About 25 years ago when I was still in college I thought it would be cool to get a motorcycle. I rode it around for about a year with no problems until one day I was riding down this mountain road near where I lived and a deer ran out in front of my bike and I swerved to avoid it, I flew off my bike and into a ditch on the side of the road and was knocked out, my bike fell off the other side of the road and down a sheer cliff face. It was not obvious anyone has ever been there or that there was an accident. I laid there for almost a two days until people started looking for me after missing work. When I came to my legs were messed up, I had broken an ankle, elbow and wrist and couldn’t move. I sat there for hours convinced I was going to die. I was pretty upset about it but after a while the anxiety washed away and I just went completely numb. My next memory was waking up in a hospital.
Thank god I was wearing a helmet.
How about you?
I put a gun to my head, ready to end it all.
Woke up in a hospital. No drugs involved.
I drove myself there. The gun was in the glove compartment. Apparently, I self admitted through ED.
I remember NOTHING from gun to my head to waking up in the hospital.
Not sure if that qualifies as near death, but I think I was.
I am better now. That was years ago, I came close again recently, but this time I have answers about myself and a place to start.
Sounds pretty fricken near death to me.
You need to be proud of yourself. That’s a big thing
Glad you’re still here with us!
I’m glad you are here friend
Makes me think about that line where Bruce Banner says “the other guy spit it out”, referring to the Hulk when he tried the same thing with the gun in his mouth.
A bunch.
Two while snowboarding. First time I hit some rocks that were hidden in fresh snow. When I checked my helmet, a rock had pierced it in the back of my head. It was easily a fatal hit had I not had my helmet on. The second time I accidentally rode off a cliff (took the wrong line). I landed on my back in powder but a snapped branch was sticking up two inches below my left arm pit. Had I fallen four inches to the left, it would have impaled me through the heart.
I lost count how many while surfing. Lost a surfer I was trying to rescue and almost drowned myself.
Oddly, never while downhill skateboard racing.
Twice while riding a motorcycle.
Once in a car. A pickup hydroplaned on the interstate right ahead of me. It went in the ditch, overcorrected and came right at my door at speed. I turned my wheel into it so it wouldn’t t-bone me but instead I missed it entirely and all I got was mud on my car and in my underware.
Blockage in three of my four main heart arteries. Two were 99% blocked. It required four emergency stents in my heart. I should be dead for sure from that one but a little voice in my head told me to skip the boat trip and go to the ER because I felt “funny”.
Stage 3 cancer. Beat it but lost my singing voice. Fuck cancer.
Damn someone has been dancing with the devil.
Lol, god damn, dude has 9 lives
Not anymore he hasn’t
I count 8 lives used. Next hole punch gets a free death.
When they say “live life to the fullest” they never mention that doing so will absolutely put you at greater risk of an untimely death. Worth it though.
I was around 21-22 years old. My step-dad got a boat and we had a big family picnic at the bay. We went tubing and started with the youngest sibling up to the oldest, me. Each of us got a progressively more intense ride. I knew I was up for a crazy ride, so I sat cross-legged IN the tube. That was a huge mistake and very dangerous, always lay on top of the tube in case what I’m about to tell you ever happens to you.
It was fine for a few minutes, despite the intensity. Suddenly, the way the boat turned combined with the wake and position I was sitting, the actual tube launched out from the cover/rope that attaches to the boat and that wrapped around my neck and luckily, one of my arms. I was pulled behind the boat for a few minutes, slowly blacking out, as I finally came to, floating naked in the bay. Luckily my step-brother noticed the tube was gone and told him to stop the boat. No idea when my bathing suit got ripped off but luckily it was floating nearby. I had a huge rope-burnrash across my chest, under my arm, and around my neck. Pretty sure if it wouldn’t have went under my arm, it would have snapped my neck.
That was well over a decade ago and I haven’t been in the ocean since.
That was really reckless from your stepfather. You must always have someone watching the tube at all times.
Thrice, all a long time ago:
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Driving back alone from a group camping trip. Got stuck in a freak snowstorm in the mountains, without chains. Stalled and started sliding back towards a really deep ravine. Hit the brakes, but it kept skidding through the sleet. Had the car door open, ready to bail. The car came to a stop, barely inches from the edge.
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Walked out of the shower in a towel. Faced a tweaker with a gun standing in my apartment. Demanded my wallet. Took out the cash. Wasn’t much. He paused, trying to decide what to do next. I really wasn’t sure which way it would go. He left.
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Flight instructor had checked off on doing a solo, then left town. Was nervous, but he had told me to put in the flight hours in his absence. Practicing short take-off/landings and go-arounds. Little single-engine trainer. On the first touch-and-go, I forgot to take off full flaps, which meant maximum drag on the wings. Got barely 1000 ft above ground, then the engine began to sputter. The plane stalled, and started a slow-mo, nose-down spin toward the ground. I remember stopping breathing. Then the brain kicked in. Figured it out. Recovered from the spin way too close to the ground. The most sphincter-clenching, stupidest moment of my life.
