Mark, a workmate, and I were leaving an Indian restaurant having had lunch. As we approached the door I popped some mukhwas into my mouth. The restaurant always has a bowl with a tiny serving spoon by the cash register. It had been my turn to pay so Mark hadn’t been to the counter. He told me to wait and went back to grab himself some. After a short delay we headed off back to the office.
As we approached the traffic lights at the nearby intersection where we would cross the road we heard a bang. We looked ahead to see a car shoot diagonally through the intersection, only a few meters from us, over the place where would have been standing, waiting to cross, had we been seconds earlier. It ploughed straight through the front of the large Greek restaurant on the corner and ended up against the rear wall. Luckily it was closed and no-one was seriously injured. I am 100% certain that we would have been pretty fucked up except for Mark delaying us for those few seconds. We were chatting as we walked along so didn’t see the accident. I assume that one of the cars involved just clipped the car that went through the restaurant because it was still travelling fast when it left the road.
In a similar vain, I have twice physically pulled distracted people back from walking in front of a moving bus. Both of these incidents were at another set of lights near work. Due to a series of dedicated bus lanes all the traffic can be stationary except for a bus tearing down the bus lane. Both times the person standing next to me, looking at their phone with earbuds in, went to walk across the road and I grabbed them as the bus shot past. One woman burst into tears when she realized how close she had come to being hit.
I was in a “Weapons Out” Cop Draw-Down after a somewhat less than High-Speed Pursuit.
When I look back on it, it really could have gone badly. But I didn’t die and got to ride my stolen bike home. Without a helmet, with a “Get Out of Jail Free” card!
A near-drowning off a seawall in my teens when, near complete exhaustion, I grabbed at and got a fingerhold in a crevice in the wall, only to have a large, fleshy, multilegged creature crawl out on my hand. Lost the fingerhold but somehow managed to reach a distant ladder and safety.
A few years ago after taking a wrong turn on a Texas hiking trail, thinking I could negotiate a steep drop-off (wrong), slipping and flying through the air with a long moment to wonder at what was happening, ending up crashing onto my back into a bush, coming out of it with colorful bruises instead of what could easily have been a fractured spine.
I’ve mentioned before I woke up at 2 am with horrible crushing chest pain. I was sure I was having a heart attack and wouldn’t survive long enough to make an ambulance call worthwhile. I got out of bed and sat on the couch to die quietly so my gf wouldn’t wake up. I was drenched in sweat. Then the pain stopped.
Since I survived, I thought it wasn’t cardiac. A few nights later it happened again. I assumed it was GERD, so I began drinking Mylanta before bed.
I ignored the episodes for a month, then mentioned it to my gf, who freaked out and forced me to go to my doctor, who freaked out and made me see a cardiologist, who freaked out and diagnosed the episodes as unstable angina with at least one actual infarction.
I got chills reading about the plane crash and am very grateful you survived. So were you and Mrs. Mercotan high school sweethearts?
The kayak incident had my in tears. I’ve always held you in high regard for your medical expertise and general insights, but I’m overcome by how quick-thinking, compassionate, and brave you were. I hope it was some comfort to the poor dad to know that all that was humanly possible was done to save his daughter.
My dad grew up in Glencoe, and much of my childhood was spent on Lake in Michigan and at the Oak Street Beach. It can be a treacherous place.
When I was a toddler, I got into my grandfather’s epilepsy pills and wound up in the E/R.
When I was 15 I was scheduled to go on a “shuttle American teenagers across Europe” tour, but a few days we were to leave, the tour was canceled. The return flight would have had me at the Madrid airport on July 1, 1985. Unlikely I’d have been anywhere near where the bombing took place, but still…
When I was 19 I was in a head-on car collision. Had I not been wearing my seat belt, I wouldn’t be here telling you about it.
When I was about 48-49, I was extremely anemic and was going through a particularly bad bout of hemolysis - as in, I was hospitalized for three days and got a blood transfusion. My hematologist told me I was nowhere near death.I certainly felt like I was, at certain points.
I knew a fellow this happened to. He was so badly injured medics didn’t think he’d make it to the hospital, and doctors there thought he’d be dead in minutes or at best several hours. They called his parents to rush there in hopes of seeing him before he died. Amazingly, though, he survived. He had an open-book pelvis injury and lost one leg, one hip, most of his pelvis (!), his bladder and much of his colon, and pretty much all the pelvic area organs. And eventually he learned to walk again with crutches, though it took months.
My “missed it by that much” story: I had a routine colonoscopy but they put a 100 mm tear in my ascending colon resulting in peritonitis. I was in a great deal of pain but wasn’t diagnosed for more than a day, then got emergency surgery and a week in the hospital. Spouse and daughter say the surgeon presented my prognosis as a tossup. The weird thing is that, very uncharacteristically, I strongly resisted getting medical help. Ms. Napier pushed me to. If she hadn’t, the infection would have rapidly become unsurvivable.
And, about the same year, Ms. Napier was attacked by a cat that turned out to be rabid, and she strongly resisted getting medical help, and I was the one pushing her. The wounds had scabbed over and started healing when treatment started. The treatment caused the wounds to open and bubble, suggesting she did have rabies virus in there.
