Your closest brushes with death

When I was about three, I was at the beach in Delaware with my family. My dad decided to carry me past the breakwater so I could see the waves. Good move - he severely underestimated the strength of the waves, which knocked me out of his arms and into the water. Once he picked me up, another wave knocked us over again. The feeling of being suddenly underwater is one of my earliest memories.

All turned out fine, he got me out, he'll never live it down, etc.

1) Vomited on an Egg McMuffin, ruptured esophagus and subsequently puked up maybe a couple pints of blood or so. Not sure of exact amt. but my blood solids were about 50% when tested at the hospital. Death by McMuffin, almost, true story.

(Dunno if it was near-fatal but I've been waiting to use the "Death by McMuffin" phrase a long time)

2) Nodded off driving home after night shift work and opened my eyes about one second from impact behind stopped garbage truck. Swerved into oncoming lane (no traffic) but still tore away right side of car on the little platform the guy in back rides on (luckily he was off the truck). The collision spun the car around and it stopped facing the correct way in the opposite lane; had it not I would had shot headfirst into the steep ditch off the road with unfavorable results.

The worst part was that the patrolman who took my statement kept haranguing me about how fast I was going; I didn't know because I was asleep at the time of the incident but he thought I was trying to cover up something.

Mostly I was just glad nobody else got hurt because of me.

3) A couple of sleep apnea type incidents where I'd wake up with a sealed windpipe. Probably unlikely that I would have passed out before drawing breath but it's kind of scary thrashing around alone in a dark room unable to shout out for help thinking that's it for you. P.S. if you have acid reflux don't snack on peanut butter before sleep because I suspect that's what snuck back up my throat forming a glommy glottis sealant.

1)Had very, very severe pneumonia when I was a couple weeks old. Hospital even called my parents and a priest into the room at one point, but I pulled through. No real memories of that though.

2)Driving into Memphis a couple years ago, I was doing about 75 on the highway coming in over the river. Got to a rise in the bridge and saw that traffic was dead. fucking. stopped. immediately in front of me. Hit the brakes and swerved onto the shoulder. Came to a stop about two feet from the car in front of me and about three inches from the concrete barrier on the shoulder. To this day I no idea how I managed that maneuver without hitting anything. It was a shaky drive the rest of the way to my hotel.

when i was 3 we lived in france. we were at the top of a mountain and boarding the cable car to go back down when a group of tourists started pushing on, pushing me off the ledge and almost fell to my death. luckily my dad noticed and caught me.

1. i was 16 driving home from a football game with friends and was all OMG WE'RE SO GROWN DRIVING ALONE and i was distracted and turned left across 3 lanes when i shouldn't have. two incoming cars swerved around our car which was stopped perpendicular across the road. i might not have died but a few of my friends certainly would have

2. this past year at a park with some friends, i had my friend throw a tennis ball really high up in the air so i could catch it (so much fun). except another friend didnt know what was going on and decided he was going to hit the ball as it fell from 40 feet in the air. i ran to catch it and he swung a bat at it and he apprently missed my head by a few inches. i didnt know what was going on because i was looking straight up at the ball but my friends were really freaking the fuck out.

lol Americans.

When I was in my late 20s, I injected a substance of unknown provenance and I went into atrial fibrillation. I dunno how close to death I was, but I was very close to the docs deciding to stop and restart my heart, which might have been fatal.

I suppose having a head-on collision with a car coming the other way on a highway is also a pretty close brush with death. I didn't drive again for 5 years after that.

When I was 19, I had a strange disease that caused my ankles and wrists to swell up to 3-4x normal size and turn purple. Also, I had pains in my gut like someone was doing hari-kiri on me. That whole thing lasted about a week, and they thought I had meningitis, but I didn't. They put me in an isolated room and nobody could come to see me w/o facemasks and other protections. They never figured it out, but told me I had leukocytoclastic vasculitis, which is a term for a collection of symptoms, not a disease.

