What's the closest you've come to death?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Unfortunately, I am.

Right after I graduated, I wanted to fulfil a lifelong dream and go to Paris. A girl in my school was an exchange student, and told me that the orginization which had sent her here also did tours for students of foreign countries. I called them up, and booked a trip. My flight was TWA 800, which was leaving in a couple of months.

I worked hard to save up the money, but as the final cut-off date approached, I found I’d still be short. My grandmother offered to loan the money to me, and suggested that I should go ahead and take an earlier flight, rather than waiting. I changed my reservation to TWA flight 801, which left a little more than two weeks before 800.

A day or so after I came home from France, I went back to work at my job in a convenience store. It was early morning, and the newspapers had just been delivered. When I saw the front page, I felt physically ill. Shaking and crying, I called my boss, and went home for the day.

I still wonder if someone took the seat that I might have been in. I watched the news footage over and over, stunned and sick. The images I saw of family members tossing flowers into the waves still make me tear up when I think of them. That could have been my mother. Part of me feels a little guilty when I think that another girl might have been thrilled when a seat opened up, and now her mother grieves for her, because I was impatient to go on my vacation.

Now, flying is terrifying for me. I went back to Paris two years ago, and wept during the entire flight. Every bump and shake made me tremble with fear. On the return flight, I doped myself heavily to try to sleep through it. (Had an additional scare at the airport when a bomb threat forced us to change planes.) I know it’s silly, but a tiny part of me whispers that I was meant to go in a plane crash, so, in a way, I’m trying to cheat death by not flying any more.

Anyway, that’s the story. It certainly gave me a new perspective on life. I sort of feel that the past few years have been a gift of merciful Fate. I could be dead, which gives me quite a bit more appreciation for life. It really does make the little complaints, aches and pains of life seem inconsequential, and the little joys seem incredibly precious.

22

Lissa, just last week I decided that I am going to save up to go to Paris. Several times since then I have thought about Flight 800. I’m awfully glad that you are here.

23

Mine isn’t so amazing as the Flight 800 story or the North Tower story, but here goes.

When I was six, I was taking swimming lessons. I had only had a few, so I didn’t know much. Anyhow, for some reason, another little girl decided to push me under. Being the stupid creature that I was, I didn’t try to swim up. I just stayed there calmly underwater, without air, thinking about how peaceful it was under there and how I was likely to die soon. Next thing I knew, an instructor was pulling me up and was about to give me CPR when I started coughing up the water I had swallowed.

24

A few years ago, I had to watch “Triumph of the Will” in a film class. I was so boring I almost shot myself…

Seriously though, when I was 3 or 4 years old my aunt was babysitting me and apparently I wandered away and my aunt found me in the pool. I am told that I lost conciousness but don’t really know how close I actually came to death.

25

Crud, change boring to bored in my above post.

26

Last summer I was waiting at a cross walk on a busy street. I patiently waited for the little man to tell me I could walk. Light turns red, hand turns into walking man, I take one step off the curb, and WHOOOOSH, a bus goes flying past my face. I was startled and put my hands up in front of my chest, and the bus was so close it was brushing my fingertips. Then just as the bus passed I kind of lost my balance and turned to the side, and the bus hit my elbow. I had a huge bruise and a scrape and I’m damn lucky that’s all I walked away with. Half an inch closer or a second sooner and I would have bought it.

The good part that came with it was telling everyone later that I had been hit by a bus. The reactions were priceless.

27

In college, I had a zoonotic disease. I was told afterwards that the health professionals were quite pleased to get my fever below 105 degrees Fahrenheit. I was unaware of my surroundings at the time.

28

Which time?!

When I was seven I was riding one of those little scooters, the kind that got popular again a couple years ago. The way the handlebars were set made me lean quite a ways forward when I was riding it. I hit a curb at speed and went face-first over the handlebars, sliding about three sidewalk squares. Took all the skin off the side of my face, but amazingly it didn’t leave a scar. I made it home and fairly promptly passed out cold. That one was good for three days in the hospital.

The concussion I got the year I was twelve was a little more thorough. I was playing Keep-Away on icy pavement at recess and fell, banging the back of my head on the fence. This fence consisted of a length of 4x4 set on edge on posts about 18in high. I really whacked it. I went in to class and realized that my vision was blurry. The nurse got my dad to pick me up and I was out cold by the time we hit the hospital. I was unconcious from about 11:00am until 7:00pm. Apparently all my veins collapsed and I darn near bought it. That one was good for six days in.

I’ve come way too close for comfort in cars half-a-dozen times, having had a thoroughly mis-spent youth. I’ve also woken up to small fires a couple of times, got a bad ride hitchhiking and had a good start on a case of tetanus, which is nothing nowadays, but would have done me in a few decades back

Oh, I almost forgot! I gave birth to a my first son butt first, with a pretty decent case of toxemia and sky-high blood pressure. He didn’t make it as they tore his brainstem trying to get him out. (Well, he lived six months, if you can call it that.) I almost didn’t make it either. The third kid left a big chunk of placenta behind, a fact which they discovered after I passed out cold and lost a lot of blood. I think they pumped back in six units total. I also lost a fair bit during a miscarriage.

I think that’s it.

So far.

29

Musta been about five years ago now, I was trying to get together a flashlight tag game in my neighborhood. I went into this kid’s house to ask him if he wanted to play, and he started chasing me with a barbacue lighter. Probably wouldn’t have killed me, but definately the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me.