So we resolved to always push each other about getting medical help.
When I was a third grader, another kid and I took a pair of large knives from his mother’s kitchen and started chopping up a wooden fruit crate. We were facing each other, so when he swung wide, he slit me open across half my chest. Fifteen stitches in my scrawny self. Doc said he came pretty close to hitting something important.
Chefguy and I must both be older than you! I remember wooden crates for fruit. Also really solid wooden crates for carrying large bottles of pop and liquor.
First week of November, 2022, so just over two years ago. I was driving east on US Highway 60 approaching Clovis, New Mexico, where I had a hotel reservation. Time of day was about 8:00 pm, so it was well past sundown and dark. The highway at that point is a ‘super-two’, meaning it’s a two-lane road, but with wide shoulders on both sides and occasional passing lanes.
I came over a slight rise and was startled to meet two sets of headlights, one of which was in my lane, trying to pass the other oncoming car. I had just enough time to say ‘oh fuuuuck’ out loud and then realized that the car being passed swerved onto his shoulder (to my left) and the asshole who was passing swerved onto my shoulder to my right. Had I impulsively jerked to my right towards the shoulder, it would have been a head-on at 70 mph, and I would likely have not survived. Instead, I glided just a bit to the center line and both cars rocketed past me, one on each side. I continued into town, checked into my hotel, and immediately found an establishment that served alcohol.
I can only assume that the asshole either thought it was a passing lane or thought he could see oncoming traffic well enough to pass the guy in front of him. Either way, he was wrong and I missed it by that much.
In November of 1980, my parents and I had reservations to stay at the MGM Grand hotel in Vegas (the old one that later became Bally’s). My mom came down with a bad case of the flu the day before we were supposed to fly there and dad cancelled the trip since she was in no condition to fly. On the day we would have checked in, a massive fire broke out at the hotel, killing 85 people.
About 5 years later, I had just got my license. I was driving in my pickup and completely distracted by a new album I had just purchased. I ran a red light, hitting a car that was making a left at the intersection. I was going about 30 miles an hour and not wearing a seatbelt. I essentially pushed my rear-view mirror through the windshield with my forehead and managed to sever an artery. I remember looking down and watching my new shirt get completely covered in blood. Somehow I managed to get my shirt off and pressed it against my head. I got out of the vehicle and man immediately laid me on the street and pressed that t-shirt hard on my head until the paramedics arrived. Turned out he was a medic in the Vietnam War. He very likely saved my life. I still have a big long scar on one side of my forehead but most people can’t see it now unless I point it out. That was the last day I didn’t wear a seatbelt.
About 30 years later, I was on the opposite end. I was making a left and a car ran a red light and hit the front corner of my car. I wasn’t hurt, but it did total the car. The worst part was that I had paid off the car a week earlier.
I’ve nearly died, or been killed, at least 4 times that I can recall off the top of my head.
The most dramatic event is one I think I’ve related here before.
I was stationed at the naval air base in San Diego in, IIRC, 1969. My squadron was assigned to half of a double hanger next to the runway, and I was in a workroom just off the hanger area watching some guys mess with a radar out of an F4 when I decided I wanted a drink. There were drink machines out in the hanger area proper and I walked to the door into that area. I was just a step from entering the hanger when there was an enormous explosion and I was suddenly staring at a roiling wall of flame.
It turned out that a pilot has lost control of his plane while he was trying to land and had bailed out over the runway. The plane had flown into our hanger and exploded.
14 people in the hanger were killed.
If I had gotten thirsty a couple of seconds earlier I would have been one of them.
I have other stories, like being the passenger in a sports car that went sideways through a telephone pole at 90+ mph. The pole impacted the side of our car just behind my seat.
I sometimes think the universe is keeping me alive just so it can mess with me.
Seemed like the right thing to do at the time. She’d want to call an ambulance. I didn’t want extreme intervention (thoracic surgery). In fact when I signed the releases for angiography I refused going for bypass surgery if a stent wasn’t enough.
My senior year in high school I was out with one of my best friends and his girlfriend in her car (an Opel Kadet, of all things.) None of us wearing seatbelts, of course. She was speeding down a road behind the university when she oversteered, started to skid and then the left rear wheel hit a pothole. According to the security guard who saw the accident, the car flipped 1 1/2 times in the air and landed on the roof. I bounced around the back seat like a jai alai ball. When we finally stopped I was laying on the roof. A quick shout got responses from Dan and Patty, so I kicked the rear door. It fell off. We all got out and stood there looking at the mass of torn metal. An ambulance was on scene at once, because the security guard was certain there were multiple fatalities. Dan was transported for overnight observation (jammed spine - he was shorter by a bit for a while). I accompanied Patty back to her house to explain what happened to her folks, then went home. The next morning I couldn’t get out of bed. Turned out I had torn, sprained or strained every muscle in my back from my shoulders to my hips. Spent the next 2 months getting physical therapy 3 days a week. I grew to hate that muscle twitch machine.
The cops couldn’t figure out how any of us survived, much less with relatively minor injuries. Like Bumbazine, I figure The Powers What Is wanted me alive, if only to serve as a Bad Example.
