I forgot my most recent one.
Two years ago this month I was visiting cousins and leaned into a candle. My brand new coat went up in flames with me in it. My cousins beat me with dish towels and the fact that I was wearing several layers of clothing saved me from a terrifying fate.
I am a death magnet but somehow still survive.
I was behind my buddy riding dirt bikes up a pretty technical trail in SW CO. There are a series of ledges along a shelf section that are always challenging, but until that point had gone fine. I screwed up and stuffed the front wheel into one of the ledges and went over the bars to the right. Which was a 600’ drop all the way to the highway. Luckily it was not a true cliff–probably 60 degrees, and there was a little vegetation–I grabbed a sagebrush before I got up too much momentum and self-arrested. Broke my hand doing so. I don’t care to ride that trail anymore. Got it on helmet-cam, at least!
Riding the PCH north of SF (with a passenger) on my GPZ750 behind a timid mini-van. I was young and impatient, and I was sure I hadn’t seen any oncoming vehicles for the next couple of turns. Pinned it to pass and sure enough there was a full-size van coming around the corner. Luckily I had ridden 10,000 miles already that year and we slipped between but it was a matter of inches. I pulled over at Muir woods, apologized to Jane, and shook for a good while. All she had to say was, “Well, we didn’t die!”
Think I related this here at some point…
8.5 years old, San Juan Puerto Rico. My father the early bird got us all up around 6 am to take a dip in the ocean. My mother actually filmed us going out (while my little sister built a sand castle) and I even found the film 30 years ago in a closet. It shows us in rather rough 3 footers, onshore breeze, with me jumping high in the air with each incoming swell. The film ends right as I get caught in a rip current (back then everyone thought that sort of thing was the “undertow” which is relatively weak in comparison). Last thing I remember was losing touch with the sandbar and going under as I was dragged out.
I woke up on a surfboard, thanks to my mom getting some local surfers to go out and get us (for them it was crap conditions so they were playing craps against the seawall), after they initially laughed off her concerns before her tears started flowing and got them in gear. I later researched that I had undergone a dry drowning-there’s actually two such syndromes, and I got the good one, where your epiglottis reflexively closes shut to keep the water out of your lungs, then when it relaxes you can start breathing again (my father was a surgeon note and he would have undoubtedly done CPR on me if I hadn’t).
[The bad kind of dry drowning is when the water DOES get in, but you don’t feel it right away, but you may lose consciousness when ashore which might kill you]
My dad then threw me into the pool so I wouldn’t end up “afraid of the water”, but my mind has never worked like that, and I was more bewildered by what had happened than frightened.
Not sure if I’ve told this story here before. Years ago, a friend and I were in Costa Rica. He was driving down a narrow mountain road. Someone started coming up, and so my friend decided to back up a bit to a wider section to give passing room. He pulled to the side and misjudged it - hung the passenger front tire off the side of the cliff. I had to very carefully climb across to the driver side to get out. Our SUV had two and most of a third tire on the ground, with the fourth dangling in the air.
The locals saw our situation, got some heavy rope and a little Toyota sedan, and pulled the SUV back to fully on the road.
I was in training to become an aerial observer/scout. We were flying nights using NVGs. I was in the front seat being trained while there was another trainee in the back. I was looking down changing the radio frequency when the guy in the back called out there was a plane to our left. The instructor pilot immediately dropped collective and we quickly vacated the air that the plane passed through a few seconds later. The plane had no running lights on and it wasn’t supposed to be at our altitude since we were in a designated helicopter training area. If the guy in the back hadn’t been looking in the right direction or had been dozing like I would have been we would all have died. The pilot figured it was probably a drug runner coming in from the Gulf.
I have always been one to be reluctant to seek medical help unless it is something super obvious.
When I was in 7th grade I was playing football in a friend’s backyard around Christmas (in the snow). I was chasing a friend and he slipped and as he fell managed to kick me hard in the shin. That hurts but thought nothing of it.
