Anyone else have a 'This is gonna hurt' moment?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I generally enter my house through the garage rather than the front door. One winter a couple of years ago I came home from work and saw that a package had been delivered and left on the front stoop. I parked my car in the garage and walked around to retrieve the package.

The front stoop is raised just one step above the walk. I picked up the box, turned around and stepped back down onto the walk, and directly onto a patch of ice. My feet flew out from under me, and – though I know this is physically impossible – in my mind’s eye I saw myself flying upwards, cartoonlike, and hovering in midair perfectly parallel to the ground.

In this brief instant my mind was remarkably lucid. I knew that the edge of the stoop was directly beneath my head and I swear I actually formed the words “basal skull fracture” in my mind. The feeling was not one of panic or even “this is gonna hurt,” but more like a calm and resigned “huh, so this is how I’m going to die.”

Then I came down, hard on my back, and somehow my head missed hitting the stoop by less than an inch. Remarkably, I was uninjured, save for being sore all over for about a week. But yeah, it did hurt like hell.

22

Riding my bike and caught a trolley track with my front wheel. I knew I was going down before it happened. It was more embarassment than pain.

23

I had that happen when I got “doored” while riding my bicycle. I was in college at the time, and someone opened their car door right in front of me while I was riding along. I had no time to brake, caught my right shoulder on the door’s frame, and saw my right hand come off the handlebar and swing through where the driver’s side window should have been, and remember thinking that the window had better be down, or else I was really going to hurt shortly. Fortunately, it was indeed rolled down.

One that I didn’t have that with was when I broke my right wrist. I turned away from the garage, felt a slipping feeling, and suddenly I was sitting on the ground, and my ass, right wrist and hand, and back of my head all hurt in varying amounts. Then the pain really hit my wrist and I curled up in a ball on the ground. I’d slipped on ice under the snow, had my feet fly out from under me, my right hand flew out to try to break my fall (landing on the heel of the hand and breaking my radius), my ass hurt from landing hard on it, and the back of my head hurt from bouncing off the aluminum siding of the garage after I landed. But I didn’t remember any of that intermediate bit, just the tiny slipping feeling and then sitting on the ground in pain in various places.

24

Mine were both car-accidents.

First on - old farm-truck in front of me turned left through an intersection, and then immediately turned right into an empty lot that was being used as a grass-roots farmers’ market/flea market. Neither his turn signal or his brakes lit up, and I was watching the traffic through the turn, and not as closely to him - until I was about 6 feet away, he wasn’t moving at all, and I had yet to touch my brakes.

I had plenty of time to scream mental curses at assholes who don’t keep their signal lights in working order before I crumpled my car up into his solid steel ass. My car had to go to the junkyard ON a tow-truck because it was in pieces, his stupid ancient truck didn’t even have any noticeable new dents in the fender.

Bless the officer who took the time to have a mechanic inspect the stupid truck and determined that the lights were not working, sparing me an “at-fault” accident.
The second one also involved an asshole in an oversized truck, but this time, he failed to brake for me - stopped in traffic on a main artery. I was stopped about 20 cars back from a red light, glanced up at my rear-view, and thought “huh, he’s not slowing down at a-- oh fuck me!” before he plowed into me hard enough to end up with my hood totally UNDER the SUV in front of me, and every car for 6 people up the line crumpled together.

He was going about 50 in a 35 zone, and never once touched his brakes. In fact, after he hit me the first time, he bounced back, and because his foot was still slammed on the gas, he hit me AGAIN! and pushed me further up under the SUV. There were a lot of not happy people that day. Again, his own stupid truck didn’t have nearly any damage, but I heard a rumor that he lost his license over it.
Most of my “oh, that’s really gonna hurt” moments come *after *I’ve done something stupid, and the pain hasn’t quite hit yet because of adrenaline. It’s not a premonition - there’s usually already blood, but I’m able to sit there for a good length of time (15-30 seconds) going - “Well, damn. Where’s the ibuprofen and I’m gonna need somewhere I can scream and cuss without the cops getting called!”

25

The only time that springs to mind was one time when I was checking my tyres. The back one was a little low, so I was topping it up with a foot pump - quite a decent, new pump, but the hose suddenly came flying off. I had too much of my weight on the pump and not enough on the foot on the floor, so I went straight backwards. I had time to think “I wish I hadn’t done this when no-one else is at home. I wonder if I’ll hit the back of my head on the concrete” before I hit the ground. I didn’t hit my head (hard). I landed my full weight straight on my coccyx instead. Then I lay there for a good thirty seconds totally unable to move or breathe, then a few more whimpering and wondering if I was broken, before managing to roll onto my side, get up and waddle indoors. That hurt for ages, like months.

