Almost drown scuba diving. I was poorly trained and slightly panicky underwater – I rarely breath through my mouth so I had oxygen problems underwater. I was the first person of the first dive team sent down (6 teams of 5 people each). Turned out there was a problem on the boat delaying the next person down – my dad – about 10 min. I looked up and noticed I was leaking a LOT of air – the dive leader didn’t check my gear. I was 35 feed down and swam straight up, without holding a hand above my head or watching for obsticals. I slammed into the bottom of the boat, loosing my mask and respirator and knocking myself silly. Everything went black. I recovered my respirator and hyperventalitaed and regained some vision, recovered my mask and surfaced.
I was wearing 185 lbs of diving gear and my BC was disabled due to the hose uncoupling from it. So I spent 15 min treading water in 185 lbs of gear with a concussion until the dive leader would let me return to the boat. It took 10 min to climb up the ladder (falling 3 times) before I got to safety. I then threw up 3 times and passed out – from hyperventilating.
Radiation exposure at work I’m ok now – I work with idiots.
3-5) Serious car accidents I walked away from without a scratch
Contaminated myself with blood possibly carrying B-virus (100% lethal central nervous system pathogen). – yay safety gear
Spilled a SMALL - not enough for a spill report - quantity of HIV-2 on my gloves. I sneezed while holding a plate where I was generating fresh virus. (Later titrated it to 2ug/mL) – yay safety gear
Was freeclimbing a cliff face high on Blanca Peak by myself when an ice storm hit and then darkness set. How I got down without falling to my death I’ll never know.
I had ear tubes put in when I was 5. Because I was so young my doctor decided to do the surgery in the hospital with general anesthesia rather than in the office. We discovered that I have a condition called Pseudocholinesterace Deficiency. At some point during the surgery, I don’t know if it was the beginning or when, I woke up. And being awake, I tried to open my eyes only to discover that I couldn’t. No only that, I couldn’t breathe or move. I tried to scream. All I could see were red and yellow dots. I don’t remember how it all ended, whether they put me back to sleep or brought me out. I’ve never been so scared in my life. The condition I have doesn’t allow me to metabolize the type of anesthesia that they used and it caused respitory arrest. At the time (some 25 years ago) they were just discovering this condition and I had gotten lucky enough that my anesthesiologist had just returned from a seminar on pseudocholinesterace deficiency and knew what to do. Otherwise they would have inadvertantly killed me on the table.
I was diagnosed as asthmatic several years ago. At the time my g/f (now wife) and I had two cats. I was told to get rid of the cats and clean this and use filters and take these inhalers twice a day. I followed none of the directions except for the inhalers which I used sporadically. Not surprisingly, I was not doing well. I had a few ER visits and, while attending my sister-in-law’s birthday party with my entire family present, I had a serious attack. Luckily, he lives not too far from a hospital. I stopped breathing for a short time and spent the night in ICU on a vent and went home a couple days later. If he lived a few miles farther from the hospital, well, that would have been it. Cats were given away, we cleaned up the house and I took my meds.
Actually buying the farm would have been when I was a passenger in a car that was run over/dragged by a tractor trailer (at the age of 18- both of us were OK, but the police absolutely could not believe we walked away from it. The car was completely destroyed and torn up). I also was about 50 feet away from a shooting a few years ago in a parking lot (I dove into my car and shit my pants. OK, not really, but I did shit my pants), and I’ve had a few near miss traffic deals since then.
The only time I really thought I was going to die for sure was with that tractor trailer. I thought for sure that was it.
The closest was probably when a crack-addict robbed me while I was delivering pizzas. He had a knife pressed into my throat to hard it left a mark for 3 days, but it didn’t break the skin. Just a flick of the wrist and…
When I was 3 an older kid talked me into drinking gasoline. I asked my mom about it when we were getting ready to head home, a couple hours away. They quickly got me to the local hospital, where the doctor said I probably would’ve been unconscious in about 30 minutes, dead in an hour, if they hadn’t pumped my stomach. Like a lot of kids, I usually slept during long car rides, so my parents probably wouldn’t have noticed anything was wrong until they got home and I was dead.
Other than that there were 2 near misses between me and cars when I was riding my bike (at about 9 & 12), and a car wreck that could’ve been really bad when I was 17. No injuries in these.
When I was about 6 or 7 I decided to fix our dryer in the basment. All I remember is walking toward the dryer with a screwdriver, and then my mom trying to wake me up on the other side of the room. Evidently I had jammed the screwdriver into something and received one hell of a shock.
I’ve also fallen off an A-frame ladder from about 25’ up, no injuries, and I had an entire one-man Genie lift fall over when I was about 35’ up. I managed to jump out of the lift on the way down, and only ended up with a concussion and lots of bruises.
Overall, I’ve had (I think) 6 or 7 concussions so far (it’s hard to remember), I’ve had a gun pulled on me, and I’ve run away from two different people with knives. Every expereince I’ve listed here has left me thinking, “I should be dead.” I am the luckiest person alive.