My family was home for Christmas and, as it happened, a lot of them were sick (cold/flu). A few days later I mentioned to my mom that I had a bruise on my shin. She looked at it and said we should go see the doctor. I said no way…it was fine. I had a bruise. No need for a doctor.
But, she insisted. My doctor was not an expert for this so sent me across the street to the hospital which, fortunately, was next to my doctor’s office. Another doctor came down to look at my leg and told my mom I needed to be admitted immediately.
Turned out I had osteomyelitis…basically my leg got a cold but this is a really bad thing. I was unaware but I learned later they were telling my mom it could be life threatening and I might need the leg amputated. None of that happened but I do remember getting sicker then I have ever been while there for that (was a week in the hospital).
Fast forward to about 10 years ago and I was having some numbness and chronic back pain. I didn’t think much of it but my GF pestered me to go to the hospital. I did, they said I was fine, take some ibuprofen and sent me home. Over the weekend it got worse and ibuprofen did nothing. I went back to the hospital (again at GF pestering me). I saw my doctor and he had me admitted immediately. Now the hospital paid attention. I had Guillain-Barré syndrome (my body was attacking my nerves). Potentially very serious. Two weeks in the hospital for that but I came out ok.
God bless my mom and GF. If they had not pushed me to get medical care the results would have been much, much worse for me because I would have almost certainly delayed medical care too long. Even if not death it would have been bad.
About ten years ago I lost control of my car on a highway and hit the end of a guardrail. The guardrail crumpled up, snaked in through the passenger side window, and absolutely destroyed the front passenger seat, but I crawled out of my driver-side window without a scratch. If you simulated that crash 100 times with slightly different inputs, it’s likely a good many of them would have resulted in the guardrail killing me instead.
I had a dirt bike when I was 11 years old. So did my older brother. We where riding at a pretty good clip in snow covered ditches out in the country.
I hit a culvert and the bike did and endo. Front tire stopped. Rear tire up and over.
The rear tire, still spinning caught my head and wedged the top of my head between the steel fender and my helmet. It scalped me. Also nearly ripped off my ear. 130 stitches. A very good doctor. The skin on my head was numb for years, but today 53 years later, you can barely see it.
My post in a 2010 thread on topic:
And a 2009 thread:
Maybe? It was my senior year of high school. I was on a roller coaster and my butt was just bit to big to fit in the very conformed seat, so I couldn’t quite get the bar to lock. I was too embarrassed to say anything, and in my cloudy thinking, I was just going to kinda hold it down. If a classmate hadn’t noticed and called over a tech who tried to force it down and eventually had to have me get off, I don’t know what would have happened.
For the record, I weight over 150 lbs less than that now. And I’ve kept it off for a few years now, without any real effort on my part. Mostly just no longer eating gluten and dairy, which limits my food choices. And honestly having fun things I do that I forget about eating (or posting here as much).
I was born 3 weeks premature with a knotted umbilical cord, so probably missed it by a few minutes.
During a motorcycle race I high-sided hard on the second lap on cold tires and landed on the asphalt in the middle of the pack and a couple of bikes sped right past my eyes in a flash. No way a direct hit to the head/neck would have been survivable. The idea of surviving with severe brain damage is even more horrifying. I was incredibly lucky but obviously I was doing a high-risk activity and it was completely my fault. You just can’t crash in that situation. I was pushing way too hard at that stage for no reason other than being frustrated by a poor start it was a lapse of judgement that could have ended tragically. That was the most danger I have ever been in.
Not me, but my Dad …
He and his wife lived in Los Angeles. Back in the summer of 1996 they wanted to visit Paris. The two routes that made sense given the rest of their circumstances were to fly LAX - STL - CDG or LAX - JFK - CDG. Usually they preferred to go via JFK. This time, due to random crap at home, they chose the routing through STL.
Which caused them not to be on TWA Flight 800 - Wikipedia. They arrived in CDG none the wiser then saw the commotion at the airport where people were expecting to meet a flight that would never arrive.
