What's the Closest That You've Come to Dying?

[SecondMonkey]

When I was 2, I choked on a life saver candy and turned blue. How's that for irony?

Then there was the time I drove into a tree at 45mph. I still limp.

Then I overdosed on vicodin. Drugs are bad, mmmkay?

Then my doctor nearly killed me with a bad mix of prescriptions. I blacked out and woke up very confused in the ER.

I've been electrocuted more times then I can remember. Maybe I should invest in a pair of thick rubber gloves?

 

[oilboy123]

My sister said I almost fell into Kilauea volcano in Hawaii when I was little (she grabbed arm as I was falling). This was in the early 60s before things were made safe for kids/people. We were standing on a platform just above the edge.

I almost drowned a couple of times body surfing waves. One of the times I could not get up to the surface and thought that was it.
I also got pulled out by an under tow and was a couple of hundred yards out. I had been swimming full speed into shore the whole time. I was then exhausted.
In those days they did not tell you to swim parallel to the shore. But I know that now.

Just recently I had a pressure pot fitting blow off at my old job. It was under 2600 psi when it blew. One of the guys mentioned it was leaking to me. Then I went to look at it with my face right in front of it.
One minute later I was off to the side of it, and then I hear POW! It would have either gone thru my head or knocked it off.

I realized that someone had filed the threads down on the fitting. This was done when it was used on a lower pressure Pot we had because the threads were sticking.
I remembered this after the fact. I had told the boss we needed new fittings because the aluminum ones were damaged. I then found out my brother in law told someone to do it a while back.

Long story short they filed too many threads off and with should have not used that fitting. That Pot should have used the brass ones only. My brother in law acted like it was no big deal. Needless to say I don’t work there anymore.

I have had a few others but those stand out.

 

[rjundi]

I got hit on my mountain bike on the road by right hand lane
drifter to make a left hand turn when I was a freshman at university.

I broke my nose, lost three teeth, had plastic surgery (1300 stitches to face) and fractured my jaw. I was unconscious for 15 mins after it occurred.

Luckily is it.

 

[1sttruck]

As an Air Force brat in Japan in the early 60s I remember seeing some of the early space program capsules on tour, and wanted to be a spaceman. So with my younger brothers watching I crawled into our front load washer with the window, closed the door, and almost immediately starting running out of air. I started yelling an pounding on the door, which scared my younger brothers and they just stared at me for awhile. Finally one of them opened the door.

While rock climbing on Mt Evans in Colorado not too far down from the 14k ft peak (don't be impressed, you can drive to the top :^) I came to a spot where I couldn't step on a rock, and would need to step on some snow to get to the next rock. I paused, looked at the snow, and then looked at the lake some few thousand below on the sheer cliff that I was on. I thought that it would be good to test the step first so I yelled to warn anyone down below, didn't hear anything, and then dropped a not too small rock on the snow. It was actually ice as the rock immediately flew down the cliff. I found another place to cross.

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

In light of the "how do I clean up vomit?" topic, does The Critic's roommate need to chime-in on this conversation?

 

[OriginHacker21]

Result of some serious stupidity... Was hunting around with a shotgun (not sure of the gauge) and decided to shoot a bug on a tree that was level to me and about 4 feet away. After shooting I felt a burning sensation on my chest. Had to dig out several flattened out pellets from my chest.

 

[Crashbox]

Hit a parked guardrail at about 38 MPH back in 1981, and disturbed a LARGE nest of yellow jackets. They estimate I was stung between 50 and 100 times. I swell up pretty good now if I get stung.

I've probably come closer than that to death but not appropriate here...

 

[eljefino]

When I was around 5 or 6 (could read but had no sense of mortality) I found a jug of something in the garage-- think it was prestone antifreeze.

The health & safety instructions said if it was ingested, one should move to a dark place, do this and that. I thought it would be fantastic to do, imagine all the attention Mom would have to lavish on me.

Went for a sip, the child-proof cap worked. It's the same style they use today, with that tab that catches on that thing you have to depress when turning.

Kidney failure = certain death.

Was standing on a mostly wood dock once-- some rebar concrete-- and there was a distant thunderstorm. Everyone's hair started standing on end. Nobody thought this was remarkable. I tried shepherding people into a freight shed for shelter-- no rain, people were blowing me off. Lightning never struck.

Got really drunk at college, wandered off into the woods in late november. The woods were really semi-frozen swamp. Found a path somewhere on an old railroad bed that only got me worse off. Every light I saw had swamp between myself and it. Eventually found my way home. I was well enough dressed I wouldn't have gotten hypothermia-- would have sobered up and found my way out come morning, so it's really just something stupid I did.

 

[Rob Taggs]

Hit a retaining wall on a motorcycle at over 70mph. Letting friends shoot apples off my head with real guns. Getting shot at by not so nice guys. Recently VT kicked in, in my heart causing me to black out and go down a flight of stairs and end up with my wife yelling at me thinking I was once again pulling a stunt to scare her.

I'll take all the above over the Venticular Tac in my heart. Thought I was a dead man. Found out that it was the two gallons of Mountain Dew and 5 or so coffees I had that day on a 12 hour shift that caused that one. I'm 41 and my dad was 46 when he died of a heart attack in front of me, so I'll take all the dare devil stuff over heart problems anyday.

