Ever thought you were going to die?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

During the final incident of my first marriage, my ex-husband attacked me. My thoughts included:

  1. Wow, I’m not nearly as tough as I thought I was.
  2. This scream is the last sound I will ever make. When he cuts off my air, that’s it.
  3. This is so not fair.
  4. Really?

Luckily, the guy who was repairing our air conditioner intervened.
The next day (and ever since) I felt very embarrassed about it. My mother has expressed our undying gratitude to that air conditioner guy, but I never faced him in person. It was such an ugly and stupid scene in my life, not to mention that my skirt was somewhere up around my neck.

42

Not sure how I forgot our capsizing incident in Lake Victoria. My wife used to crew on boats in SF Bay, and really liked sailing. So here we were, posted to the embassy in Uganda, and she decides that it would be a good idea for us to take sailing lessons from the local British sailing club. This, despite my fear of drowning and inability to swim.

So we signed up for “lessons”, which were less than helpful. We then went to the lake, which is huge, and after some hands-on instruction about the ropes, we all launched in these tiny Lasers. The wind had kicked up considerably, and the little boat shot across the water. All was good for the first few minutes, but then we needed to turn it around to head back, which is when trouble set in.

The sail went slack, then the wind hit it with enough power to cause the boat to heel over. We jumped off the high side (wearing life vests, thank the stars) and clung to the keel as the boat slowly went “turtle”. The current was behind us and kept trying to drag us under the boat, and my wife’s leg got caught in the ropes. My main thought was of the hippos and crocs that inhabit the lake. Even though we were quite a ways offshore, one never knows how deep the water is.

The instructor finally spotted us and came over in his motorized dugout. By then, we were both exhausted from fighting the current and had to be dragged out of the water. I haven’t been on a boat since, and have zero intention of ever doing so.

43

Too many times.

44

Had an “Oh shit, this could be it” moment for a few seconds. I was approximately 2000 feet off the ground with a malfunctioning, spinning reserve parachute over my head after a high-speed malfunction of the main canopy. I was a student skydiver on my 12th jump.

Rode it down to a freshly-plowed field, hit somewhat hard and the impact knocked the wind out of me so hard that I thought that I’d burst an internal organ. Then I realized I was OK (if rather bruised and strained) and was on an adrenaline high for a while.

45

In the early 1980’s, I was a Paramedic

Had a call for Man Down.

We were first on the scene at a small home. Nothing out of the ordinary. I grabbed the jump kit (as I had done hundreds of times before), and went to the front door as my partner loaded the gurney with the other stuff.

I rang the bell, and a man with a gun opened the door, pointing the gun at me. He invited me in (how could I refuse?). I dropped the jump kit and entered the house. He shut the door

My partner saw me enter the house without my jump kit (that is a signal). I spent a little over 3 hours with him. All this time there are cops calling on the phone, people asking how I am etc. Trying to talk him out

He had been unemployed for 11 months. He was losing his home. His wife took the kids and left him.

Ironically, my wife just left me with the kids. Much of the same situation in our lives except, I was still working. We related on a lot of stuff. After what seemed like forever, he relaxed (he stopped pointing the gun at me). I was told this was when he decided to do it. in the debriefing (It wasnt Dr Phil)

He thanked me for talking with him, put the gun under his chin and pulled the trigger.

I never expected to leave that house alive.

46

  1. slipped and fell in front of a charging alligator

  2. snorkling alone 300 yards from shore and being harrassed and nipped by barracuda. Huge barracuda.

  3. sliding sideways in the snow in my MG Midget towards a fire hydrant waay too fast. Stopped inches away.

  4. hit by car while riding motorcycle. Bad day.

  5. knocked off motorcycle by car, laying in road; semi truck skidding towards my head. Stopped inches away.

  6. choking on food while home alone. I can’t believe I’m going to die this way.

  7. cut thumb badly and almost bled out. I can’t believe I’m going to die this way.

  8. jumped by 2 thugs who beat me and tried to get my gun to kill me. I won.