I have next to no experience but from the few times I went on those planes I can say the G forces are much more then you expect. It’s not just “oh cool I feel lighter”, it’s " oh god I’m falling to my inevitable death"
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Heart stopped beating. I could feel the lack of oxygen despite breathing like mad. Thought “Fuck, tomorrow my mom is going to find me dead in my bed” (I still was a student living close enough to university to commute). Luckily, one of the built-in safety mechanisms kicked in and my heart restarted. Spent some weeks in hospital after that so they could find me a better medication than the one I was using.
Heart stopped beating? That’s a thing? Jesus
Presumably OP had some kind of condition, given that they were already on (non-working) meds.
I mean I’ve heard of heart attacks but never just neurologically stopping beating. I’m not a doctor or anything though
Heart attacks are also not no more beating, if you didn’t know that. It’s when the heart muscles don’t get enough blood and the essentially start to suffocate.
If it stops beating for any of a large number of reasons, that’s cardiac arrest, which used to be the definition of death.
man dies, freaks out, and comes back to life
Cardiac arrest is heart stop beating (e.g. damar Hamlin? The Bills dude the other year). This is when you see a flatline.
Heart attack or myocardial infarction means the arteries that keep your heart oxygenated get blocked, cardiac tissue after the blockage of that then starts dying. The heart is still beating (or trying to beat).
That is a thing if the medication you get does not really work out for you. I remember waking up one night a week before that where I started the blood pressure recorder, and it measured a heartbeat of 26 BPM. And that was when I was actually out of the valley and had enough energy to press the button.
If you don’t mind me asking, what are you diagnosed with?
High blood pressure. I initially got beta-blockers, which my heart didn’t like that much.
Intense, glad you’re still around!
Yes, me too. Not a good experience, I’ll rate it 1/10, not recommendable.
And yes, quite some of your life passes before your eyes in those seconds. It is indeed very intense.
Almost choked to death on potato. Fell to the ground, which loosened potato.
Choking is the most terrifying and most unfair imo. I have a lot of siblings and every single one of them has had a choking scare.
This. My mother is has ptsd just from witnessing me and my siblings choke on stupid shit.
I really recommend people learn how to perform a tracheostomy in the event that the subject can’t dislodge the object. Heimlich maneuver first and CPR if they lose consciousness, but if all else fails, sharp tube object, and spike the divot above the sternum.
How could brother potato do this to you
Similar to you, but I can’t remember if it was a potato.
Like others, ive had things go down the wrong pipe before; everyone has. But this time it was completely blocked; no air in or out.
I live alone, so it was the scariest moment of my life. By the time I was able to dislodge it enough to breath by slamming my diaphragm down against the edge of a counter enough times, my eyesight had already begun to go dark.
Thought for sure that that was it for me right there.
Rode a horse.
Woke up in a hospital.
Discovered I’m like insanely allergic to horses; airway was completely fucked.
Someone hit me with an epi-pen after recognizing the signs - good chance I’d be dead otherwise. Unsure if it was a staff member or just a random person who happened to be carrying an epi-pen; I was pretty little when it happened, and only vaguely recall getting up on the horse and nothing after, but I’m told I just randomly went all dead-weight and flopped off and face planted in the dirt.
Thanks, random stranger with epi!
This is funniest one.
Wow, that is something I never considered as possible. I guess I’m glad I’m terrified of horses. I should carry those around just in case I see this happening even though I don’t have allergies
It’s not so much a horse issue as it is an allergy issue, and those are specific to the person. You can have a severe reaction to pretty much anything, and you don’t know ahead of time unless you’ve been allergy tested for some reason - you’ll just have a random exposure like mine to horses, and find out the hard way.
I’m guessing the person with the epi pen had an allergy to something else and was carrying for that; saw me and decided to intervene with their own meds.
Sorry that happened to you (regardless of head or hand).
That was a wild read. Glad you’re still around.
. Exit wound
Does it count if I don’t really remember it? I was 8. It was a week before summer break. I was waiting for my mother to come home from work (sitting on the front steps to our house). A friend of mine called me across the street. I went. I didn’t make it to the other side. Hit and run driver crashed right into me, dragged me half a block and left me for dead. Neighbors said he didn’t even look back. They never caught him. I don’t remember waking up in the ambulance. I had a head wound and a broken leg (compound fracture, pierced the skin). I remember them having to set the bone and then take me to another hospital (a children’s hospital). I remember being drugged. And waking up to my mom sleeping in the chair next to me. I have no memory of anything from the time I was crossing the street to the time I was in the ICU at the first hospital. They wouldn’t let me move my head. I don’t remember being scared or in pain or anything until they had to set the bone to straighten out my leg to splint it.