 

[jmac]

My first motorcycle, about 16yo, was sent out of the office where I was a summer intern and sent out to local store for some coffee for the maker. On the way back pulled into the lot of where the office was, this was an annex in the back of an old long shut down brewery, where the City also rented a building in another part of the yard. So pull past the gate and on the left are old grain silos and heaad straight back to the rear when from the left a City dump truck comes flying through the yard at fairly high speed and right in front of me. Next thing I remember my bike is about 5 ft from me on the ground and I am on the ground too. Dump truck is receding around the corner to the rear of the yard, never stopped. Bike looks like the rear tires of the dump must have run over the front fork and wheel, handlebars, part of the engine, and part of the gas tank.
what I got out of it was a bruised thigh and a lump on the leg that was there for about the next 20 years before the lump went away and the area is no longer numb.

The other time I can think of, was in second grade was put in hospital for a couple of weeks with an unnamed infection in the joint of the right hip. Fever spiked to the point one day that a team of nurses were bathing me with towels soaked in ice water and with ice to lower body temp, so was close to 106. Luckily the temp came down. Infection went away only after inserting big ---- needle into the hip joint and withdrawing fluid. Only thing that saved me was my own immune system I think. Anti-biotics weren't touching it. They never did name the infection that I or my parents know of.

 

[jmac]

Oh yeah, I forgot about the electrocutions....
worst i have been hit with is 240v, sometimes I read about the deaths of linemen on the lineman's forum.

 

[1sttruck]

Drove motorcycles for 20 years.

One of the worst indcidents was driving down a neighborhood street in the late evening, at the speed limit as it was something that I learned early on, and staying a bit to the right as one learns to stay out the center of the road. All of a sudden something real big a few inches from my head flew by. I turned around to check it out, and found a parked, large, dark flat bed truck with a high bed sticking a ways out into the street, and dirt all over the tail lights so you couldn't see them.

Another time I was merging from I5 onto a state road, turned to check traffic, and when I turned back around I saw a large metal frame warning sign sitting in the road where the lanes merge. I swung hard to the left as I had just checked it and it was safe, there was a lot of traffic, and just clipped the sign. I wrestled with the bike, moved into the #1 lane, pulled over on the meridian, and put the bike on the centerstand. The bike, a 750cc Yamaha, had a flat front tire, the lower fork leg cracked in half and was dripping oil, the right side of the engine shaved off and was dripping oil, and the brake pedal was bent back 180 deg. I looked at my boot and was glad that they had steel toes, but my toe was starting to hurt. Then a CA patrolman pulled up and said that he had just told the construction crew to move the sign as someone would hit it. He must have been real smart as how did he know that I'd hit it :^) Then the construction crew pulled up, and then a friend with a pickup. I got the name of the construction company, they ended up covering all costs, and while getting the bike into my friend's truck I noticed that my wrist wasn't working right. I had ended up with a sprained wrist and broken big toe, and a feeling of being grateful for how some things turn out; it wasn't good to have hit the sign, but things could have been much worse.

 

[jmac]

Yeah the City never did pay for my bike after that hit and run, I had a city attorney screaming down the phone at me at one point, "Take us to court!! You have NO proof and WE will NEVER pay." That was a response to just an inquiry I made on how to make a claim. Unfortunately I had no witnesses and after I picked up the bike the drivers supervisor sent the truck out of the area and disavowed any truck being there at all.
That confirmed what I already knew, that the City of St. Louis was a cesspool government of pure corruption and &*%^).
I love that city, but I still hate the government there.

Another true story. I once met a hit man who was doing life in a maximum security prison in Mo. who claimed to have worked for the organization under a man who later became governor. I was a visitor. Normally I would dismiss such stories, but knowing politics in that state, I don't really doubt it.

 

[va3ux]

On 2 occasions I was given "Last Rights" by a priest at my hospital bedside. My parents were called by the hospital to come quickly because the end was near. It all happened when I was youngster back in the '50s so I don't remember any of it. I DO remember being in that hospital though (for months at a time), despite only being 2 or 3 years old at the time. Faces, hallways, windows, desks, floors - I have extremely clear pictures in my mind. Yet I can't remember what the office of client looks like even though I was there 2 weeks ago.

 

[Vilan]

Quote:

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The other time I can think of, was in second grade was put in hospital for a couple of weeks with an unnamed infection in the joint of the right hip. Fever spiked to the point one day that a team of nurses were bathing me with towels soaked in ice water and with ice to lower body temp, so was close to 106.

---

Teams of nurses bathing you? This thread is about almost dying, not going to heaven.

OK, you were in second grade, a bit early then...

 

[Cogito]

Got ejected from the raft on a Level 5 rapids (Level 6 is considered unnavigable. Think: Niagara) on a river in Costa Rica. Spent about 10 minutes underwater, bobbing, spinning, crashing into underwater boulders and railroad ties, going over waterfalls into whirpools, etc. Great fun. Just when I thought I had taken my last breath, some guy jerked me out of the water into his boat.

Had a scary incident in high school of falling through ice on lake in winter, barely got out. Won't count the times I dumped my motorcycle, those should be expected.