The most embarrassing part of that last episode was when they brought in a troupe of med students to look at my testicles, which were also purple. Probably looked at other parts of me, but I was in no shape to notice.

Drove round a bend in the road at 70mph to be faced with a dude coming round the same bend from the other side, only faster and on the wrong side of the road. Swerved, just managed to stay on the road, pulled over, shook a lot, had to get my mum to drive the rest of the trip for me.

When I was about eight, I was playing tennis against our back wall while eating sweets and a mint got lodged in my throat and I collapsed and my dad had to turn me upside down holding me by my ankles and slap my back until it came out.

Nearly hit by a night bus crossing Oxford Street in 2005. Also contracting pnuemonia in France in 1997.

1) aged 14 or so, ran straight through a plate-glass window (i thought it was ... well, not a window, just a big empty space). suddenly being surrounded by thousands of tiny, swirling shards of glass was actually pretty fucking cool.

damage sustained: massive bruise to my knee (which seemed to have been the initial impact, luckily); tiny scratch on forearm; delayed-shock reaction which meant i had to go and lie down for an hour going: "fuck."

2) about 10 years ago, due to my mistaken belief that an external hard drive would never be plugged directly into the mains, i sustained an electric shock that threw me right across a room. damage sustained: banged head (no concussion); awesomely cool burn mark in my hand that looked like i'd been bitten by an electric vampire.

i have to say, i don't think either of these counts as a brush with death. but, luckily, it's the closest i've come.

i'm not counting "dude pulling gun on me and my mates in a bar" because i very, very much doubt it was loaded and, even if it was, i don't think he'd have been able to fire the fucking thing. being caught in a windowless basement that caught fire wasn't very nice either, but at least the exit was between me and the flames, so hey.

touch wood, i've never had any particularly serious road accidents. i think my dad and my uncle took the family share of those :/

1) Getting caught in a riptide of the coast of Mexico. Was maybe 50m out from the shore, realised that I was expending a hell of a lot of effort trying to swim back, and getting nowhere. Plus I was getting hit in the face by waves which is no fun. I don't think I was panicking but I was getting pretty worried, when I saw that someone must have noticed my predicament because the lifeguard was lazily ambling down the beach, sitting down, leisurely putting his flippers on, before swimming out and pulling me back to safety. I don't know what would have happened otherwise, if I knew back then the old trick of swimming parallel to the shore.

2. Various unthrilling stories of reckless driving in my college years, e.g. driving my friend's left hand drive golf and the guy in the passenger seat telling me it was ok to overtake, pulling out, and seeing the headlights of some huge vehicle coming straight towards me.

No really good ones (touch wood), but these are the ones I can think of:

1. About 6 months ago, when I was just getting used to my clipless bike pedals, I managed at the absolute last possible moment to extract my foot from the pedal when failing to do so would have seen me topple under a car going at 40mph. Each time I revisit it in my mind there is no way for the car to have avoided me if I'd fallen.

2. Tom reminded me of getting multiple cramps when swimming in Elba. I had been swimming leisurely for about 20 minutes and had maybe 400 yards to go across a half-moon bay, and suddenly I had cramp in my calf, then in my thigh, then in my other leg, then in my feet. Agony, but somehow I made it to shore.

3. At a Halloween party when I was 12, I was climbing up a ladder and missed my hand hold, falling about 6 feet backwards onto a concrete floor, head first. My skull didn't split open because I was wearing a bowler hat at the time, the rim of which was the perfect combination of hard and springy to take almost all the force out of the impact.

I fell in a river when I was small and was nearly washed away TO RAPIDS but was able to swim and my dad fished my out.

Then there was that time when I went ashore with the Green Berets in 'Nam.