  9. skiiing/racing down Mt. Hood w/friends at sunset. Last in line, no one noticed I wiped out and flew accross a
    ravine and got stuck in the snow. Stuck. Immobile. Can’t move anything. Cried for 2 hours, knowing I’d freeze
    that night. I can’t believe I’m going to die this way.

  10. got Pneumococcal Pneumonia and Spinal Menningitis the week I graduated from high school. That was a bad
    month. I didn’t feel well.

There’s probably more I’m forgetting, but I feel like going to buy a lottery tickey right now…

47

Ha, I came in to post my near-death experience on the Zambezi, too. Quite intense, isn’t it? Mine came while riverboarding. The rafting was still on the fun side of scary, then we had to jump out and try to ride the rapids on one of those piddly little Baywatch-style bodyboards. Trying to ride the rapids quickly became trying to occasionally get my head above water to take a breath. I was relatively fine until I got my first mouthful of water and then I was just choking and panicking and pretty convinced I was coming out of that canyon in a box, if they ever dredged up my waterlogged body.

On the plus side, the adrenaline buzz lasted for about 48 hours.

I posted about this a while ago. :slight_smile:

48

Only twice:

  1. Climbing in Italy. Was blown off the mountain, with enough air time to think that this is it. I survived relatively unscathed. My climbing buddy, whom I was roped up with, was killed sadly.

  2. As a teenager and a passenger in my dad’s car on a country road. Guy overtakes the car coming towards us - nowhere for us to go. At the last second, as we skid towards the on coming car, my father removes his foot from the brake and accelerates hard through the adjacient hedge and into some light woods. Thankfully we do not hit any serious trees head on nor turn over. Car was a write-off, but we both walk away with nothing more than cuts and bruises. I promptly throw up with the shock.

49

I had what in retrospect was some sort of panic attack that triggered tachycardia that lasted for around two hours. I’m not kidding, but for about two hours, my heart was beating at something like 180 bpm.

It was night and I was in the middle of nowhere Croatia (going from Pakrac to Zagreb) after just having finished up a three-month volunteer stint there. Apparently, all the stress of saying goodbye, being highly caffeinated, and decompressing from three months in a post-war town just hit me all at once. As soon as I got my backpack off on that empty train, I felt a sudden warmth in my stomach. My heart began to race, my vision started to tunnel, my extremities got all tingly and numb, and my thoughts became fragmented. I sat down, tried to relax, but it wouldn’t stop. There was nobody else on the train except for a sleeping conductor. I honestly thought those were going to be my last moments on earth.

A half hour later, I get off at a stop to change trains to Zagreb. My heart is still racing along at around 180 bpm, but I’m not experiencing any lightheadedness or numbness in my extremities. My thought process gets all crazy at this point. I get on the wrong train, knowingly, and ask the local in Croatian whether this is the train to Zagreb as it starts pulling away. He answers no, and tells me to get off at the next stop. I didn’t care, I just felt that I needed to be moving, for some reason. At the next stop, I get off with my backpack, and sit outside the station. I contemplate telling the station master that I need to get to a hospital, but decide against it, because of some weird paranoid delusion that he’s going to kill me. He sees me freezing outside and invites me in. I accept, but I still have the idea he’s going to shoot me or something. The next train doesn’t arrive for an hour.

In the meanwhile, I’m in this dissociative state, where I feel the push and pull of the rational side of my brain (no, this guy isn’t going to kill you, you’re having some weird paranoid attack) and the insane, freaking out side of my brain that is telling me I’m going to die, whether through my heart exploding or through this guy killing me. I try to breathe deep and calm down, but nothing is helping.

Finally, one hour later, I get on the train. I manage to somehow fall asleep, but my heart is still racing. Even when I awoke in Zagreb to transfer to Budapest, my heart rate was still elevated, in the low 100s, I would guess. It took me a full 36 hours to get back to “normal” mentally and physically.

I have never experienced anything as intense as that before or since. My doctor did not seem to be too concerned about it, but, man, it was fucked up.

50

Cave-in.

I was about 13. Some friends of mine and I were in a cave near the Mississippi River. There was a small side tunnel near the back. I crawled in there.

WHOMP!

