IRL Death experiences (Possible feels warning)

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

This may be a sensitive subject for some, and I understand if some do not wish to speak about this topic. I'm sharing my story because I feel its something that needs to be shared and I've no shame in talking to others about my life and mistakes and issues.

Incoming paragraphs!!

Some of the things I say may indeed seem strange, but they were my perceptions of events.

When I was about 25, just around Christmas '05, I lost my job. I was working at a McDonalds full-time and doing PC repair in-between, as I always have since I was 15. I had a spat with the manager, which may have been brought on by a depressive trough because I'm bipolar. I had a decent house, shared with a really good friend and also co-worker at McD's.

I found another job about the week before Christmas at an Italian restaurant as a cook since I've had a lot of kitchen experience and learned a lot of Italian techniques from my grannie and father. I had a lot of compliments my first day and spent a week there, through the holiday and right before New Years Eve the owner came to me and told me he had to let me go.
One of the cooks I guess complained because I had been working too hard? That's the inside scoop I got from a friend who initially got me the job, he overheard the cook making a huge stink to the owner. I collected my check and found it light and couldn't pay rent.

My friend and housemate told me he couldn't cover me and let me stay, it wasn't his fault because the landlord was a tyrant. So I had to move out, in winter and I had nowhere to stay, in my mind. My family that was close had basically written me off because of drama, which wasn't anything to do with me but rather a horrible relationship with my biological mother.

She, in short, was a terrible person and blamed me for all the bad things in her life even though I'd never lived with her. My father got custody of me when I was 3 and she only had minor visitation rights. Basically all my visits with her were filled with bitterness and abuse at her hands because she transferred her mistakes to me, blamed me for my father leaving even though it was her issues that drove him away. By the time I was 13 I stopped seeing her because I had the choice.

I gave her many chances to be a better person but found that she was only a mother by my birth but in no other way and I could not stand to give her any more chances. I had a mother anyway, my stepmother, who was there for every part of my life. My parents never talked bad about my biological mom, letting me form my own opinion whereas bio-mom just talked shit about both of them, despite knowing little to nothing about them and verbally, emotionally, mentally and even physically terrorizing and abusing me.

So I couldn't call her or my surviving grandmother (her mom) because my biomom still lived at home (at 50+ years). My father and I weren't talking for some reason, stupid in hindsight, and I felt I truly had nothing and nowhere to go. I left a ton of my stuff, it was just material possessions but I had some attachment to them because I felt I worked very hard to keep those things.

I had no savings because I had had hospital visits that cost me a lot of money over a previous knee injury in the military. Destitute, on the street and lost, I took inventory of what I could carry in a bag, left the rest of my things with my now ex-roommate and basically gave them to him to sell or keep in payment for back rent (I always pay my debts in any way I can). I packed two bags, very heavy and trudged off to the bus station. When I got there it was too late to catch a Greyhound back to my hometown and I would have to wait 24 hours. I bought a ticket, found a cheap motel and stayed the night. I then woke up, stressed because I hardly slept and had no clue what I was gonna do or where I was gonna go.

I hopped on the bus at the appointed time and found myself in Melbourne, FL. It was a longer stop and I went to go use the bathroom, when I got out I found my little travel bag was gone, stolen and my ticket within and they would not let me on the bus.

I'd spent my last dollar on that ticket and was stuck, 230 miles away from where I needed to go (Key Largo). Stressed, tired and devoid of funds I hid my bag in a safe place, well as safe as I could think, took my smallest messenger bag out of my larger bag and placed some snacks that I'd acquired earlier within, as well as some other things like my journal that I always kept with me (pen and paper folks, never will get in the habit of digitizing my writing).

I recalled an ex-girlfriend lived in the area and took a chance, thinking that she'd worked at an Outback when I dated her elsewhere, I set course for the nearest fake Australian Steakhouse. I thought luck was with me because I recognized her car and she was within. I went in and spoke to her, told her my plight and asked for a meager sum. See, I had loaned her a LOT of money in the past with an agreement that she would pay me back sometime in the future, well I called that debt and told her I'd forgive the rest if she could fund my ticket back to Key Largo.