-tool
My story is this… I was born with the cord wrapped around my neck and it caused a lot of breathing problems for the first 1yr of my life. One night I could not breath and turned gray. My grandmother ran me to the church where my parents were and they all ran me to the hospital. I was pronounced dead and even have the death certificate… I guess a lot of church people were there and they prayed me back to life and the hospital staff all ended up coming to the Lord through it.
I honestly am not a Jesus freak but I am very aware of the spiritual realm because of the experience I think… I sense things… feel things… see things…have very vivid dreams… can sense very strongly good and evil… BUT IT COULD BE all the grass smoking too! ROFLMAO
In 1955, I came face-to-face with a car that had jumped a divider and was coming south in the north bound lane of a divided freeway. I managed to avoid a head-on colision, but my right front hit the right front of the other car. No seatbelts or airbags in those days and I doubt any of us would have survived a direct head on collision.
A few years later, I was caught in a riptide off Galveston and had to be rescued by a good friend and a stranger in a boat. I know I wouldn’t have made it without them. I was at the stage of thinking how peaceful it was and how the water felt like a comfortable bed. I remember thinking that I would just catch a nap and then swim to shore.
I was in my preteens, and playing around in my Grandma’s yard, barefoot. I stop for a second to catch my breath, look down, and see this snake inches from my foot and in striking position–mouth open, head drawn back. I jumped several feet to the side and ran before it could bite. Now, where I lived, I was about a half-hour from the hospital, so I’d have probably survived it, but still–scary.
That happened to me a couple years ago too, but only the bus didn’t actually touch me. I was waiting to cross, got the walk signal, glanced left, and I actually saw the bus and it seemed like it was far enough away that it was going to stop at the light, looked right and stepped off the curb, then I heard a car horn honking and I looked left again to see this bus barrelling towards me, and I jumped back quick enough to not get creamed. I had to sit down and have a smoke and quit shaking before I could attempt crossing the street again.
At 2 years old - fell off a two story porch into a pile of coal.
At 8 years old - hit by a car - in body cast for almost a year.
Hit a stalled tractor trailer on the expressway - The tractor trailer broke down in the middle of the expressway, had no hazard lights, and it was dusk. SO hit the tractor trailer doing at least 60 mph, was ejected from his vehicle and was bounced down the highway.
Fell off the roof at one of the local malls.
Was atttacked while waiting for a pay phone. The guy came after him with a concrete block, shattering part of his skull. He lost some motor skills and the vision on one eye for about 6 months. He is fine now.
Constantly shocks himself with 220V (not on purpose).
Once I was crossing the street to my car, talking to my friend who was a good 10+ feet away. I was looking at him as I was walking and not at the street like I should of been. All of a sudden he goes “AMY! Watch out!”, and I instantly froze. This car goes whooshing past me, so close that I grazed it with my fingertips and my hands were at my side. I nearly walked smack into the side of it! Sadly, this was only like 3 weeks ago! :rolleyes:
I forgot to mention my near drowning. When I was about a year old, my mom took me to a wading pool. She let me splash around a bit and sat down to chat with my aunt. A few minutes later my aunt’s jaw suddenly drops and she starts pointing. My mom turns and there I am, floating face down in the water. My mom says the one thing that was running through her mind when she ran to rescue me was “I’m going to ruin my new watch if it gets wet!”. Thanks Mom. Anyway I was perfectly fine. We now fondly think of that wading pool as “The place where I almost died”.
My brush with death is boring. It was at my birth. My mom was 44 when she had me, (risky 40 years ago). Plus she had started menopause and didn’t know if her periods were periods or just spotting. She’d had my sister by c-section, so thats the route I took. The doctor decided he’d deliver me in June. After I was born he realised I should’ve been born in August.
The only brush with death I can remember is having a 106 degree fever for 2 days when I was 5. I knew it was bad because the doctor was in his pajamas, and my dad the agnostic had called the minister.
Two times. One, I was working in a kitchen and I was about a foot away from an oven that exploded due to natural gas buildup…
okay, so it didnt literally explode, but the gas inside did, and sent the doors of the oven flying open so fast that what I thought was the doors flying open was really the ricochet :eek:. The doors put an inch-deep dent into the aluminum walls. A few inches closer and my head would have been smushed.
Another one. I was hiking up a creek and we came to a turn in the creek where it had carved a wall in a hill. Someone dared me to pretend to “lift” a precariously balanced stone. They told me to get out of the way and sure enough, just after I did, that 500-pound stone fell down, along with much dust and pebbles.
We continued. We then went back, and got back to the 30-foot-high cliff. I knew that the previous rockslide was just the first. So I stood about 50 or so feet away and threw a large pebble at the wall. The entire face of the wall collapsed. We were never in danger at that point since we were so far away, but we were enveloped in a cloud of dust for a minute or so.
Whats the weight of a 30ft60ft1ft section of stone? :eek:
I’m ok now – I work with idiots.
Funny. No, I’m not a guy.
More Bvirus for me!