A couple years ago I began having episodes of horrible chest pain every few nights. Since I survived them, I assumed they weren’t heart related and began drinking antacid before bed. After about a month I broke down and made an appointment with my doctor.
Turns out the episodes were unstable angina, and I had lived through a heart attack. Had a stent placed and remain symptom free.
Two times that I can think of. I almost drowned in a pool at a Holiday Inn once when I was about twelve. I just got too tired to swim across the deep end and started struggling. My dad pushed me to the edge. When I looked up, I saw my mom standing above me with her hands crammed over her mouth like she was stifling a scream.
That was back when motel pools had deep ends, obviously.
The second time was rather recently. I caught the office cold, and found I couldn’t breathe. My chest wouldn’t expand. I went in an ambulance to the emergency room, and they wanted to keep me. I said that that was impossible because I was my mom’s caretaker and I couldn’t leave her alone overnight. I argued it was just a chest cold and I’d be fine. I left against medical advice, thinking how ridiculous they were being. Bad move. Second ambulance ride, and I made arrangements with Mom’s daytime caretaker to stay with her until I came out of the hospital. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t walk. I could only speak in short gasps. Scary.
I stayed three nights. It was bliss. I lay in bed as people brought me food and gave me medicated oxygenation.
I had the nicest roommate. I hated to leave.
Domestic violence.
I fell asleep at the wheel while driving in the mountains of western Maryland when I was 27 years old, in 1981. The car was a Chevette, not a great car for protecting its occupants. Luckily, there was a guard rail, which saved my life but flipped the car. I had a bunch of almost serious injuries, the worst of which was a cracked vertebra in my neck. I was in the hospital for a couple of weeks, out of work for three months, and in a neck brace for a few months.
I’m 65 now and understand what my father meant when he said those injuries would come back to haunt me later.
Two near misses:
Private plane crash, multiple injuries requiring hospitalization. We were flying a Fairchild PT-26 oops
Capsized canoe, far out in Lake Michigan, in a failed attempt to rescue a child. Eventual rescue of myself only. 
relevant thread
Heart attack. Nearly 54 years ago. But I survived and still do.
Oh yeah, forgot that.
Mine involved a barracuda, snorkeling. (Me snorkeling; not the barracuda). At a very, very remote location. Very. Remote. Location. Alone (my research partner was in the general area, but not in any position to understand the predicament I was in.)
I actually wrote and published a short story about the encounter. All ended well enough, but for several minutes I was sure those were going to be my last minutes on earth.
I am innocently walking down the sidewalk, come to the street and take one step off the curb when I hear a car’s breaks squeal. I stop just before a car going about 40 miles an hour (I guess) turns the corner right in front on me without signaling. I look up at the crossroad, the the car whose driver hit the brakes is now on the sidewalk.
If that braking car hadn’t been there, I would have been struck and probably killed.
“All of the above”? I’ve had a cardiac incident that should have killed me, a minor stroke that could have been worse or in a worse region, a couple close calls driving a motorcycle including a crash where the car driver was trying to kill me and another where I flipped the bike nose-to-tail three times. And I was on a bus that flipped over. :smack: Oh – and I got hit by a car crossing the sttreet in college but I jumped up on the hood and didn’t get hurt at all. Needless to say with my track record I don’t buy very many lottery tickets. But it could be genetic; the doctors were ready to pronounce my Gramma a goner 8 times (4 of those said doctor had actually started the paperwork) between the ages of 40 and 60 and she finally did die ---------- just short of 99 years old.
<in a bad pirate accent>
Us Yellowbeards are never more dangerous than when we’re dead.
Did that experience have any effect on your decision to pursue medicine as a career?
2006-Brain aneurysm. it happened at work, grave shift, during a five minute period when someone else was in the same room as I was.
When I was an infant, a few months old. It was a warm evening, so Mom left the windows in my room open. But it cooled off significantly overnight, and when my mom woke up in the middle of the night to pee, I was already turning blue. I’d probably have died if it weren’t for my mom’s small bladder.
Talking on her cellphone. 
I’ve had a few car “incidents” where things could have gone terribly wrong, but nothing actually did (sliding into a 360 on an icy Chicago street would have been deadly if any cars were coming from the opposite direction, for example)
Actual dangerous situations involve canoeing and rafting in white water (which I used to do a lot) and one time in the ocean when a giant wave pounded me pretty bad.
I was born a preemie, which in 1981 meant being on some sort of life support (or so I’m told) for about 10 days. I was born in a small community hospital and immediately life-flighted to the state’s teaching hospital 190 miles away. I was in the NICU for 3 weeks or so. My parents say the doctors told them on the first day that they should prepare themselves for the worst as it didn’t look like I was going to make it. But here I am.
That’s the closest I’ve been to death. The oxygen left me with retinopathy in my right eye, but that’s the only lasting effect.
I’ve hit several deer (including once where I hit two at the same time), which I suppose could have been life-threatening under different circumstances, but as it was just destroyed my car.
I truthfully answered the question “Do these pants make my butt look fat?” 
I’m going to vote Automotive Accident. In high school, a friend lost control of her Opel and flipped it a couple of times. No seat belts, and I bounced around the back seat like a pin ball. Tore/strained every muscle in my back and was in therapy for several months. But everybody walked away from the wreck.
I once slept in a room with the windows closed and a fan on.
Also, I swung from the barn trolley after my parents told me not to. Then the 100 pound cast iron trolley came off the tracks and hit the ground five feet from me. Put a hole in the barn floor. Lucky it didn’t split my skull. And my folks were right there. That would have been a day to remember. For them.
Kids, listen to your parents!
Unfortunate animal encounter.
I was on my motorcycle merging onto the West End Bridge when I saw there was a rider in the center lane – no helmet, shorts, t-shirt, flip-flops, smoking a cigarette and talking on his cell phone. When we got to the red light at the end of the bridge I pulled beside him and asked “Can I have your liver? Well, its not like you’re going to need it all that much longer!”
He didn’t seem to appreciate my humor.