26

Done the falling off the horse who gave a good buck thing. It was years ago, and I never did find out what set off her bucking fit. All I know is it seemed to take forever before I hit the ground. I’m usually pretty relaxed during a fall once I know I can’t stop it. Not this time, I had enough time during that fall to dread the eventual impact.

And, yes, there was that moment post fall when I’d heard the impact, knew the ground was hard, realized I didn’t bounce–and had time to think “this one is going to be really bad.”

Odd thing is, that fall just gave me bruises that were ugly as hell but didn’t really hurt much after the first day or so. The most painful, lingering injury I’ve had was from a near fall that I saved… but pulled a groin muscle doing so.

27

I was getting out of my car with a couple bags of orchard apples last October. Somehow, I managed to shut the car door on my right index fingertip. I instinctively yanked. The finger wouldn’t budge and the door was fully shut. I sat down my apples from my left hand in order to open the door, thinking all the time “this is gonna hurt worse shortly.” It did.

The new nail is just about grown in now.

28

Not in slow motion, no. One time during band camp, I was running around the parking lot for morning calisthenics. A girl got too close behind me and stepped on my heel, and I fell and slid, ending up with some heinous road rash (all at the speed of life). It was over before I knew it, though. All that remained was to scrub out the gravel with antibacterial soap. To this day, I can’t smell peach-scented soap without remembering that horrible day in vivid detail. Still got the scars on my palm :slight_smile:

29

My clearest moment was when I fell face-first onto the edge of a wooden barstool while horsing around with a buddy about 8 years ago. He knocked the stool over and fell, pulling me with him. I’m about 5 inches taller and caught the edge of the seat on my left supraorbital ridge. Time just seemed to slow to a crawl and I thought “Uh oh.This is really gonna hurt.” I was right. Gave myself a concussion and fractured both the ridge and my nose. Had two gloriously swollen and bruised eyes for a couple weeks and the bruises took over a month to fully fade.

30

Got a time-slowed-down-but-avoided-pain one.

Driving on a dirt road in central New South Wales I was coming around a bend and dropped a wheel into a soft patch of dirt causing me to start skidding across the road towards some pretty hard looking trees. Corrected but then over-compensated and started heading towards the trees on the other side of the road. This happened maybe three or four times before I could bring us to a safe stop.

When we got out of the Hilux my passenger remarked that she wasn’t sure what happend as it was all over so fast!

It felt like about 5 hours for me.

31

Yup. Went over a hill too fast on my ATV (winter, helmet was fogging up, hard to see trail in uniform white snow cover) Got air and hit then next hill midway up, which sent me over the handlebars in a pretty swan dive. Got the slow motion thing, then blacked out. Slid about 50 ft on the snow, facefirst, and I think the machine ran over my head. No injuries except a headache and a sore puffy bit on the back of my head for a week.

32

I was biking down a hill on a paved path that curved. It was spring, there was a semi large puddle in the middle of the curve. No problem I thought, what I didn’t realize it being spring within that puddle was some slime. I was going at a fair speed when I took the turn suddenly realizing that my bike was sliding out from under mel and I was going down. I knew it was going to hurt because my natural reaction was to put my hand out to brace the fall.

The fall was slo-mo. I hit the ground and ended up with a hairline fracture in my arm. It hurt, and I was starting a new job the next day. Showed up in a sling and half-cast.

33

I was climbing a tree and grabbed a branch that turned out to be rotten. Pitched straight over backwards and plummeted to the ground directly upside down. I remember thinking, “There is no space to shift at all here. I’m going to land right on my head. It’s going to hurt like hell and I may seriously hurt my neck or spinal cord.”

Landed about half a second later, right on a tree root. It did hurt like hell. Somehow, though, I landed slightly at an angle so I hit with the side of my neck/shoulder first. I was hugely relieved to realize that I could still feel everything. The next thing I remember is my brother, who had been with me watching the whole thing, standing over me in terror and asking if I could move. I’m lucky I didn’t break my neck.

34

Weird–I had the same experience while using a meat slicer. Cost me the tip of my right thumb. Fortunately after much pain, bleeding, and cursing my stupidity it grew back.

35

I am such a klutz I have these kinds of experiences all the time. The most frequent is falling on stairs, especially if there’s one scrap of ice on them.