1. Aged 11 or so, pulling myself onto the top of my back garden wall, I grasp the concrete slab across the top - which turns out not to be attached to the wall at all. I fall backwards onto the ground, pulling the slab after me. When I come to, I am on my back on the ground - I have no pain and no injuries, just a big concrete slab squashing my belly. Not really a brush with death, but certainly a brush with a crushed pelvis which would've been plenty bad enough. I still don't really know why I wasn't hurt - the slab must've fallen at an angle and hit the ground an instant before I did, making its eventual drop onto my stomach a couple of inches rather than 8 feet

2. Running to school around the same time, I dash across the road without looking, but fortunately emergency stop on the white line or I'd have been under the wheels of an oncoming car. I turn to run back, only to feel the breeze of another car going the other way. I've got traffic-dodging off to fine art now, of course, but I remember feeling (while the cars were still passing, inches from my skinny body) surprise and again confusion that I'd got away with it.

Mark C - at your Halloween party, were you dressing as a droog, one of the Thompson twins, or a general city gent? It is nice to know that bowler hats actually do what they are meant to.

I think I was a psychopath of some kind - I remember having an axe.

In order:

1. Hours from death by meningitis, age 10 months.
2. Given terminal cancer diagnosis, age 4.
3. Got pulled into Mississippi River undertow from a drop-off nearer to shore than imaginable, age 11, causing two uncles to jump in and try to get me. All three of us needed rescue by boat.

I fall backwards onto the ground, pulling the slab after me

I did this, but instead of a slab it was a stone sundial, and instead of falling 8 feet I fell into a garden pond with the sundial on top of me. Nasty bruising but nothing worse.

Walking up the hill back to Brighton station after a weekend away, failed to notice that someone had left the windows open on third floor of Waterstones in a gale. A window is slammed shut by a gust and the pane of glass falls 30 feet, shattering on the pavement five yards in front of me. "Fuck!" I think, paralysed with feat, trying to work out what just happened. Regain composure and then *another* pane of glass falls just behind me. I legged it across to the other side of the street and all the way up to the station.

*fear* not "feat"

I nearly got run over by a tram twice in Poland, saved by being pulled out of the way by bystanders. They don't make any noise and I'm not used to looking out for them.

The funny thing about all the potentially REALLY BAD accidents I've almost had is the total lack of affect afterward...I'm not nervous, my heart doesn't pound, the bad thing didn't happen and now it's over. I guess when you don't/can't see it coming, there's no adrenal/chemical spike to deal with...?

i think the adrenal spike is what causes that actually

2. this past year at a park with some friends, i had my friend throw a tennis ball really high up in the air so i could catch it (so much fun). except another friend didnt know what was going on and decided he was going to hit the ball as it fell from 40 feet in the air. i ran to catch it and he swung a bat at it and he apprently missed my head by a few inches. i didnt know what was going on because i was looking straight up at the ball but my friends were really freaking the fuck out.

^^for some reason this is the one that freaks me out the most, but are you like 3.5 feet tall?? how does he swing over yr head?

Accidentally swallowed a gobstopper candy, (oh, the irony) but thankfully my brother had the good sense to pound me on just the right spot upon my back, whereupon it flew out of my mouth.

Almost hit on bike as a child by a motorcycle going probably 70 mph, actually nicked my frame but didn't hit me directly, I didn't even fall over.

Almost fell off/down a big rock cliff while hiking on the northern side of Lake Superior in oh 1996 or so -- I overbalanced and someone else grabbed me by my pack and pulled me back.

I don't know what else right now. There're probably more.

xposts

Yeah, like, the first time I ever got mugged I took it in such stride that it genuinely surprised me. I even calmly told the perpetrator to have a good night before I continued walking on home.

It was like a casual meeting of two gentlemen, except one of the gentlemen threatened the other one with bodily harm.

1.) Walked around for two days with a collapsed lung, thinking it was just really bad heartburn. Could have led to cardio or pulmonary failure. Ended up in surgery and was hospitalized for 2 weeks.

2.) Using Tyl3nol 3s in a way that I shouldn't have. Started to feel weird, sick, and faint. Ran into the bathroom and collapsed in very slow motion (in real life, it must have been quick, because I pulverized a wooden trashcan on my way down). I could feel consciousness fading away and thought to myself something along the lines of "Way to go - I'm dying and all I've done with my life is listen to Phish."