She told me she'd help me but she had to drive a friend home and she'd be back to help me. I trusted her. I sat outside that restaurant after she left well into nightfall and past closing. The temperature started to drop precipitously and reached below freezing. For a Florida native that is not a good sign.

For a bipolar, sensitive person who's been through extensive stress and what felt like a huge loss, this was the last straw. Realizing she'd ditched me and left me to sit in the cold, with a thin jacket and no money. I had a psychotic break and somehow was able to get myself to a hospital before I harmed myself. I ended up in a ward for the mandatory Baker Act 3 days, wherein a Nurse Practitioner, not a Doctor, proceeded to tell me I was faking my illness and was drug-seeking.

I had never in my life been addicted to anything narcotic, maybe caffeine and nicotine yes but hard drugs? No. Not me.

They released me and something inside just snapped again. 2nd psychotic break in 72 hours, and I think the meds they put me on had an opposing effect and amplified the break. Instead of wigging out I got very calm, but highly amped up. The entire next "chapter" flew by, and I hardly recall the events except that at some point somehow I acquired sleeping pills because I hadn't slept in almost 4 days.

At this point things get fuzzy and I don't recall all the events. At some point I have this memory, or dream. I'm not sure which because I don't know when I passed out but I was floating above myself in the woods, where I'd gone to try to sleep and not be disturbed I guess. I saw people standing around me, people who couldn't possibly be there because they were gone, dead. My grandfathers, both paternal and maternal, my paternal grandma, my great-grandpa on my stepmom's side and her father... and a few others, friends who'd died way too young. I don't recall if they spoke but they just stared at me, not the floating me but the physical me, passed out on the ground in the woods.

When next I awoke I was in the hospital and throwing up. I tried to get up, saying "I'm sorry, I'll clean it up" and found I was restrained. I fell back to the bed and crashed, hearing "Code Blue!" and that was it, blackness and silence.

I woke again in the ICU, my father by my side. I came to completely, and we spoke. I had taken about 150 Tylenol PM and died, twice. It was some sort of miracle that someone found me and called for an ambulance. I was cold when I was found, covered in frost in places and not responsive. I coded in the ambulance and then again in the ER, right after I'd had that puking incident. After I'd been revived my father arrived, having been notified somehow by the authorities or hospital staff. Drove 230 miles in record time apparently to make sure I was alright or not.

I was told I'd harmed my liver severely and the chances of survival depended on the liver healing itself or not, around 50/50 maybe less despite the resilience of the liver. 150 Tylenol PM is not a good thing, but the conditions of weather may have actually slowed my metabolism and saved me.

How I was found is a mystery because I was deep in the woods and should not have been easily discovered. I do not know whether I was suicidal or just so far gone I'd no idea what I was taking. I'm betting on the latter because I remember feeling I desperately needed to sleep and in the state I was in at the time, I don't think I had a good short term memory. I may have actually compulsively took the pills because I kept forgetting if I took one or not.

It matters not because I cannot account accurately for the psychotic break and the effects of medication, which I still do not know what they gave me at the ward. I do know that Nurse Practitioner lost all her medical licenses and job over something, but the hospital would not divulge why or what. I believe there may have been evidence for a lawsuit because my near-death could have been prevented if she hadn't deemed me wrongly a drug-seeker. I was in desperate need of help and I had felt I'd no one to turn to.

Waking up in the hospital was terrifying. I was on some form of painkiller that made me hallucinate severely, and at times I'd babble to my father about total non-sequitors. it was all around a horrible experience but my liver pulled through and my doctor felt I must have had a great will to live because behind the bedside manner, she actually felt I was going to die. Again.

I was released after a week, into the damn ward again but this time they let the real doctor monitor me and I never saw that woman again.

I was released after two weeks of observation, and hell. The state of mental health facilities in this country is astoundingly bad. Unless you have money, then the wards are more like a damn day spa. Night and day comparisons, and my parents spent a lot of money to put me in a very comfortable 30 day recovery facility. It was a dual-facility for mental health patients who've had a psychotic break and also addicts.

