While riding my motorcycle in 1987 San Diego, a car hit me head-on at 50 mph. I broke most every bone from the pelvic on down. The doctor later told me that if I had been 5 minutes further from the hospital I’d have died from internal bleeding.
Good times.
Chronologically, I’m closer to death right now than I’ve ever been before.
Paddling a canoe across a lake in Canada shortly after the spring thaw. The sun was going down, and the wind was coming up and we were far from shore. If we’d capsized (which we nearly did several times) we wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes in the water.
I had ARDS. It can be caused by trauma or sepsis. The best way I know to describe it is: you know how in the movies and on TV when somebody gets a plastic bag put over their heads and they start beating their heels on the floor, trying to get a breath? Like that. (They call it “air hunger.”)
All mine are my own stupid fault.
The first was when I was fairly young, I think 8 or 9, at my redneck cousin’s house. We were outside “chopping wood” for the woodburning stove, which really just meant they’d let us out of the house (the eldest of us a year older than me, the youngest 4 under me) with about 3 axes to break up sticks and crap out of the yard. I decided to chop branches off of a dead shrub in the yard. I held the axe like a baseball bat, took a good hard swing at the nearest branch - and the axe rebounded HARD, right straight into my head, knocking me out and cracking my skull.
As Bill Cosby says, “I don’t remember anything else that happened that day…”
The second one was when I, for some reason (I was a very poor swimmer, and asthmatic with cruddy lungs) decided to throw a bucket into my aunt’s swimming pool. My aunt, grandma and mother were sitting beside the pool, talking and completely ignoring me. I decided I’d get in trouble for the bucket, and jumped in after it (into the deep end, of course,) swam down to the bottom, grabbed the handle and tried to swim back up. By the time I realized that the bucket full of water was WAY too heavy for my swimming skills, I was nearly drowning. I made it to the surface. gagging and with big black spots dancing around my eyes, pulled myself on the ladder and coughed up tons of water. Mom, Aunt and Granma never noticed a thing.
The third time I was in high school - my then-boyfriend (who later became my husband, then ex) and I had a habit of playing “chicken” in the crosswalk next to our school. Our school was in the middle of downtown, and located on an extremely steep hill on a one-way street. Cars came FLYING down it all the time. We would time our runs and then dart out into the street to see if we could make it JUST ahead of whatever car was coming. Bonus points if we got them to slam on the breaks.
For some reason I decided (this is a theme…) that running in front of an ambulance, siren blaring and lights flashing, was a super idea. I managed to stop, just barely, when I realized that I’d misjudged the speed and I wasn’t going to make it. The ambulance ran over the toe of my sneaker and ripped half my jacket away when it swung forward with my sudden stop.
Something looks after stupid children…
Sure I’ve mentioned it before. Ex boyfriend, if he couldn’t have me yadda yadda. Apparently had no pulse for several minutes (according to police report).The rope burn scars lasted a year.
And the usual almost running off cliffs, stupidity in cars etc etc.
And that moron on the way home from work today. Still pumping a little adrenaline from that idiot’s desire not to give way when turning into a main road.
Not as dramatic as other people’s stories but I’ve been in about ten car accidents. Amazingly, while some of them were pretty serious, I’ve never been injured in any of them.
I was in a car accident off a dirt road, going about 50 mph, that fishtailed into a ditch and rolled a complete 360º, and my friend and I were completely okay.
The real, more profound question is: how close was I to death, and never even realized it. I’ll never know what kind of peril I narrowly escaped just by dumb, random luck/timing. None of us will. :eek:
To take it a step further, how many people might you have indirectly killed, because of some mundane action you did, and don’t nor never will know. :eek::eek:
Wow… A lot of ‘holy shit’ tales here! Mine’s not that crazy.
Looking at me, you’d never think someone my size might’ve died of malnutrition, but… It was close. I was living with a friend, too ashamed to let him know I had no job, and was living on ice cubes (to curb hunger) for over a week.
One morning I woke up and couldn’t move. It took about an hour of trying to get the muscles to work before I could. That night, my muscles started seizing up again, and in the morning my friend found me passed out on the living room floor (I simply hadn’ t been able to get up and head to my room).
Worried, he brought me to the hospital where the whole sordid tale came out. For the sake of accuracy; I was at that point so deficient of potassium that another few hours would’ve likely gone from ‘voluntary muscles shut down’ to ‘involuntary muscles shut down’.
Severe infection after my vasectomy op. Antibiotics turned it around just little short of it turning into septicemia, and as you might imagine(based on the site of origin for the infection) the symptoms were not pleasant.
:eek:
Crashed my Harley at 80 MPH - wrapped it round a bollard and got thrown 30 feet into a ditch - rock on 1 side - barbed wire on the other - walked away with a bruise on my back.
Was wearing an open face helmet, jeans, t-shirt with bomber jacket – slight rip on the sleeve and visor popped off but other than that – nothing wrong with me…
The Harley was in some state - £4500 worth of damage – but I managed to straighten the handle bars and ride it home:D
This is the closest for me
Dear god man. You have my sympathies.