Even the aftermath (10 weeks in a body cast that went from my breast bone down to cover everything but the toes of my broken leg) is kind of a hazy mess. Except that I then fell down the stairs and broke my arm too. Added insult to injury.
Kids are weirdly resilient. It sounds like you should have deep scars across your body, but I know for a fact that they all probably faded in a year or two. Damn kids with their super powers.
I still have the scar from the head wound but you can only see it in winter time when I’m paler, and it’s sort of receded some into my hair line. Even then. It’s very faint. I don’t have any scars on the leg (that I can see anyway) Or my back. It’s the kind of thing that didn’t seem scary or worry me at the time, but looking back I know I could have died. I think I don’t remember a lot of things because I was on painkillers for a good majority of the time.
Of course the other thing is that I have to go off the accounts of people who were there at the time and they were mostly kids (and one person’s mom) who couldn’t give the cops a good description of the guy or the car or anything.
Bumped my head with another kid in 6th grade at recess. When we went back in for reading time I realised I couldn’t read and had a headache, so I told my teacher and went up to the front office. I remember sitting down waiting for my mum to pick me up, then next thing I know I’m laying down in a hospital bed. Apparently I got a really bad concussion and went crazy and I don’t remember a thing, I’m glad I don’t lol.
There was an icy patch on the playground one day and people were taking turns sliding on it. One kid fellover and I went down after him and my stomach fell on his upturned shoe. All the wind rushed out of me and everything went black for a few seconds until I woke up on the ground
Wow, that is really scary. It is kind of funny/sad how delicate our heads are and they just kind of hang there on top of everything exposed
I know right, it wasn’t even that hard of a hit. Apparently it was just in a sensitive spot
According to my brain, every time I have to interact with a stranger.
I… I just died in your arms tonight…
“Oh ffs Farid, you can’t keep doing this! You’re getting too heavy!”Appreciate the Cutting Crew reference. But I can and I will.
“Should we call an ambulance?”
“No, call his mother to yell at him.”– No, don’t call my mother, she’ll be so mad! She told me that if I die I shouldn’t come back home for dinner…
she’d kill you
Or worse… expelled.
“Do we… do we call an Ambulance?”
“No, we call his sister who will pick him up and yell at him.”
I’ve been on a motorcycle for over 25 years now and I’ve had some near misses but nothing serious.
That’s an amazing story and lucky you for making it through. I’ve known of two people in my circle who died from motorcycle accidents and a few more in my community and region who died … it’s also amazing to realize that you don’t need to be riding fast in order to get killed on a motorcycle. One woman in my town was at an intersection, moved across in an awkward way, got hit by a truck and neither were moving fast, she just got hit in a particular way, knocked down, pinned down by the truck, crushed and then died on the way to the hospital.
My near death experience was not as dramatic as yours. I was a dumb teen on a four wheeler on gravel. I did a major jump without knowing it out expecting it, launched about 20 feet in the air, landed front wheels first, launched forward and smashed my face in the gravel. Thankfully the atv went flying in a different direction and didn’t land on me. I also didn’t have a helmet on. I didn’t get knocked out and I was aware the whole time. I was just lucky I was fit strong and landed in a lucky way that didn’t hurt me too much.
I have a cousin who fell off an atv as a passenger, landed the wrong way, hit her head (again no helmet) severely injured, treated in hospital for a day before she died from injuries.
Motorcycles and ATV are dangerous machines
High stress job led to alcohol, smoking, high risk lifestyle almost ended me at 27 with a bleeding ulcer. In bed for a day or so before my then girlfriend found me and called the hospital. ER, blood transfusion, 2wk stay, 2wk recoup at home with daily iron injection, prescription meds for a month to keep the acid low.
Special diet for a month (no processed food, no caffeine, no nicotine, no pepper, no hard foods-spft, mushy, etc.
Got my shit together, woke up. No more smoking, alcohol (eventually) in moderation, healthier coping mechanisms- at one point when the stress ramped up in the job (still in the same career field) I was training/running triathlons. Married that then girlfriend, 25+ years on, 2 grown ass kids.
27 club is no joke…just happy I wasn’t a celebrity.
Glad you turned it around. Alcohol is no joke
Yeah also found out during a follow up exam that cigarettes cause an increase in stomach acid.
Everyone I have met who rode motorcycles has a story like this. Then they lift up their pant leg or shirt to show you ghastly huge scars.
Kid me was pretty stupid. My mom, sister, and I went on a trip to Hawaii with my mom’s coworker. At that time, I was really bad at swimming. One of the beach trips we went to snorkel. I was left unsupervised for a while and ended up following a sea turtle way too far out. I ended up getting water in the breathing tube, and I panicked. I think I was flailing around for about two minutes going up and down the surface of the water until my mom’s coworker noticed and dragged me back to shore. Was pretty sure I would’ve just drowned if no one noticed.
