Yes but I’m a hypochondriac. So the vast majority were not objectively very dangerous.
Some really interesting stories here.
I wasn’t convinced I was going to die, so much as very aware of that possible outcome if I didn’t make all the right decisions.
A few people and myself from my Panamanian tour group decided to climb a local extinct volcano to the shelter at the top - reports from previous groups included lounging in the sun at the top after the 6+ hour hike, which ended up being significantly at odds with the pelting sleet we ended up facing. Long story short, I think I arrived at the above thought huddled behind a small transceiver electronics shack with my generally fitter (but coastal dwelling and therefore exhausted) hiking partner.
After jettisoning extraneous items, I ended up shoving his pockets full of styrofoam cups for insulation and feeding us coldcuts and a bottle of wine before heading back down as fast as we could; 20 minutes later we were at a better (warmer) altitude and I knew we would be okay one way or another. I generally like to examine thoughts and actions for a while before doing anything, but at that time I had a focus and speed of thought that I found impressive.
I’m not convinced I can die.
Car wreck. Scared me beyond belief, I was absolutely certain I was going to die.
Kidney stone. Pain was so gawdawful, my blood pressure spiked and I got a vicious headache as a bonus. I was convinced that I was going to stroke out. Then the Demerol hit. Mr. Demerol is my bestest friend.
Yep.
At a dinner party where due to an unfortunate series of events I inadvertently consumed something I was allergic to and I was vomiting, on the verge of losing control of bladder and bowels, my eyes were swelling shut, I felt incredibly lightheaded and woozy, the inside of my mouth, nose, and ears were itching indescribably horribly, those same mouth, tongue, and sinuses were swelling, and I suddenly couldn’t get enough air in through my throat… I was afraid I was dying.
In the ambulance, with the EMT’s trying to administer oxygen and me trying to cough out the fluid filling my lungs as my vision started to tunnel and fade to black and white, hearing the guys calling out my crashing blood pressure and so desperate to find a vein they’re talking about cutting into my flesh to find one… I was certain I was dying.
Fortunately, I was mistaken.
But anaphylaxis really sucks.
And that’s also why I’m terrified of tomatoes in any form.
I fell asleep with a headache, woke up with a raging case of malaria.
A perfectly clear-as-a-bell understanding formed in my head. It said “You are sick with something fatal. This disease will kill you.” Of course, I had the thing tricked and popped some anti-malarials. But there is no doubt in my head that if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have made it to another morning.
I was once on a plane that was clearly out of the control of the pilot. In China, people tend to giggle when they are nervous. This was my one “God damn it, what’s wrong with you people moment.” I’ve never been quite as upset as being on a plane that was veering decidedly towards the fast-approaching ground, surrounded by guffawing Chinese people. I was thinking “For the love of god, we are all going to die. Can you show this moment some proper respect and stop with the LOLz.”
Yup, pulmonary embolism. There was twice in that particular episode that caused me to think I was actively at that moment dying. When it first hit and I couldn’t breath and passed out in my friend’s kitchen and nearly lost control of my bowels and bladder, that moment before it happened I was all, “Ok, dead now.”
Then I wasn’t, I was fine, unless I moved.
Later as I tried to get to the ER after driving myself there (yeah, dumb, but I wasn’t thinking clearly) it happened again about six meters from the door - I stopped a guy as I was falling to my knees and said, “I really think I need some help.” But my brain was screaming that I was going to die.
Good times, huh? Clearly, I didn’t die (although they told my poor husband to prepare for the worst!)
Was this the Youghegheney River? Cuz I had the exact same experience and it is the time I thought I was going to die.
There were two airplane rides between Kodiak and the village I was living in that I was sure were going down. I was certain that I was never going to see my kids again, and tried to prepare myself for the crash into the mountains on one plane and into the ocean in the other.
I think I have shared this before, but while living in the village I had a lot* of encounters with brown bears. One in particular was especially terrifying, the short version is a sow with two cubs charged me while I was on the deck. I got into the house and went to get the firecrackers from my room to chase her off. The window was open and I could see the cubs in my yard. I thought to look out to see where she was. As I leaned out to look towards the deck the bear stuck her head in. We were close enough that I could see myself reflected in her eyes, and her breath was blowing my hair off my face. I could see her paw resting on the window ledge with wicked long sharp claws; I didn’t know if she was going to bite my face off or simply knock my head off my shoulders. After an eternity** I was able to take a breath and I screamed some colorful language into her face; her eyebrows shot up in a human-like expression of alarm, and she took off, with the cubs on her tail***.
*almost daily
**okay, probably just several seconds
***I assume, as I have no recollection of what happened between the time after I screamed until my husband came back up from the beach.
I dumped a motorcycle on the freeway at about 70mph or so. One part of my brain was trying to figure out the proper application of braking on a motorcycle with a severe steering wobble, and the other part…well, shit, I don’t know what the other part was thinking. One the one hand, I knew my situation was dire, OTOH I was calculating like mad.
I figured wrongly, of course, but got away with only a few stitches and road rash.
No epiphanies.
Retinal surgery, and the possibility of awakening blind, had more of an impact. I appreciate the gift of sight every day.
