Brushes with Death

[Myndnix]

I almost drowned when I was fourteen.
I haven't been on a beach since, and I don't ever plan to go near one again either.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

I was in the car with my Dad when we got into a head-on 55 on 55 collision. I don't remember the impact but I do remember my Dad saying "I'm sorry, this is gonna hurt..." (I was 8), but apparently I flew under the dashboard under my seatbelt and got a bad concussion and bruising. My dad, on the other hand...broken back, neck, all 10 fingers, and something in his right kneecap. He's walking now, but he didn't for over a year and we were told that he wouldn't again.


I've also had 2 guns in my face. One was the police from raiding the wrong house (which I know they wouldn't have shot me, but they said my behavior towards them being there was "perceived as dangerous"), and the other was a drunk dude at a bar who bumped into me and decided he'd threaten me with it for his mistake. A bunch of people tackled him to the ground, and I've never said so many "thank you"'s in my life.

There's more I'm sure, either repressed or not severe enough to remember or mention.

 

[dumbseizure]

Mine would be nearly falling off a 50 metre cliff onto jagged rocks and ocean while we were in Hawaii. ended up with half my left arm and half my right arm being a bit shredded from sliding down jagged rocks. Only half hour before this happened I was at a Japanese temple, and I bought a lucky coin from there. Lucky coin my ass.

 

[Zack Alklazaris]

So today I was in a car accident. I rear-ended a van while doing around 50 mph on the highway. Thankfully, everyone involved was okay with only front of my truck folding up like a lawn chair. I'm still a little sore but I'm alive.

While getting my truck towed, I got to see several other accidents on the way. Some of them were mere fender benders like mine. One of them was a serious wreck (the holidays bring out the worst traffic).

I saw a man getting loaded into an ambulance and it occurred to me that my little accident could have been infinitely worse. I didn't see my life flash before my eyes or anything like that but it did give me a very solid reappreciation(?) for my fortunes. Even during bad times, there's always someone else who's worse off.

Has anyone else had moments like this? Brushes with death? Sudden revaluations of your life?

How did you manage to rear end someone going full speed?

I have had

Brush with death? Sure. I ride a motorcycle after all. Anyone who rides will tell you people are out to kill you.

Oh I know, people here drive crazy. I don't have enough auto medical coverage to get a motorcycle. Power to you.

------------------

I have had two near death experiences which for only being 26 is two too many.

I was hit in my drivers side by a car going 55 mph. It shoved the door so far in that it was wrapped around the steering wheel and bent the car into an L shape. I walked away from that with just a few bruises thanks to my wife. I was waiting in a median for some cars to go by when I heard screeching tires. I turned to my window and saw just headlights so I turned to the passenger side to my wife to tell her to hold on when they hit me. The fact that my body was turned away kept me from experiencing most of the damage.

They weren't kidding about the after shock of accidents though. I stumbled around after I got out of my car that the guy that hit me thought I was drunk.

-----

The other time was when I took a steroid shot, ibuprofen, and aspirin at the same time. I didn't know that a steroid shot would be just as dangerous an nsaid as taking it in pill form. It open a hole in my stomach and I didn't know about it till I was vomiting blood like the exorcist. I remember kneeling over the toilet as this dark fowl smelling blood was coming out. After words I went to stand up only to realize I could only stand so far up, any more and I became too dizzy to maintain my balance. My wife dragged me to the hospital and we found out I lost most of my blood. I was sitting at about 5k blood count and I needed to be at 13k.

It was quite a terrible experience. That time I actually thought I might die and believe me when I tell you I was cursing myself out in my head. I just kept thinking you might die here, laying over a toilet, puking your guts out. How fucking lame is that.

 

[Old Father Eternity]

Many a years gone by now but two cases of near drowning, three if you count the time I fell down a well, which could also have ended with a broken neck, almost falling down a tree (another possible broken neck), got stuck by my belt on a branch stub a meter before hitting the ground, last but not least driving my bike into a tractor coming from behind the corner.
It is almost as if the bugger was pulling mean practical jokes. To be frank though, every time I go out onto water in a canoe or kayak, I am mocking him back because my swimming skills are far from adequate.

 

[dstryfe]

Apparently three, though I was too young to remember any of them, now. I'm told that I was clinically dead for 30 seconds when I was born (so...stillborn? I guess?), that I got another 20 or so seconds out of attempting to eat a whole pear out of the fridge just after turning 1, and about another 15 from 'drowning' in a pool at 3.