That part is a longer story and I may share it later, and the rest but I wanted to go back to my deaths.

I've since felt like I'm not the person who died twice in that hospital. I have the memories of the time before that but my goals, my drive, my persona have altered drastically. I still have some of the traits of the old me, but the more negative things have dissipated. Its as if dying twice killed off most of the bad parts of me, left me half full of the better things and also left it up to me to fill the rest of me with whatever.

Death has changed me, and there were some freaky parts along with it. The scene in the woods, the darkness and silence in the ER... both were scary, but both were also cathartic.

I am a different man, I've got more inner-strength or at least inner-confidence. I know I am not invincible, but I feel like I'm a lot more perceptive to life. I value the moments, the memories, the future possibilities. Sunrises and sunsets I count, not numerically but spiritually as blessings. Don't get me wrong, I'm not religious. But there's a part of me that feels like something happened, something found me and did not want me to die then, or at least wanted to give me a chance to survive.

Maybe its just a leftover weirdness from dying, but I can't help but think back to the woods and how I was found despite being removed from civilization's eye. No one can tell me who found me, that person has never come forward and did not stick around after the paramedics came. I even spoke to the first-responders and they do not recall the person who called them out and led them to me.

I've given up on ever knowing who that good Samaritan was, but I thank them for giving me this opportunity at a second chance and saving my life.

Thank you for reading my story, and its all true. As much of it as I can properly remember at least.

EDIT: I meant to put an end note. Due to all of this I ended up in my current town, where I met my wife who I've been with for nearly 10 years now. I don't always believe things happen for a reason, like we're on a destined path, but our actions do determine our future. We still can make choices, and those choices have ripple effects we cannot perceive. But the things that happened to me almost 10 years ago brought me here, to my wife and my stepdaughter and I'd not trade any of that for anything in the world.

I'm saying that even at the lowest point in life, you may not actually be as alone as you think you are. Happiness can truly be just around the corner but you first have to have the perspective to see it, to achieve it. I don't recommend dying twice to get there, its very hard on the body and mind and soul (if you believe in that sort of thing, I do in a sense but thats a different topic).

All I want to get across is that there's nothing we humans cannot bounce back from, short of the whole terminal illness thing and grave injuries. The mind is more resilient than we know. But my lesson that I learned was that I cannot ignore my illness, and I have to face it and deal with it every day or it will end up killing me in the end. Again.

 

[Strazdas]

Not sure what a correct response to a thread like that should be. It was an interesting read. but calling it "interesting" just feels "wrong". I think traumatic events in ones life makes a lot of changes in how we percieve the world. while nothing close to your experience, i had my down moments and they have reshaped how i see the world and i heard that from a lot of people. Im glad it turned out well for you in the end.

 

[Robert B. Marks]

Thank you for sharing, and I'm very glad that you seem able to gain strength from the experience in the end.

I've only properly faced my own death once, and it proved to be a false alarm. It was during my first Crohn's flare in 2006, and I ended up in the hospital. An over-eager student doctor became obsessed with putting in a nasal-gastric tube (actually, he was already obsessed with it - he bragged about how many he had put into patients), during which time we discovered that I have a hyperactive gag reflex, and the tube had to come out. But, before it did, I was warned that my colon might tear due to swelling, at which point I'd wake up in agony and could only be saved with emergency surgery.

So, I spent that night not knowing if I would still be breathing the next morning. It would later turn out that it was all a false alarm - due to some interesting genetics, I've got a oversized colon. Still, you don't come out of that unchanged. A bunch of my priorities made a dramatic shift, and I never looked at life the same way again.

 

[RanD00M]

Apparently when I was 4 or 5 some kid bashed my head in. I have no memory of this and have only been told this once by my parents.

 

[Aesir23]

Thanks for sharing your story and I'm glad that you pulled through.

I had my own close encounter with death back in 2009 or so. I developed a fairly rare complication with my Crohn's Disease called Toxic Megacolon that landed me in hospital. If I'm going to be honest I actually thought I only had the flu because my brother and sister had recovered from it just a few days earlier.

