When I was giving birth to Ledzepkid. I only barely remember it as they put me under as soon as hell started breaking loose.
According to my mom, I was very close to dying of asthma as a two-year-old. Of course, it’s just as likely that I was mildly ill and my mom was just freaking out to everyone who would listen.
- Aneurysm at the base of the skull a few years back(brought it up on the board before, but can’t find it now). I was at work, grave shift, and had just stepped into the main lobby when I collapsed in front of a co-worker who had also just stepped into the building. He dialed 911 before I hit the floor, and they operated as soon as I got to the hospital.
- Said “Bloody Mary” in front of a mirror. Twice.
Hit by car at age 4 (mentioned in one of the linked earlier threads).
Somersaulted down stairs on vacation (ditto).
Head-on collision, which I’ve also mentioned a time or eight. On our way to a Fancy Restaurant for our 10th wedding anniversary, curvy country road, had been raining but was not at the time, car coming the other way lost control on wet pavement, hit us head-on. I remember screaming, not sure I remember the actual impact, but I do remember when we jumped out, uninjured (WEAR THOSE SEATBELTS!!!), running to check on the boys in the other car (and they were boys - about 19 as I recall), deciding we were all alive and uninjured…
There is no feeling like knowing you’ve just survived something that could have been Very, Very Bad. If there is a drug that makes you feel that HIGH, I don’t want to know what it is because it would be addictive as hell.
Ditto. I’m a girl-type and I’m cringing for you! :eek:
there are so many variables. Probably the time I dumped my motorcycle on the freeway going about 65-70. The big truck behind me had enough room to miss me and my helmet never touched the ground. My hands, knees, elbows and hips, on the other hand…
I blithely ran a red light in a major intersection once (in a car this time), hit nothing, but I’d consider that close, too.
Nothing due to injuries, disease, etc… just almost in the wrong place at the wrong time.
When I was in high school, I was house-sitting one summer for some friends of my parents, and I’d gone over to their house sort of late- 9:00 ish to feed their cats, etc… and on the way home, I’d stopped at a local convenience store and got a soda. This was maybe 9:40 pm.
When I got home, I saw the news and the breaking story was that the particular convenience store I’d just left was the scene of a violent robbery where the clerk was shot and killed, and a customer was seriously wounded.
I can’t help but think that had I hesitated a little bit leaving from feeding the cats, that I’d have been in that store as it was robbed.
Got hit on my motorcycle by a 17 yr-old left-turning cell-phone talker. Speed was high enough that my (small, RZ350) totalled her car. Impact was just to the rear of the front wheel, and I went sailing over the hood and down the road. Another couple inchs and I would have hit the roof and that most likely would have been that.
I kinda remember hearing the ambulance guys yelling at me “Don’t go to sleep!” as I went into shock.
25 years ago: I was driving up Provo Canyon (Utah) to go skiing at Sundance and a fully-loaded timber truck coming the opposite way skidded through the curve just ahead of me and took out barriers, trees, etc, and came to a stop in the creek on my side, upside-down.
i am one of the ambulance guys, so i’m close to death, almost like the grim reaper. It really gives you a different perspective on humanity as a whole. Some people you swear have angels with them, others you wonder if the bird of paradise took a huge crap on them. But my job is interesting, I will say…
Short story: Stomach operation went bad. Eventually the stomach perforated and during the subsequent operation I nearly died. (more than once.) Long Story here. (I’ll correct that tale and say that my last operation was in 2008).
My surgeon told my Mom that he had “outside” help saving my life that night. I teased him a little and said that I couldn’t handle the pressure: If God interrupted his busy schedule to come down and help save me, he was going to expect me to be nice and stuff. I can’t do that.
My surgeon looked away and said: You were on the tale 10 1/2 hours. Every time I thought you were done, you just kept on living.
OK, it was the Every Time part that freaked me out. I dunno why, but almost dying once didn’t bother me. More than once weirded me out.
my blood sugar level dropped to 17 while i was behind the wheel of a car. i lived, my car didn’t.
Rocket attack in Vietnam. Five guys medevacked; guy next to me took shrapnel. Second event: mortar attack, same place. They walked them in, straddled our bunker and blew up our 2-hole shitter. Shrapnel flying everywhere and I was certain that my time was up. Third event: capsized in Lake Victoria.
Birth - I was overbaked (almost an entire month late and yes Mom knew when she got pregnant), Mom didn’t dilate and I got squished, etc. The docs damn near killed me and Mom both.
Then when I was 3 I had salmonella poisoning. Our doctor said I was within a few hours of death when the hospital finally admitted me.
Getting typhoid shots in preparation for going overseas in 1979.
Two shots, one week apart. The first one did nothing. The second one nearly killed me. I had been lying unconscious in the bathroom of my apartment for over 12 hours when a friend with a key came in and found me. If she hadn’t…
It’s been a long time since I’ve mentioned it, so I guess I will again: I was clinically dead for 45 minutes as a 15/16-month-old due to a high fever. The cause is still unknown, but I did have my MMR shot soon before this. So, just in case, I avoided getting a second MMR shot. Instead, I paid for a test to show I was immune and didn’t need it.
I’m very glad my parents didn’t give up on me after the doctors had.
In 1972 when I was 9 years old I was living in Lima, Perú. We went to a beach about an hour away. It was a windy day and the surf was rough. The waves loud. My friends’s father told us that we were leaving and we ran towards the water to get the sand off. We usually aren’t taught to look both ways on a beach as kids. I didn’t hear the motorcycle coming towards me. It hit me, the impact sent me flying. I landed hard and in front of the out of control driver, he hit me again! Yes, twice within seconds :smack:. This time however, he just ran over me and as he did the back wheel of his bike tore open my arm. I weighed about 70 lbs - I was just a little shit. I could see my muscle and bone…it was pretty wild. I was driven to the hospital an hour away in the back of VW. I lost a lot of blood. The scar on my arm is pretty interesting, but I don’t even think about it anymore. When I became sexually active I was really worried about it…I thought that guys would be turned off by it. Ha! I soon discovered that a nasty scar on my arm is barely noticed when one has nicer and sexier areas.
Every time I walk along a busy street or drive on the expressway, I am mere moments from a death of my own choosing.
There was one time when I genuinely thought I was going to die, but I wasn’t even close in reality.
The time I I probably came closest in reality was as a passenger in a Ford Pinto that had a blowout on a busy highway and did a complete 360 spin before coming to a halt. The woman who was driving must have been a better driver than Dale Earnhardt, because he’s dead and we’re not.
I managed to get caught up in an out going tide and had to pulled from the water by a friend; I had basically given up and thought that if I could just nap for a bit, I would regain strength and be able to make it back to the boat on my own.
I think the very closest to death I’ve come was while I was living with an Aunt and an alcoholic Uncle. I came home very late one night and was trying to reach my bedroom without disturbing anyone. My uncle jumped out of his bedroom with a .38 caliber revolver; he was in the “combat crouch” and he told me he would kill me if I moved another inch. I didn’t move that inch; I did try to tell him who I was; my Aunt was crying and trying to soothe him. He and I were no more than six feet apart and there no way he would have missed if he had pulled the trigger. After a few seconds that seemed like hours, he lowered the pistol and went back into his room. I slept on the couch that night and none of us ever mentioned it; I doubt my uncle even remembered it.
I might add that he was a hell of a good pistol shot; he wouldn’t have missed.
Shit, that reminds me. As a kid I had whooping cough. Apparently I stopped breathing twice.