A large chunk of the ceiling fell on the space I just crawled through. Thought for sure I was entombed. But then, by candlelight, I saw that there was about six inches of space between the debris and the top of the tunnel.

No gopher, no wombat, no I-don’t-give-a-shit honey badger ever excavated any earth faster than I did.

I never went back in that cave. It’s sealed over now.

51

Wow, mine is really boring compared to all of these.

I had a nasty bout of food poisoning and was busily horking into the toilet when a piece of meat that I was regurgitating got caught in my throat. I couldn’t breathe and was on the verge of passing out when I realized that I didn’t want to be found dead in my bra and grandma-panties with my head in the toilet. I managed to Heimlich myself on the side of the tub and out popped the meat. I could breathe again and my dignity was preserved.

52

In retrospect that was the closest I’ve come to dying that I haven’t posted about yet. In fact, there wasn’t a cave-in at all in my case. It’s just that I discovered a “cave” made by a spring and crawled into it. I say “cave” because it the ceiling was about 10 feet of dirt :smack:

53

Fucking hell. I couldn’t even imagine going through that. You must have nerves of steel to bounce back from something like that.

As for me? Well, I’m a hypochondriac. I always think I’m dying.

54

I want to hear this one. I maintain there is a greater percentage of homicidal maniacs and just flat out assholes in NO than anywhere else. You can’t ask for directions without keeping an eye on the guy with a hammer mumbling and staring daggers or sit down for a meal without some evil bastard trying to entice you and your wife into his rusty windowless white van waving wrinkled greasy brochures of a free nights stay in a local hotel. And that’s in broad daylight.

Fess up for an Ole Miss boy?

55

Like Surly Chick, it was a choking incident. I have problems swallowing, and one time I was in my classroom while the kids were at lunch, and I was eating a sandwich when it just stopped in my throat. I remember thinking, “They’re going to come back from lunch and find me dead in here.” I just heimliched myself with my fists, and it popped out. I’ve heimliched myself on the kitchen counter before, too. The last time it happened I was in a restaurant with friends and the one could tell by my expression what had happened. We stood up, she squeezed,vit came out and we sat down. It took about ten seconds and I don’t know if anyone else in the restaurant was even aware of what had happened.

It’s a horrible feeling.

56

I’m not sure I’d ever want to eat if I had this problem. How do you do it? I mean one needs to eat to survive but I think I might stick to vegetable broth and milkshakes.

57

I’ve just gotta ask: do fiends possess some special impact-absorbing properties? I mean, it’s pretty cool of you to use an emergency landing as an opportunity to take out a fiend, but I’d have thought you’d be better off crashing into a haystack or something. :wink:

58

I once had a nightmare where someone stuck a dagger through my throat, but I’m not sure nightmares count.

For waking moments, the closest was probably a Cold War scare, when I was a little kid. I don’t remember exactly what incident it was (it might not have even been anything significant), but there was something on the evening news that had me convinced that the nukes were going to fly that night.

And I genuinely did almost die once when I was a baby, but I was too young to have any understanding or memories of it. It had been a warm evening, and Mom had left the windows in my room open, but it got unusually cold overnight. Mom got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, and saw that I was actually turning blue from the cold.

59

Reposting from the Stupid Doctor advice thread:
Woke up having horrible stomach pains, and was out of town, flying back that afternoon. I went to the ER and was told it was Appendicitis. I asked them if I should get it removed right away and miss my one hour flight, (SJC to PDX), and they said to go ahead and fly back home and go to a hospital there, it’s not that bad yet, plus the high altitude while flying would alleviate the pain.

They almost turned the plane around I was in so much agony. By the time I got off the plane (rushed off ahead of everyone else) and to the hospital it had burst. The ER doctor was incredulous when I told him about my earlier ER visit and subsequent recommendation for air travel.

Me: “They told me it wasn’t bad enough to miss my flight and that the altitude would make it feel better.”
Dr: ::staring silently, blinking at me:: “That’s…in no way, shape, or form an accurate statement.”

60

Yes, if by “fiend” you mean “diabolic creature type”, since they have as a base characteristic 5 points damage reduction.