Wait...does clinical death in all three cases disqualify me?

 

[Starik20X6]

Brush with death? Sure. I ride a motorcycle after all. Anyone who rides will tell you people are out to kill you.

This! So much this...
Not going to get into too much detail, but car drivers: Pay attention to motorcyclists when making right turns!

Or just pay attention at all and obey the road rules. I got knocked off by a guy pulling out of a stop street. If I hadn't seen him start to pull out I wouldn't have braked and would have been hit a lot harder than I was.

The only other time I've sincerely feared for my life was being stuck in a mosh pit at a Rage Against The Machine concert. The crowd was packed so tightly I could barely breathe, and in my fight to get out I nearly fell down under everyone's feet a few times.

And there are so many near-drownings in this thread...!

 

[slyywiskers]

Ooooh boy. I have a couple, Almost drowned twice; First time I can't remember any details at all I was very young, second when I was 15 or 16 I went to the local swimmin' hole (now considered a bio hazard area apparently due to contamination by the dairy industry) with my sister, I couldn't swim and I grossly underestimated the depth, luckily my sister realized I wasn't playing around and she pushed me back toward the shallow bit. I was pushed into some kind of small bee swarm (I was about 14 my memory is fuzzy and all over the place) type thing by a "Friend" that wasn't fun, I got the hell outta there pretty much immediately and even though I was wearing "good" clothes I still got stung about 5 times, no idea if I beat him up later or what. fairly recently (Doesn't really count but oh well) A friend was driving me a couple of other friends to a nearby walk trail thing, and he did about 180Km in a 50Km zone, I was practically shitting myself. Another one that doesn't really count was when I was with 2 of my friends and we accidentally set his bed on fire and we almost didn't realize in time (We were very tired and no-ware near sober) that's all I can remember for now

 

[Muunokhoi]

The first time I had a brush with death was when I drowned when I was 5 after getting caught under a waterfall and the second time I was 16 and I grabbed a King Brown snake mistakening it for a branch earning a bite to the wrist and several doses of anti-venom. I was sick as a dog for several weeks after that second instance.

 

[Binkan]

When i was about 20yrs i had blood clots and when i got them i didn't realise what it was mostly because i didn't know but on that day i had a school exam to do and i was hyped up to do it and when my grandmother repeatedly told me to seek a doctor to check why i could hardly breath i refused her and when i was about to go to school the ambulance drove up to the house and kidnapped me xD, (well they drove up and told me to get into the ambulance for a check and at first i refused but when they took the tests they drove me to the hospital in light-speed and about 10 minutes after arrival i went into some kind of short-duration coma because most of my body couldn't get any oxygen.

Sry for the wall of text >.<

 

[Zhukov]

I've been nearly hit by a few cars, I've been actually hit by one car and I've been stabbed in the side of the neck with a pocket knife.

The stabbing was easily the worst of the lot. The car incidents were all over so fast that I didn't really have time to get genuinely scared. But seeing that prick pull out a knife and have my evaluation of the situation suddenly jump from "I'm bigger than he is, I might cop a broken nose but I should okay" to "I may actually die right here on this footpath" was a feeling in a league all of its own.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Huh... I don't think anyone around here has anything on [user]xmbts[/user]...

I've heard that story and man... not nice... -_-

Anyway, I've only had one, and that was... actually, it wasn't a brush with death because I actually died (was clinically dead for about ten seconds). Something was up with the anaesthesia, came back and wham... chest (felt as though it) was on fire for about six hours. :/ Probably not that long, but sure felt a long time...

 

[R4ptur3]

I don't remember this but when I was very young, I was sitting in a trolley/shopping cart while my mum was pushing it and, unknown to her, it had a very bad wheel and it just fell to the side, and I fell out. It doesn't sound very life threatening but I was so young at the time if I fell on my head I would of probably died, and instead managed to fall on my teeth, pushing one of them straight up into my gums.

 

[Korolev]

I've almost fallen down a couple of floors in a building. I get dizzy when I stand near ledges and I almost toppled over.

I sweated for a bit, I physically felt my heart speed up to a ridiculous rate, but 30 secs later I was more or less fine - a bit shaken by the experience, but otherwise fine. I have not repeated the same mistake again.