Basically I was sick as a dog for a whole week to the point where I couldn't even keep water down so I was quite dehydrated and somewhat less than lucid by the time the week was up. I was actually still convinced I had the flu when my mother insisted on taking me to the ER because my stomach was distended.

I actually don't remember leaving the ER and I don't remember that first week I spent in hospital where they were getting me stabilized so I stood a better chance of surviving the surgery.

A lot of it is still pretty foggy but from what my surgeon told me later on my condition had apparently been bad enough that my colon had swollen so much that it had actually torn in a number of places and I would have likely died in a couple of days if my mother hadn't gotten me to the ER. I found out even later from my mother that the doctors also hadn't been sure I would survive the recovery period.

It's not quite the close shave that some have had but a lot of my priorities and my own perspective on life shifted at least a little. I'd like to think that it's helped make me a less anxious person.

 

[Cycloptomese]

I don't really have anything that compares. I just wanted to chime in and say thanks for sharing your story. That goes for everyone else as well.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Snip

That's an amazing life story there and it brought tears to my eyes. I'm not Christian, but it's apparent someone, or something up/out there likes you, because it sounds like you had an encounter with an angel of some sort. Spiritual, or not, some piece of fate intervened for you.

Personally I almost died from an infected appendix, when I was 9, lost a fair bit of body weight because of how sick it made me. The takeaway I got from that was not to be afraid of surgery, because it saved my life.

This thread does have meaning, because two people I know died rather recently, they both basically dropped dead. The first wasn't discovered for several days, luckily mild temperatures kept him from decomposing badly. The second was the husband of my landlord, he dropped from a massive heart attack, the paramedics revived him, but ultimately the hospital couldn't save him. We humans can bounce back from a lot, but there are somethings we just can't fix...

 

[FPLOON]

Spoiler: The moment when I almost accidentally died...

In Elementary School, I was playing Tag on the one-and-a-half story jungle gym, which was built a year or so prior to this particular event, after school and I was tagged while climbing to the [very] top... I let go out of shock of being "it" that I end up falling to the ground, landing not on the mat around the jungle gym but on the concrete that surrounded the mat around the jungle gym... Luckily, I get up, start telling people that my head hurts, and sat down next to the wall of one of the classes... I'm more surprised that I didn't end up bleeding due to the concrete impact, honestly...

Spoiler: The moment I almost accidentally killed someone...

In Middle School, a group of kids and I were playing with a broken metal frame after school... Since it was shaped like a boomerang, we kept throwing it like it was one... Once everyone got bored/stopped playing with it and everyone's backs were turned, I picked up the metal frame and threw it on the ground... It bounced in the same direction as one of my friends, at the time, and if it didn't redirected itself at the last bounce, it would have impaled him in the back because that's how sharp the edges were based on how they were shaped at the time... I've never freaked out as hard as I did that day and I have cut someone's arm to the point of drawing blood using only my long nails in High School...

I'm not sure if any of these have the feels to them, but they are the most vivid in the IRL near-death archives...

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Thanks for reading, and giving it a chance, everyone. I shared it only because it'd been almost 10 years and the amount of blessed time has been filled with a lot of self-reflection. I'm happy to be around and to be alive, and sharing a piece of life, a bit of my story just feels right.
And thanks to those of you who shared their experiences. Its never easy to talk about traumas in life, however they're inflicted.

 

[manic_depressive13]

I was suicidal when I was younger because of an abusive home situation. I never made a serious attempt on my life because I was scared that if I fucked something up, or if someone discovered me before I finished dying, I'd end up alive but with permanent damage or chronic pain, and I would be forced to live with that. Now for all intents and purposes it's "gotten better" like every shit eating **** has always said it would. But I've never felt like a was glad I didn't kill myself. My current situation is pretty good, but being dead would have been just as good.

