were both going the speed limit (70 MPH) on the highway. Thankfully I did not spin out, and actually saw the accident coming but could not avoid it due to cars almost but not quite boxing me in. Who knows what would have happened if I had not moved almost to the side of the road and sped up, she may have completely t-boned me rather than just clip the rear and continue into the railing. As it was I did bounce a foot or so from the crash but I kept my wits about me and did not panic react (speaking of which, that would have been bad in the mountains as well, if I would have tried any turns at all, either turning into the slide, which would have put me down the mountain, or away from it which would have exacerbated the spin.)
