I put down other. When I was a kid my mother took me to the doctor, whose office was in a big shopping center with the parking lot on a hill. I was in the back seat and was about to get out on the driver’s side. She told me to get out on the passenger side which was the downhill side. I did, and as I shut the door the car jerked. A car parked above us on the hill slipped out of gear and slammed into the driver side rear door, just where I was going to get out.
I never saw my mother turn so white.
Does cold air make babies cyanotic…? 
Or is it excessive exposure and you were getting hypothermia?
I’ve had a few incidents related to my work as a foreign aid worker who specializes in conflict zones, but this is my favorite.
We were setting up a new project in a city in Afghanistan and were living in a hotel while we went about renting the office, hiring staff, etc. We also rented out the hotel’s conference room to use as an office during this time. One day, the Afghan police raided the hotel and arrested two men who had rented out the room next to our conference room; they were building a bomb in the room with the intention of blowing us all off the face of the earth.
I used to say good morning to them at the hotel breakfast.
A person with a history of drug-related offences felt a sudden urge to acquire the contents of my cash register. Depressed skull fracture in the right temporal region, with subdural hematoma.
[John Astin]But I’m feeling much better now.[/John Astin]
I also had a massive uterine hemorrhage. If I had been home alone I would have bleed out. Fortunately, I was at work with a woman who immediately put her in her car and drove to the E/R. Saved my life.
My wife believes this 100%. She castigates me to no end for sleeping with a fan on. “You’ll die! Everyone knows that!!!”
I voted for passenger in a car, even though it wasn’t an accident; the car wasn’t even moving, nor was the car behind us, the one with all of the flashing red & blue lights.
Helping my buddy move back home from about 9-10 hrs away. Took his dad’s 198x Suburban to pack everything up in. It’s after midnight, he’s driving & I get the epiphany that it’s more comfortable sleeping in the flat back (those seats all folded flat to make a cargo area) than propped up on a bench seat.
I’m happily, horizontally sawing lumber when he gets pulled over for speeding, my body must have realized the lack of motion & sat up. Rubbing my eyes when I realize I’m staring at the wrong end of a Trooper’s gun barrel. Since I was lying below the window level, at night, the trooper didn’t see me until I sat up; he thought he was being ambushed & drew.
Deer vs. car for me, too, though only one instance of it. I came within about a foot of the deer coming straight through my windshield into the car, while I was going ~50mph.
17 years old: woke up in an ambulance with a pretty decent concussion, though no other injuries. I was seen laying unconscious in the middle of the road by someone working in a nearby office. I have no idea how I ended up there but before that I was riding my bike home from a friend’s house. I’m not sure this counts as nearly dying though because I actually have no idea what happened and what could have happened if that person hadn’t called 911.
Toxic shock syndrome at 19 from tampon use coupled (they said) of swimming in the ocean. I had been in bed for about a week with severe flu-like symptoms before my visiting grandmother finally convinced my parents to take me into the clinic. Doc there thought I had spinal meningitis and sent me to the ER. By the time I got there, my BP was so low I couldn’t stay conscious while sitting up and my veins had collapsed to the point they had difficulty getting in IV line placed. Just as they were prepping me for spinal tap, the labs came back showing massive staph infection. I was in the hospital for nearly a week and was told that I would have been dead if my parents had waited one more day to bring me in.
Early 20s, nearly drove off a cliff driving downhill too fast and catching my rear tire on the edge of the pavement which made me lose control and careen toward the cliff on the opposite side of the road. I over corrected and spun out of control to the right side of the road and off the road with my car coming to a stop next to a very large boulder just about a foot from the driver’s side door. I was trying to avoid hitting a pair of Francolin’s Erkels crossing the road, unfortunately I missed one but not the other. I survived unscathed, the bird did not. I later learned that they mate for life and that you shouldn’t try to eat a bird that has been nearly obliterated by a blunt force trauma.
Late 20s, passenger in a small pickup truck that was blown off an icy road by a crosswind, crossing the center line, hitting a sign on the opposite side that caught the front driver’s side fender peeling it back like a sardine can, and smashing into a ditch and flipping over. We came to a stop hanging from our seatbelts upside down, truck totaled, minor concussions for us. Fortunately, it was Christmas day and we were in the country and the traffic was light. However, people in an oncoming car watched the whole event from not too far away and pulled up to help just as we came to a stop. They say that timing is everything and I don’t disagree.
I ride my bike for transportation now (but I’m getting better about riding in a car) and I’ve had only one incident that made me fear for my life when an impatient and aggressive driver of a large pickup passed me way too close for comfort at speed.
Oh yeah, I forgot choking on a Tostada Supreme at Taco Bell also in my 20s. Dude sitting behind me turned around and performed Heimlich maneuver on me and a huge piece of tortilla shot out of my mouth with such velocity it landed a few feet away. My throat hurt for days after that and I think I might have actually torn up my esophagus a little. I don’t really eat that TB anymore and I haven’t eaten hard tortillas since. Soft tacos all the way for me.