30

Reading this thread makes me wonder at myself or the rest of you all sorta… Must be a bunch of youngsters… Well, being am old fart that has sailed on the ocean blue, logged more that 10,000 hour of pilot in command time, been hit by lightning twice, been blown away in a tornado, fallen off a cliff, done wiring repair jobs in panic situations with hot 220 volt circuits, been hunting and shooting, bow hunting, ride motorcycles, been in all forms of wrecks and in honor of an above post that kind of struck me because I was a breach birth, my son was breach, been poisoned, inadvertently drank a pop bottle of gasoline, and other attendant things of which living to be an old fart entails, makes me want to ask, “In what context? Time seconds, distance in inches, decisions or circumstance, twilight zone episodes, what category do you like most?”
Remember, adventure is just terror in retrospect…

31

September 16, 1995,
Driving from Austin to Houston (Texas) I fell asleep at the wheel and crossed the centerline of US 290, it was “questionable” if I was going to make it for a couple of hours, my injuries:
Open fracture, right tibia and fibia
Broken 3rd rib, right side
Broken clavicle, left side
Separated diaphram (hurt far worse than the rib!)
“major” soft tissue damage
34 days in the hospital, 6 operations, external fixator, 2 months in a wheelchair then I graduated to a walker and finally to crutches, 7 months off work.

Driving tired is as dangerous as driving drunk, be late

Unclviny

32

Lissa, whatever you do, don’t rent Final Destination. :eek:

Personally, I’ve had a few narrow escapes on the road. Some out of studidity, some out of bad luck. The one that comes to mind is when I slid off a Northern Italian alpine road: I was doing maybe 15 to 20 km/h in a hairpin when my car started to drift over all four wheels. Uncontrolable. It dug its nose through a snow wall by the side of the road, leaving it embedded in a meter of snow. Had I gone fully through the wall, I would have started a ride down a decent slope. It was a meadow without trees, but since it was all frozen over and snowed over, there would have been no way to stop the car. If I had taken that curve a little faster, I might have plowed right through the snow wall, with a very uncertain outcome, but almost certainly injury. As it was, I had to dig the car out of the snow, and carried on.

I did buy new tires when I got home. Yikes.

33

Attempted carjacking at gunpoint in North Philly. Got a mobile phone the next day.

34

I was sitting on the front of a speedboat in the Gulf of Mexico, with my legs dangling down the hatch, when the bozo driving it thought it would be a good idea to accelerate to 40 knots to jump the wake of a Coast Guard ship, rather than slow down. I was thrown forwards over the front of the boat. Luckily someone down the hatch saw me going, and grabbed my foot. Eventually the boat hit the water again and I swung backwards onto it. I smashed the fibreglass hatch with the backs of my thighs, for which I had to have stitches, and broke my wrist on the guard rail at the front.

Went to turn on a bedside lamp in a room in Singapore. It was a 1930s lamp with a metal body. The live wire had fallen out of its contact and was resting against the lamp body, and when I hit the switch, it must have made contact. The world went pure white, and I came round crumpled on the floor and screaming, not knowing if it was New York or New Year. I had tripped a 20-amp circuit breaker at 240 volts.

35

This is when I was about six or seven.

I was climbing this part of a big ravine/forest that’s behind my house. I grab onto this root, and it wasn’t strong enough to support me at all. Since I was/am not very coordinated, I fell about 5 feet off the elevation that I was climbing, and landed on the walkway thru the forest. I was a couple of inches off of falling down a 100+ foot elevation. Nothing much physically resulted of what happend, other than my knee hurting for a while after. However, I think from that I get my phobia of heights. I always get vertigo and feel uncomfortable being even 10 feet above the ground.

36

I was calmly walking down the street one rainy Sunday. I stepped off the curb and heard a very loud screeeeeech of car brakes, which made me stop instantly. A car that was going about 60 miles a hour had turned down the street without signaling. It went by me about two seconds after I stopped. If I hadn’t stopped, I would have been hit and probably died.

The screech that saved my life was the car behind him, which was now on the sidewalk. The driver and I just looked at each other, dropped-jawed.

37

I think I read about you.

(assuming you are, in fact, a guy)

38

Hrm, I feel fortunate to not have come as close to dying as all of you. Mine would be having a large (3’ diameter) old hickory tree take out a deck two feet from me during a tornado. Dad and I were watching the storm from the other side of the sliding glass door (stupid, yeah) and the branches scraped down the glass right in front of us.

39

At 19 I got septicemia as a complication after a ruptured appendix. Apparently it was fairly nasty and life threatening, but I was too doped on morphine at the time to realize. Doctors later told me that it was only in the last few years that they had antibiotics strong enough to save me. First time I was glad not to have been my brother (who is very much like me, but 10 years older). Later at 28 I got pancreatitis, which was also a bit touch and go for a time.

I am interested to know, does anyone here who has had a close brush with death believe it did not effect their lives in any major way?

Cheers, Bippy

40

You can get three strains of bacterial meningitis… each of them can kill you. I have had all three, but 5 times… I have had the last rites I can’t count how many times (scared me the first time, last time I told the guy to F**k off, said I wasn’t gonna die so don’t you think I am lol)…

Had to have 4 other surgies as a result… the last time I was in hospital was for 2.5 months and off work for 6 months. In total, I think I’ve spent well over a solid year in hospital lol…

But I haven’t a single thing wrong with me now except for a bad back (which is totally unrelated). I really do believe it will take a silver bullet or wooden stake to remove me from this world lol…

Things like that make you reassess your life - in cases like that, I think they’re pretty life affirming occurences.