 

[Almgandi]

Well it probably doesn't count as a real death experience, but it's the closest thing I can offer. When I was about 8 years old I had a dream. I was in a store on a floor where apparently the ceiling had to be repaired (bunch of ladders and cables everywhere). A flight of stairs lead to a hole in the ceiling which I climbed through. I ended up in a sewer like area. It was a path seperated through sewage from another path (both paths about 40m from another). I walked a bit until I saw a black thing on the other side/path. It was kind of furry looking but I couldn't see much except that it was kneeling or atleast had it head close to floor like it was eating. 1 second after I realized that it was something I tried to go away while glancing at it every now and again. After a couple seconds I see it about 1m from me flying at me after it probably jumped from the other side. It slammed / clawed me right onto the floor and was dead. Now from what I have most people that have dreams about dying wake up almost immediately, but I just layed there while everything went black. I was unable to move or really think, I just felt the time pass. After what felt like 2 or 3 minutes I woke up. I was grasping for air not like somebody who awoke from shock or ran but somebody who just got animated from cpr i.e. after going unconsious under water.

 

[Saltyk]

Wow. That's a story. Glad that everything seems to be better for you, now.

Closest I have to a near death experience is from when I was born. The umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck. Apparently, I didn't cry for a minute or two and my mom recalls the doctor looking at her and saying, "Oh. I guess you want to know what your baby is. It's a boy."

However, there was a time when I was nine months old. Our neighbor came over with her daughter and was talking to my mom when I kissed her daughter on the cheek. She freaked out and claimed I bite her daughter. My mom explained that it was a mere kiss and I did the same to her and my dad all the time. She then asked our neighbor to watch both of us while she took care of the laundry. Before long, I began crying bloody murder and when my mom rushed back to ask what happened, our neighbor claimed she had no idea what happened.

Well, before long, I began to get sick and my parents rushed me to the hospital. Here's where things get fun. You see, the hospital knew exactly what was wrong with me, but told my parents that they didn't know. I was suffering from blood poisoning, but they suspected my mother of being the one who made me sick. They thought this was a case of Munchausen syndrome by proxy. So they didn't reveal this information and simply watched her anytime she was alone with me.

Meanwhile that neighbor was going around bragging about how she had bitten me as punishment for my biting her daughter. Eventually, my parents did learn of this and filed charges.

But this story doesn't end here. Her husband was a mechanic. And someone sabotaged one of my parent's cars, a camaro, by putting oil in the water, water in the oil, and sugar in the gas tank. And one night, one of my parents saw someone leave my dad's truck and go into the neighbor's house. The next day my dad almost got in an accident because his brakes didn't work (he ended up coasting into a parking lot). Someone had disconnected the master cylinder.

They tried to tell the prosecutor this, but they wouldn't do anything because my parents didn't see anything. They also wouldn't drop the charges, because it was now the state's case. In the end, she ended up taking a plea deal and was able to get away with only being restricted from working with children for one year. On the bright side, my mom did find her working at a day care and informed the management of this, giving us the one victory from the whole ordeal. I also understand her husband later divorced her and used the incident to get custody of their kids.

I had a fun childhood, but not because my parents mistreated me.

 

[Draken Steel]

Damn, that was...quite the series of events. Glad to see you are in a good situation now, that whole thing sounds just awful.

For personal story, I woke up in the hospital to find out I was in a coma for two weeks and had a broken shoulder. My dad heard a thump and came back to check on it and found me unconscious on the floor and couldn't wake me, called an ambulance. Hospital ran tons of checks before even realizing that I had a broken shoulder. Ended up getting sent to a different hospital, which ran lots more tests but still got nothing. Got my shoulder fixed after I woke up, but they never did figure out what put me in the coma in the first place.

Afaik I was never in danger of dying, but I did apparently "wake up" at one point, only to not know my name or recognize my family. Since they never did figure out what happened, now anytime I get weird feelings or sensations I'm afraid that it's going to happen again and I'm going to just....lose random periods of my life...or even my self entirely.

Before that I found out that my little sister attempted suicide and had to get stomach pumped.....weeks later in a random regular conversation with my mom. Apparently she never felt the need to mention it to me....

And then...she did it again, and I only found it out because my sister mentioned it to me, again, considerably later. She at least is doing better now, graduating High School this year.