Apparently my blood sugar level upon diabetes diagnosis was reaching silly levels. I’d lost about thirty kilos in weight, ketoacidosised up to the max and a blood sugar of 42.8 (or apparently 770.4 in the units Americans use).
Massive uterine hemmorage at work, in front of strangers. Almost died of blood loss and/or embarassment.
2 for me.
First, I was training my horse to do flying lead changes, doing a cantering serpentine. He was acting up a little bit, and bucked mid-lead change. Somehow got his front feet tangled up and did a sommersault. I flipped over his head, landed on my back and looked up to see some 1100 pounds of horse coming down on top of me. I thought “This is really gona hurt”, closed my eyes and waited. He twisted his body mid-air and landed *beside *me. I had 2 HUGE bruises on my thighs from hitting the pommel of the saddle, and he bit a chunk off his tongue.
#2- in 2008 I had pneumonia and strep throat at the same time. I had no insurance so kept putting off going to the doctor. After a week of a 104-105 fever, almost too week to stand up, I finally went to the ER. They wanted to hospitalize me on the spot but I couldn’t because I had no one to care for my pets. Got the medicine and went home to let it run its course. I honestly wanted to die, I was so sick.
Sounds like getting thrown 30 feet into a ditch saved you from being skinned alive by the tarmac. :eek:
I once mistook a humpback bridge for a hill at 80mph two-up late at night. I thought the fucking bike (a BMW K100) would never come down again, but it did - carrying on its merry way with barely a shrug. My only actual crashes have been low-speed affairs and tho’ I once went over a car bonnet, it was to a safe landing the other side.
No, my nearest was as a five-year-old when I waded into the sea calling for my sister. I suddenly found myself out of my depth bobbing off the bottom just long enough to snatch a breath at the surface before going down for the next bounce. Fortunately a nearby adult spotted me and fished me out. As for medical stuff, last year’s encounter with cellulitis did entail an ambulance ride and an emergency shot of antibiotics, but it wasn’t a particularly fast ride with lights and sirens, and while I went into A&E I didn’t require anything dramatic when I got there.
(This year, I saw it coming and got it treated a couple of days earlier, so less panic all round. Still annoying to have had it twice so soon. :mad: )
In college, a huge Hell’s Angels guy named “Tiny,” who’d been dropping acid, pointed a loaded gun at my head, and was about to pull the trigger. One of his girlfriends tactfully talked him down.
I was a victim of a totally botched appendectomy when I was 28, and almost died from acute peritonitis. Back then, medical lawsuits were quite rare. Damn.
In 1998 I came very close to rolling a car off a cliff. It was literally teetering on the edge, until some French tourists rescued me.
I almost died in a hike through Horseshoe Canyon in southern Utah. I was 60, out of shape, and totally unprepared for that kind of environment. I could have died from quite a few causes. And it had never occurred to me to tell someone where I was going and when to expect me back.
Three incidents have felt real close.
I am never sure if the only one that actually injuried me should be top or not? Standing on pavement (sidewalk) with back to road doing up jacket. Get clipped by wing mirror surround of a large van that gets too close. He never knew he hit me I suspect (he didn’t stop anyway). I was in very rural Wales at the time and two almost two hours go finally get to Aberystwyth A&E with fractured skull and bleeding on the brain - was apparently touch and go for a time.
Survived with no long term effects thankfully.
Second was a few years later as a kid in my dads car and somebody tries a crazy overtaking heading straight towards us on a country road with hedges and trees both sides. My father takes the choice of leaving road rather than have a head on and goes through hedge and passes between lines of planted timber trees until he comes to a halt hitting nothing.
I get out unhurt and promptly throw up. Car that was being overtaken stops and comes to find us - but the crazy bastard overtaker didn’t and it all happened too quick for anyone to get enough details to track him down. This might be the closest but certainly the most frightening and it went on for longest (maybe only 10 or 15 secs all told probably).
Closest shave might be being blown off Monta la Metta in Italy - landed on a ledge maybe 8" wide with shear fall below me having been mid-air for maybe 30’. I could not move for 10 minutes afterwards I was in so much shock but too quick to be scared at the time.
I got two:
Once on Lake Superior when I was about 14 I went paddling in a kayak. I was in a cove, and it was really calm, no wind, very small waves, and I decided to just go around the point and see if it was as nice out there. As soon as I got around the point I capsized. The waves were probably around six feet tall. It took me about 15 minutes to swim to shore (and that lake is fucking cold!), totally exhausted, with no feeling in my arms or legs. I figure five minutes longer in that lake and I was screwed.
The other one I barely remember, although I’ve been told about it a lot. I was seven, and I had been sick for about a week. Not all that serious, just a flu kind of thing. Then one day I wake up semi-delirious and sweating. My mom took my temperature: 108. So we rush over to the hospital and see a doctor in about five minutes. He gives me a couple of shots and an IV full of saline solution, which was really, really cold. They kept me there for four hours, the doctor told us I had some disease with a long Latin-sounding name, and said that if I had been left for another couple of hours I would have had permanent brain damage and possibly died.