The most memorable is the time someone did not stop at a stop sign and just pulled out in front of me. I was going about 40 MPH, the speed limit, and remember practically standing on the brakes, thinking “Oh, shit. Oh, shit. I am going to hit this car. I am going to be late for work. This is gonna hurt. Dammit, dammit, dammit.” It seemed to take about 10 minutes. Then the crash happened, both cars skidded into a utility pole, and time returned to normal speed.

I was indeed late to work by about a week or so. I had a mashed-up knee and a cracked vertebra. My car was totalled. The other driver was underinsured but I got something of a settlement from my own insurance company (who did not raise my rates by even a penny) that was nice to have but didn’t really compensate for the pain and the knee that still gives me trouble until this very day.

36

I was fortunate enough last week to get this interesting sensation but without the pain. :slight_smile:

I was skiing pretty fast, say 50mph doing fairly wide turns down a steepish red run and enjoy the carving when I came to a series of rollers. One of them was a bit more severe than I thought and threw me off balance as I crested it, sending all of my weight onto my inside ski. My outside ski then caught an edge and shot out sideways, at which point time slowed down in a classic TSDBSAPIATH moment and I realised that my ski tip was somewhere above my head and I was about to wipe out and slide into a bank at the side of the piste, where there were several trees waiting. :frowning:

Somehow, though, as I came down the steeper back side of the roller while starting to topple forwards down the slope, I sped up enough that my legs caught up with my body and I regained control and stayed on my feet, without scrubbing off any speed.

About four or five turns later, heart still pounding, I almost wiped out again as I hadn’t noticed my friend coming past in a tuck on my inside until we actually touched shoulders and pushed away from each other.

There are few feelings better than a TSDBSAPIATH where SAP doesn’t actually H.

37

Me, too. I was walking down the basement stairs in the dark. There was a glass on the stairs and I managed to step INTO it (I have small feet). As I felt my foot go into it I thought, ‘shit, I am really going to hurt myself.’

Through a stroke of luck, I managed to jump down the remaining stairs (about six) and land on my non-glass encased foot.

I then had to sit down for a few minutes to recover from the shock of NOT hurting myself.

38

sorry, the, uh, what effect? I’ve gt “Time Slowing Down Because Something Awfully Painful Is About To Happen”. Was I close :slight_smile:

39

I had it happen twice in one episode. This all has a build up, but the gist of it is:

-I stripped out of my survival suit, saw someone else jump off the boat and thought “This is the ONLY time I’m going to be able to get away with this. Yes, the water’s about 30 degrees, but I’ve just been in it for an hour and a half; I’m already cold, my heart is already slowed; impact on heart will be minimized.” And yes, I thought all of this in what was quite literally a split second. I can’t recall another time this really happening, off-hand, except for about 30 seconds later…

Then I ran for the edge, jumped off, and thought “Oh, yeah, this is gonna be COLD”. Thought that alllll the way down <maybe 20 feet>

After I hit the water, I had the surreal experience of watching it get darker all around me as I plunged downward into vegetation, green seaweed I guess, all floating prettily up to the top of the water, which was getting further and further away from me as it got darker and darker. I wondered vaguely why I wasn’t going toward the surface; I was going the wrong way!

After about um…I’m going to guess it was about 10 seconds, but it felt like at least a minute. I know it wasn’t, 'cause I’m pretty sure ALL my breath blew out when I hit the water.

So after this lovely time of watching it get darker and creepier with my vision full of plants, I realized, explosively, that I was going to have to SWIM to the surface. See, for the last hour and a half I’d been bouyed up by my lovely survival suit; my muscles were just waitin’ around to be lifted to the surface. Also, think I was slightly in shock, lol.

Next thing I remember…and I can count on two fingers the times I’ve lost any amount of time at all while conscious…I was climbing up the ladder to the boat, with the captain chewing our asses out, and rightly so.

But it was awesome! :D:D:D

Well hell, so much for keeping it short. >.<

40

This kind of doesn’t count, because there was no pain, or anticipation of pain, involved, but I still had the same sort of experience. I was in my first year of college, and taking a course in public speaking. It was the day of my first presentation, and as I was hurrying across the quad to get to class, I realized that the previous night’s rain had turned the lawn into a big mud puddle - right about at the moment that my feet went flying out from under me. I distinctly remember thinking, as I hovered in mid air over a Woodstock-sized mudpit, “Oh, of course I’m going to fall in the mud immediately before my big speech.”

The speech went well, btw.