 

[The_Waspman]

I have several. None of them really dramatic though. Almost died of flu back when I was 18. That wasn't fun. I briefly thought - in between hallicinations - that it was meningitis, but I didn't have the energy to crawl out of bed to get to a doctor or anything. At least not until the demons I was hallucinating dragged me off to hell anyway.

I also almost fell off a cliff when I was in Corfu. Like, I was suspended in the air, god knows how I didn't actually.

And I have almost been run over so many times. Just last week I was almost run down three times in the same day. Mainly because of drivers being fucking morons.

 

[Guffe]

5 years ago, a drunk guy pulled a gun to my head and started screaming if I want to die. That was not pleasant, I tell you.

WHAT THE FUC*** HELL??!!!!
Okey if that ain't scary I have idea what is...

On Topic:

I can't say I've had really, no major accidents so far I guess

 

[Rose and Thorn]

I choked on a candy when I was younger at a babysitters house. Choked for a good long time, my masterbating friend had no knowledge of what to do as he was pretty young, so after laying on the ground and having my life flash before my eyes, the candy finally went down. I might have passed out if it lasted any longer.

After that I had to go to therapy, because it was a tramatic event that made me develop an eating disorder. So I did that for 2 years, without much help. As I got older I finally got over it, but I am still wary of things near my throat. The dentist was a nightmare during my childhood.

--------------

Another one is during highschool I was hanging a bunch of my "friends" after school and one of those stupid ass friends threw a construction pylon, one of those orange things, on the road. A car almost ran into it.

In the car was two black dudes sitting up front and an old lady in the back. They started yelling out of there car, but we walked on telling our friend how stupid he was. He did stupid shit a lot...I don't know him anymore.

ANYWAY, ten minutes later we were hanging at the skate park down the road. The car came back, this time without the old lady. The two black dudes came out of the car all angry and pulled guns on us. I remember them telling us that, that was their grandmother in the back and that we could have hurt her. So my stupid friend was trying to act tough and lots of crazy yelling with black dudes flaying their guns around the air. That went on for what felt like five minutes.

I remember one of the black dudes was telling the other dude that, "they aren't with it man, lets just get out of here" and of course the other dude was like, "Naw man, we got to teach these punks a lesson". It is like they rehearsed good cop, bad cop on the way here to really try to freak us out.

I also remember counting how many of us there was, about 20, and how many bullets they could possibly have in their guns. After a while they got back in their car realising how many skaters their were at the park and drove off.

I took the long way home that day.

 

[Yokillernick]

Has anyone else had moments like this? Brushes with death? Sudden revaluations of your life?

Brushes with death ? Sure. Funny story.

I was 10 years old playing football in a grassy patch of land that was in between two houses. One of my mates kicked the ball off the pitch and I went off to get it. However I was so concentrated on getting the ball that I didn't notice the damn near invisible barbered wire fence. I mean seriously. It was just ONE strip of barbed wire that served as a fence. Luckily I rebounded off that and I had to be taken to the hospital.

Second one when I was 7. I couldn't swim then and I thought it would be fun to climb on the ladder that leads out the pool and jump back in. I had a rubber ring around me that was supposed to keep me afloat. But when I jumped I kept both hands straight and I let go of the rubber ring just as I landed into the water. Of course I sank like a stone. Luckily a man, one of my dad's friends, came and pulled me up before it was too late. Still I had a minute to contemplate the meaning of life while sinking deeper into the abyss.

 

[saints1544]

Worked at a gas station that was robbed at gun and "huge ass knife" point. Let them to what they pleased and didn't say much back to them. Only ended up with a punch to the face and bloody nose. Could have been MUCH worse.

Back when I rode dirt bikes, decided to do a jump and while hitting the crest of the hill with the front tire I rocked the accelerator all the way back, turning a small jump into a 10 ft free fall onto my face. My 150lb bike was nice enough to land foot-peg first onto my helmet. No helmet would have equaled dead me and back then I rarely rode with a helmet on.
Cracked a sweet helmet but thank God not my head.

Smoked the very beginning of a guard rail that protected a huge creek allowing me to just slide across the bridge instead of ending up hitting a 8ft creekbank at 40mph. If I had slid a foot sooner, I would have ended up in the creek, probably unconscious and soon to be dead.

 

[Jfswift]

Yea, I spun out on the interstate during the winter years ago. I came to a stop facing traffic. That was fun. My friend was with me too but we both kept calm and I was able to navigate out of there.

I'm sorry to here about your accident though but at least everyone is okay.