- Rheumatic fever as infant.
- Pneumonia age 1.
- A dicey incident while performing a scuba rescue - way deep with not as much breathing gas as a sane person would want while dealing with a panicked victim.
I was in a car accident where it was head-on, but really, driver-to-driver, not full head-on, and I had a bad cut on my forehead where the rear view mirror had flown off and hit me, and a sprained ankle. I don’t know what it would have been like it it had been a more direct head-on, because the force of the accident forced my car sideways off the road in the opposite direction. I consider myself very lucky not to have been hurt worse. I was wearing my seatbelt, and I had a car with a high safety rating, but this was before airbags.
When my son was born, he got stuck in the birth canal. Two styles of forceps couldn’t get him out (hurt like hell anyway, though) and I had to have a c-section. If this had happened to me before c-sections were pretty safe, I would have been in trouble. If it had happened before antibiotics, I’d have very good chance of dying of childbed fever, and I’d have a dead baby.
Fell out of a moving car when I was really little.
Blow to the head a little later than that.
Another blow to the head. (‘That explains a lot!’ Wompwomp.)
Almost drove off a cliff after losing control of a car.
Anaphylaxis leading to the realization I’m allergic to penicillin.
Flu-induced pneumonia.
Golfing in high school. We were pretty bad. My buddy shanks a drive, which bounces off a rock and I got hit by the ricochet just on the top of the breastbone. Pretty sure that if it had been even 1/2 inch higher it would have crushed my windpipe (he was John Daly sized, with nearly that much control).
At least five or six, maybe more, depending on what you count.
Near-drowning when I was learning to swim.
Near death by electrocution due to an incautious stretch near a partially disassembled television.
Shot in the head (accidentally).
Another near-drowning in the course of a white-water rescue.
Shot at (deliberately), but got under cover.
Knocked off the roof of a ten-story building while working. (Caught myself on the edge and climbed back up.)
There are other probable near-misses–narrowly avoided wrecks, the bus that slid alarmingly near the lip of the Grand Canyon, falling off a cliff while swordfighting, and so forth. They were certainly situations that could have been fatal, but none that really give me that “crap, I nearly died then” feel when I look back on them, probably because I didn’t come very close to the lethal outcomes.
1.Severe medical issues as an infant that required several weeks hospitalization.
2.Drowned in a pool when I was around 5 and was revived by a lifeguard.
3.Passenger in a compact car that was hit by a delivery truck and totaled. Concussion, stitches, plastic surgery.
4.House fire while we were sleeping when I was a young teen
5.Shot at while walking in the woods on my uncles farm. (It wasn’t hunting season so I have no idea what the fool was doing)
6.Spun out my car doing something stupid driving thru the Berkshires and dented the guardrail over a 200’ drop. In my defense I was 18.
7. Spun out a different car on a snowy highway alongside a tractor-trailer while trying to pass him in the next lane. I spun around, in-front of him, did a 540° and wound up in the ditch on the side of the road.
8.Was spending New Years at a Cabin up at Indian Lake with friends and I started to feel unwell the afternoon of Jan 31. By the early evening I was feverish and really sick so I decided to drive home. I have no memory of the 1.5hr drive at all. My mother sent a friend of mind over mid-afternoon on New Years Day to check on me (I had called before I left Indian Lake) I had collapsed into bed, fully clothed, boots and coat on, with a 104.5° fever. I was sick for two weeks and the only one of the dozen at the cabin to fall ill.
9.Fire in my aprtment building while I was sleeping.
The following are work related - 15 years as a bouncer in NYC
-10.Hit in the head with a pool cue. Concussion, Stitches
-11.Had a gun pointed at me.
-12.Threatened with a gun (in his waistband)
-13.Hit in the head with brass knuckles. Concussion and serious pavement rash from where my face
hit the ground. Only time I was ever really laid out. He was moving in for some stomping when
my partners ran him off.
-14.Shot at while standing in front of the establishment. This was more of a “wrong place, wrong time” as I’m a big damn target.