I did my first (and only) triathlon at a small lake at about 7,000 ft. It as a mini-tri - 400 yd swim, 9 mile bike ride, and 3 mile run. How hard could that be, I mean, I already rode a lot, and was running a lot at the time, the only thing I needed to practice was the swimming. Heck, I was on the swim team in high school. How hard could this be?? :rolleyes:
Well, my laps at the pool at nearly sea level did not prepare me for that swim leg. In the pool, I usually had a lane to myself, the water was warm and clear, and I could just follow the line on the bottom, not to mention I would be at a side and could kick-off every so often. The lake was a totally different experience: I was among a couple hundred people kicking and thrashing the water, the bottom was not visible, and the water was not warm. Oh, and did I mention 7,000 feet?
About 50 yards out I was gasping for breath, and had to be rescued by someone on a kayak. Catch my breath and give it another go. No dice, panic again and gasping for air - head to the near shoreline and stand-up to breath. Consider throwing in the towel, and forever the mocking and humiliation from my wife. No. Press on - back in the water and finally getting around the first bouy doing back stroke so I could breath easier - most of the field is already on their bikes. Another paddle board rescuer saves me. Got around the 2nd bouy and heading for the end of the swim, but across the middle of the lake - no shoreline easily accessible. Slow and steady, I finally touched bottom and exhaustedly got out of the lake - I think there were 2-3 people behind me. I was able to make up a lot of time on the bike and to some extent on the run, and did not come in last!
This was the closest I have come to death. I think without the rescuers there I would have ended up on the bottom of that lake for sure. I have a pretty clear picture of what drowning would be like.
I was driving along on the freeway once when a motorcycle passed me. The guy riding it was talking on a cell phone. Phone’s in his left hand, right hand’s on the handlebars, and in order for him to be heard, he’s turned his head all the way left so the phone’s toward the back of the bike, so he obviously can’t see where he’s going. No helmet.
One of those times I took my foot off the gas and let the crazy suicidal person go 'way ahead so he can be done with his accident by the time I get there.
The closest was during a meal of turkey, near Thanksgiving; a chunk of meat got caught in my throat, a thing that happens every so often. I went to the bathroom to try to hork it up, and only partially succeeded; it got to my larynx and blocked my windpipe. Staggered out of the men’s room in a panic, into the arms of a co-worker who pounded my back until I vomited the offending chunk onto the floor. Very scary.
The most dramatic brush with death was when I was hiking in the Wind River Mountains for a National Outdoor Leadership School wilderness course. We were crossing a stream of pure snow melt, a process that involved taking off boots, socks, and pants and slowly wading across with linked arms. Needless to say, as the water was just above freezing, I very quickly lost feeling in my feet, and slipped on a rock. Went face-down into the water, wearing a 70-lb. backpack. My fellow hikers pulled me up, and I was fine; but that was scary for a minute. Still, I was probably in more danger from the turkey.
On the way home from work about a year ago I pulled-up behind a motorcyclist waiting at a red light. It was a fat biker with tats and a lid (not really a helmet) on a chopper-style bike. As we were waiting rush-hour cross-traffic was going thru the intersection. Without even turning his head to look each way, the guy just gunned the engine and took-off into the intersection. He did not swerve - just straight-lined - like Frogger. In a split second of WTF? I only looked at the stop light that was still red. :eek:
He made it to the other side intact, but I thought I was about to see someone killed.
Lost in a snowstorm in the mountains when I was 17. Almost gave up. Kept moving, finally got to where I knew where I was again. Frostbite on hands and bad frostbite on feet. lost a lot of skin and some flesh.
Epileptic seizure. Non-stop for over 25 minutes. We had just recently found out I had epilepsy, but didn’t know much about it, so Mr Celtic Knot just let me lay on the sofa and seize instead of getting me to a hospital. Next time I went to the neurologist for a check, he told me I could have died and was lucky not to have any brain damage.
Would 6 hours of brain surgery count for the poll? It was very dangerous, but worth the risk to not have epilepsy anymore.
I’ve been very blesses that any car wrecks I’ve been in have never caused injury.
All 4 choices.
It is all about inches & seconds.
2012 - Severe anaphylactic reaction to an injection of Copaxone for Multiple Sclerosis. Worse, apparently, than the usual immediate post injection reaction. Blood pressure spiked, airways constricted, I blacked out and was cyanotic when the ambulance arrived. It was messy, pretty much every tissue in me constricted at once and I was squeezed like a tube of toothpaste.
2016 - rough pregnancy. Doctors ignored clear preeclampsia. Told me my high blood pressure was chronic because I am overweight (I had zero record of hypertension in my entire life, very metabolically fit). Excess amniotic fluid, swollen like a water balloon, pitting edema, peeing protein, the works. Hospitalized with critically low potassium even though I was retaining every drop of water from the atmosphere, seemingly and hadn’t sicked up even once. Hospitalized 3 other times for blood pressure spikes of 160/110, etc. Went into premature labor, son born unresponsive with an Apgar of 4, to the NICU for low blood sugar.
I lost EVERY ounce of pregnancy weight (within 2 weeks of delivery) by taking 2 Lasix tabs my mom gave me. Still having blood pressure spikes a month later. Doctors in the years since have been all “Yup. Obviously preeclampsia. You’re lucky.”
Little dude’s doing great, and I got better. Thankfully.
Head-on collision while front seat passenger and not wearing a seatbelt. My head went through the windshield.
A close collision sheared off the front of the car in which I was riding shotgun. That was fairly close.