There have been several times when my mortality stared me in the face. The first was when a doctor told me that half the people who received the cancer treatment I was about to get survived it.
Interesting how many of these are similar to my second one: I went through a class 3 rapids underneath the raft. Not on purpose, of course. I was doing my best to get to the top, but whichever way I went, that raft was above me. That was a scary one.
And a very brief one, in the fraction of a second before a head-on collision. Suddenly, it seemed like we were going MUCH faster than we actually were (I was doing about 30, she was going a bit faster).
Lots. The last time was about 6 months ago. As I was rounding a curve a log truck came too fast from the inside lane and began to tip. I saw its logs shift and then its outside wheels lift. I got a sudden jolt of adrenaline as I realized there was no time to do anything to get me far enough away in time but then at the tipping point it went back the other way. I always feel “so this is how it happens” and afterward “ahhhh not yet” relief. I think if anything it makes me a little nicer to those around me and less stressed for awhile. It reminds me there is nothing to stress over, of what I might regret if I were to go now, and that any damn thing at all beats dead.
I was very sick a few years ago. I spent a couple of weeks hovering about the point of no return. A little bit sicker and my internal organs would have started shutting down. So, yeah, I thought my time was up.
No, I don’t have any insights brought back from staring death in the face for a couple of weeks, other than “don’t get sick”.
Depend on how you count delerium and dreams.
I recall being REALLY sick when I was a kid(7-10 yrs old?), and my brain was so out of it, I thought at one point there was a sewer drain right above my head, and I saw the family from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids climbing out of it, I shit you not. I was distinctly conscious, and I knew what I was seeing couldn’t be real. And that scared the ever-loving shit out of me. My mind had never fallen out of my control like that before. I was wondering if that kind of thing happened before you died, and whether I would even see it coming. I’ve never been in greater fear for my life.
There was another time, but I guess you would count it as a dream, though it was a damn realistic one. I was dreaming that I was lying asleep in bed. Nothing unusual, nothing different. Totally reasonable that I would still believe this was reality. And I felt myself being pulled up and away from my body, looking down and seeing my peacfully sleeping figure(lying in the exact same way I do when I sleep). As I drifted farther and farther from myself, I thought, very distinctly “Did I just die in my sleep? I’m 19 years old and in great health! WTF?!” But the farther I got, the less I cared. I went thorugh a very quick acceptance of what was going on. Then I felt a weird kind of excitement, wondering just what was beyond the bend. I turned to face the sky, and I woke up. I was suprisingly calm when I realized where I was. And I said to myself, “Well, I guess if that’s what it’s like to die in your sleep, it’s not so bad.”
Couldn’t actually sleep the rest of the night, thought. Just kept thinking till the sun came up. Probably why I remember it so distinctly. Most dreams are fuzzy for me unless I write them down right when I wake up. This one I have commmitted to memory.
A friend and I were sitting in the grass in Hyde Park just after dark. It was a stupid thing to do, but we were sitting right in front of her apartment, on a residential street, and we didn’t think we were in any danger.
Until suddenly I looked up and we were surrounded by four strange men, silently looking down at us.
I remember thinking quite clearly that we were going to die.
I suppose we were lucky - all they did was snatch my purse. But I have never been so afraid of anything as in that moment when I met their eyes. The memory still terrifies me.
When I was giving birth.
Things were not going well, but I wasn’t particularly in pain (high threshold and all). I was vaguely aware of all hell breaking loose all around me in what felt like very slow motion. I turned and looked at the monitor and noticed that neither the baby nor I had much for a heart beat or other stats. I was really calm and just thought, oh hey…we might die. Then they were rushing me down the corridor and putting a mask over my face. Then I woke up. And I wasn’t dead. Oh, and I had a baby boy who wasn’t dead either (close - not breathing when born, but soon after). It was all very surreal. It actually took me some time to realize it all had actually happened to me and not someone else that I was watching.
Twice.
Once was when my boyfriend at the time and I drove into Tropical Storm Cindy. The road conditions were terrifying. I actually turned to him and started saying my last goodbyes.
The second time was when a man attacked me with a crowbar in New Orleans.
I do that, too, sometimes. This really pissed off the other guy I was in an airplane with one time. Here our engine had just quit and I’m up front sniggering. Hey, I was looking for a landing spot, running the proper checklist and doing everything I needed to do, I was just doing the extremely-nervous-chuckle thing at the same time. But I didn’t think we were in any danger of dying - we were above flat farmland, plenty of spots to land in, in an airplane well suited to off-airport activities, and I’ve done an emergency landing into a fiend before. As it happened, I got the engine going again but yeah, the ensuing argument once we were back on the ground wasn’t fun at all.
Not exactly, I’ve had a couple of moments where time kind of slowed down and I remember thinking that it was absolutely important that I be completely focused and deliberate in my actions.
The one that most readily springs to mind is an incident in Iraq in the summer of 2003. I was in a car when this raving man waving an AK-47 became fixated on me and stood about 3 feet from my car screaming at me in Arabic. The traffic was clogged at the intersection, he was yelling at me and I was trying to very calmly get the hell out of there before he decided to kill me. It wasn’t that I thought I was about to die, but I had this laser like focus on my actions and his movements.