-15.Cut on the left arm from a knife fight. Stitches
-16.Got piled on and was getting stomped by a bunch of guys. I was still swinging but I was going to lose. The math was just not in my favor it was 5:1. A couple guys I knew casually from another place jumped in and saved my ass. I wound up with 3 broken ribs 2L,1R, 2 broken fingers and a fractured L orbit.
17.I contracted Necrotizing fasciitis a.k.a “flesh-eating disease”. I was fine on Friday, felt unwell on Saturday, and Sunday I was feeling sick, feverish and had pain, redness and swelling on my flesh. I reasoned that if I didn’t feel better by morning I’d go to the ER (no insurance at that point). By morning I was vomiting, high fever and a lot of pain, so I drove to the ER. I spent the next month and a half in the hospital. 7 surgeries, a month in the burn ICU, 2 more months recovery time once I went home before I was strong enough to work again.
Oh yeah. I have no idea how really close to death I was in one situation-- it might have been real, or it might have been a sick joke. I was in shock, while my friend Rick threw the guy out of the building, but I once got my life threatened by a guy who collected Nazi weapons.
He pointed a gun at me, although it was one-handed and he wasn’t aiming, but the thing was emblazoned with a swastika, and said I should go stand by the wall so he could have target practice.
The guy did not know I was Jewish explicitly, but I look very Jewish (I make Mayim Bialik look like David Hyde-Pierce), and I was wearing a nametag that said “Goldhammer” (my maiden name).
It was just the three of us in the room. I don’t know what could have happened if it had just been the two of us. It probably was just his idea of a joke, but in the moment, I felt like my life was in danger.
I still can’t help thinking “Here’s a guy who probably regards me as subhuman.” I’m so glad I wasn’t alone with him.
The most remarkable fact in this thread, to me, is that RivkahChaya willingly abandoned such an awesome name as Goldhammer.
mmm
For Maccaby, which is even more awesome. It’s even better than Goldhammer. It mean WARHAMMER in Hebrew. If you were playing D&D and you could exchange your goldhammer for a warhammer, you’d do it in a second.
• Ran a flashing red light speeding on a deserted road at 3am in college (before I realized I needed glasses). Turns out the flashing red light wasn’t far away and lower on the horizon, but right in front of me. Wooden plank smashed my windshield and when I looked in my rearview mirror to figure out what had happened, I saw a train whizzing by. (Didn’t hear its horn b/c my car stereo was at full volume).
• Touring the first house I was going to buy with the inspector. We were in the basement, and I saw a shiny copper coil arrangement in a box where all the coils were turning in on each other. I reached out to touch it, and at the last second the inspector grabbed my hand and yanked me backwards. Turns out it was the breaker box with the inside cover panel removed. Inspector casually mentioned that had I touched it I would have been killed instantly. Then excused himself to have a very angry phone call with whomever left it like that.
Total (and slow) cardiac failure (no pulse, per se) due to alcholol withdrawal about two years ago - woke up in ambulance with external pacing on chest sides. PAINFUL! The Parameds on Fire Wagon (lack of better word) were the the last thing I remember before hospital. Note to alcoholics - never quit cold-turkey…it can kill ya :smack:
Appendicitis when I was eight (my mother didn’t believe I was sick). When she finally grudgingly took me to the ER they barely looked at me before I was being rolled to the operating room while the nurse walked beside me telling to count backwards from ten while I breathed into the mask. I was very sick for awhile.
When I gave birth to my daughter I almost bled to death. Peaceful way to go but you do get really thirsty. Probably I posted this in the “without modern medicine I would have died” thread.
In between I narrowly escaped falling down an abandoned gold mine shaft when I was ten.
As a teenager I was fooling around with a boy on a train trestle and both of us had to scramble as the train came around the bend. Matter of seconds. I won’t count the other harebrained things I did at that period. Later I was more cautious.
(I feel like we just did this thread too but don’t feel like searching for it)
At the age of 16, crawled under my car to replace the starter while it was held up by only a cheap scissors jack. The car swayed back and forth as I tried loosening a nut.
While under the influence, tore through an intersection that, as it turned out, terminated into a strip mall parking lot immediately after the traffic light (I though there was more road beyond).