The exact same thing happened to me on Route 15 northbound toward Frederick, Maryland, at night. Where there were double solid lines meaning no passing, somebody southbound tried to cheat and pass the car in front, aiming it headlong toward me in the northbound lane. The outcome was as you described, with the miscreant diving into the ditch so I didn’t have to. Just like you said, there was a split second where I had to decide if I had to be the one to take the dive or go straight.
When I was a kid I went to a doctor in a complex with a parking lot basically on a hill. I was in the driver’s side back seat when we arrived, and I was just about to get out when my mother told me to always get out the other door. I guess from not getting out in traffic when parked on the street. I listened to her and when I shut the door I felt the car shake. A car parked up the hill, whose driver didn’t set the parking brake, slammed into ours just where I would have gotten out.
A more recent close call was last month when we were on Highway 101 coming back from Monterey. A truck two cars ahead of me was carrying two port-a-potties. Both came loose and landed on the road. I was paying attention, no one was to my left, and I was able to avoid them. I’m not sure hitting them would have been fatal with auto braking and airbags, but it would have messed up our entire day. And I’d just as soon not have my obituary say “killed in a port-a-potty accident.”
My mother and I were almost run over by a bus. I was in the bicycle trailer she was riding. The mechanic hadn’t fixed the brakes, so we got stuck in the bus’ way.
About three years ago I was in my backyard with the dog and I hear this “craaaack craaack” sound. I knew that this huge oak tree was going to come down. I ran up the steps to the house when it came down. Got brushed by a limb. Aside from that neither myself nor dog were injured. The tree took down the chimney, which landed in a spot where I might have run to and shattered into a million pieces. There was also the fact that it took down the power line so electrocution was also a possibility.
I guess the autopsy was to determine that he didn’t fall in and drown.
In April of 2022 I was at dinner with my dad. That pain I had been having intermittently came back badly and we left for the ER. Dad thought it was kidney stones, but insisted on the ER to make sure.
One CAT scan later I found out it was kidney stones. And I had endometrial cancer.
At my final pre-surgery meeting before surgery the oncologist told me she was frankly surprised I was heading to surgery and not in hospice care.
If dad hadn’t insisted I wouldn’t be here now.
Perhaps it is survivor’s bias, but it seems you lot are hard to put down.
My closest call that I remember was on a motorcycle too: I had just started right from a traffic light that had turned green and 70 or 100 meters further down the road was a construction site where a car decided to pull off and turn left just then without looking. I went hard on the brakes, but it was all sandy from the construction site and the front wheel just kept on going the five last meters and I slammed into the car perpendicularly just at the end of the driver’s door. The car had one of those cheap roof racks whose width can be adjusted, where the metal bar that holds it together at the top looks out laterally, depending on the width of the car, perhaps 3, 4 or 7 inches. The bike’s wheel slammed into the car, my chest slammed into the window, my head slammed into the roof (I had a helmet on), the metal bar I just mentioned slid two, perhaps three inches to the left of my throat, I fell back.
Remember: you don’t have right of way when you drive off a construction site.
When I regained consciousness a couple of seconds later I got really pissed when I heard the driver say “Shit! Not again!” (in French, that was in Brussels). Had I hit the car just a couple of inches to the left, the bar would have impaled into my throat. Had the car not been perpendicular to my trajectory at the moment of impact, I might have slid laterally into that bar or the second bar at the back end of the car, which would have badly cut my throat. Had I been just a bit faster (and 70 to 100 meters on a bike from start should have been faster! I was young then…) I would not have suffered a mere concussion. Shoei helmets were good at the beginning of the '90s!
The other cases I remember were when I was a little boy: one was my apendicitis, which was diagnosed too late, the other was when I stepped on the ice on a swimming pool. The ice was too thin. No idea how they took me out of there, but this is the only case of extra sensory perception I might be willing to believe: My grandmother swore that she heard me shouting her name when I fell in. She was 50 km away. I still have my doubts, but at that age I believe hers would have been the name I would have shouted in such a situation.