My friend came in and brought me around with a lot of cold water and talking and shaking. I don't know if I was actually close to death, but it really felt like it.

dell, if I ever get mugged, I'm going to be polite as hell.

had a shotgun put to the back of my head by some hell's angels while they were robbing my friend's apartment of some stuff he'd just bought from them. i was sure i was gonna die.

xpost

Yeah, but it wasn't even b/c I was intimidated, necessarily. I think my organism as a whole just snapped into some weird default "wtf?!" mode, such that it instantaneously made complete and perfect sense to find myself caught up in a completely dodgy situation.

pneumonia knocked out my lungs and filled my chest with fluid when i was 25. came close.

I've told muggers to fuck off before, but a) I was very drunk b) they were about 13 and c) I was pretty certain they weren't armed. I got a minor kicking, but they didn't get their hands on the £40 I had in my pocket, which I reckon is a result.

I'd wager that on some level, a great many people are more frightened by the prospect of say, asking out someone they fancy, as opposed to being held up at gunpoint.

asking out someone they fancy, as opposed to being held up at gunpoint.

having done both i'll take the fancy asking every day of the week and twice on sundays.

Caring for self-image given a greater priority than warding off bodily harm...

Being held up happens very suddenly. If you're debating asking someone out, you can torture yourself for all manner of time with endless back and forth mental phantoms.

01. (Age 20) First trip to the UK - spring break '98: Arrived in London jet-lagged and still a bit soused on duty free Scotch. While making my way from a Tube station to my friend's apartment, I started to cross a street while looking right for oncoming traffic, putting me approximately one millisecond away from being obliterated by a double-decker bus speeding up from the left.

02. (Age 24 or so) While driving a modest sedan on a two-lane expressway, I attempted to pass a semi in the left lane. I was apparently in the driver's blind spot, or he was particularly negligent, because he started to merge into my lane while I was parallel to him. By the time he realized I was there, I had been forced all the way over onto a narrow rumble-strip, flanked by inches on either side by the behemoth truck and a large concrete divider wall. This left me with a lifelong mortal fear of passing semis. Thanks driver!

2. this past year at a park with some friends, i had my friend throw a tennis ball really high up in the air so i could catch it (so much fun). except another friend didnt know what was going on and decided he was going to hit the ball as it fell from 40 feet in the air. i ran to catch it and he swung a bat at it and he apprently missed my head by a few inches. i didnt know what was going on because i was looking straight up at the ball but my friends were really freaking the fuck out.

^^for some reason this is the one that freaks me out the most, but are you like 3.5 feet tall?? how does he swing over yr head?

-- deeznuts, Friday, April 18, 2008 11:38 AM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

i'm like 5' 7'' or so but i think since the ball was falling straight down he was kind of swinging up at it so that's how it got near my head

i fell asleep once while driving home from school and crossed over into the other lane and woke up as i saw a semi driving towards me so i drove onto the other shoulder and past the semi and crossed back over to the other side.

some guy almost ran me over with his car as i was crossing the street and he ran a red light. i managed to smack the back of his car as he was driving past and he turned around and drove onto the sidewalk in front of me and got out and seemed ready to do some damage (he was huge~!) but apparently realized he was on a busy street so he drove off.

At first glance on the board, I misread this as "Your closes brushes with teeth"

the pane of glass falls 30 feet, shattering on the pavement five yards in front of me
Apart from plunging to one's death stories, this one freaks me out the most. Being sliced in half by a plummeting sheet of glass is not the way I would choose to go.

I guess when you don't/can't see it coming, there's no adrenal/chemical spike to deal with
Yeah, that's true. A full-size deer flashed in front of me recently when I was leaving the motorway at midnight, but it was so close I didn't even get a shock. Can't have been more than a foot from hitting it. I guess that technically makes it a brush with death for the deer, though I wouldn't have fancied my chances, that thing smashing through my windscreen.