Stuck in the middle of a lake, out of gas, on an all metal pontoon boat in the middle of a wicked thunderstorm (lightning-to-the-ground all around me).
Thawed the frozen gas cap lock on my vehicle with a cigarette lighter.
mmm
Not sure what happened to me but sitting on the toilet I suddenly broke out into a massive sweat. I was getting extremely weak and lied on the floor. I can remember the coldness of the tile floor in the bathroom feeling good. I couldn’t see, talk or move but I could hear. My wife was trying to awake me. She was an ER nurse and I could hear her calling 911 telling them I had no pulse. I was slightly awake by the time the rescue arrived and able to talk a little. That’s all I remember for some reason. I don’t even know if they took me to the hospital.
I was adjust the brakes on a liquid nitrogen tanker. The very second I rolled out from the truck a valve blew off and would have hit me right in the face freezing me solid. I was barely able to get out of the nitrogen cloud before passing out.
Born 2 months premature, spent my first month in an incubator
Had bronchitis at two months, damn near died.
Nearly died of alcohol poisoning several times in my wino youth.
Once noticed a bug moving toward me, I picked up my soda bottle and smashed it. Turned out to be a black window spider.
Walking down the street one day and stepped off the curb, only to hear auto brakes screening. I stop just in time to not be hit by the car going about 60 miles an hour turning the curb with no turning signal on. The brake hitting driver of the car behind it, who is now on the sidewalk, stare at each other with our mouths and eyes wide open. If that car hadn’t been there, I would have been hit and probably killed.
Unless you are allergic to the venom, a black widow bite is very unlikely to kill you.
Sure, but “Goldhammer-Warhammer” would have been…Best. Name. Ever.
Think of the Galactic-level awesomeness of names any kids you would have had! “Mayam Goldhammer-Warhammer”. “Maximilian Goldhammer-Warhammer”. “Moshe Goldhammer-Warhammer”.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I present DR. GOLDHAMMER-WARHAMMER!”
If “having loaded gun pointed at you” counts, 4
Panache wins!
1955 or 56 (too young) - parents told to say goodbye (how the hell do you tell the parent of a 5 yr old to "say goodbye?) - 106 fever for 2 or 3 days - Scarlet Fever
1996 - hemmarage. 4 units IV when the nice, soft-spoken young man slides up to the bed and asks “Is there any one you wish to have present?”.
2017 - new MD put me on morphine in 2009. By 2017, it had overwhelmed my remaining kidney function. Lost consciousness repeatedly 2/16 - 2/18. Creatinine at 4.25
At least I didn’t get the “any one present” question.
Guns: once
Acute appendicitis, delayed surgery: once
Scary car crash - once X-rays and observation. Nothing serious
Once. I had a wound on the bottom of my foot that I didn’t even feel that got infected. I did eventually feel the infection, on New Year’s Eve, at a friend’s party a good 40 minutes from home. I got light-headed and dizzy and had chills. We had to call a friend to come all the way from Lancaster to drive us and our car home (since I was (and am) the only one in the family who drives). The next day, I was in bed all day, feeling horrible and eventually having some serious digestive difficulties and a little bit of delirium when my husband finally persuaded me to go to the hospital. Called the ambulance, went to the ER…well, I was so far into sepsis that my nurse basically told me if I’d come in two hours later I’d have died. I did end up losing the foot (below-knee amputation) but at least I’m still alive. My husband still reminds me that he saved my life when we have an argument…
Swimming into a school of barracuda while snorkeling. 3-4 ft fish all around me.
Skiing down a straight down black diamond ski run with only 1 hour of experience. Big jump at the bottom. Somehow I landed it, had to be going 70mph or so.
Got flipped while navigating the rapids in a raft on the Colorado river.
Lots of stupid driving, including:
150mph in a Porsche on a narrow farm road.
Driving cross country from midnight to 5 am, falling asleep constantly, I swear I spent half the time dreaming with my eyes open staring at an alien landscape.
Driving 2 hours on the highway through a slushy snowstorm in a rwd sports car with bad tires.