What's the closest you've ever come to dying?

Everything else
21

It doesn’t compare to some of you guys (daaaaamn, Bahimiron), but: Car accident. I braked too hard on a wet road, hydroplaned, slid through a stop sign and went right into an oncoming car. Everyone walked away from the accident without injury, but if I hadn’t been wearing my seat belt, I’d have eaten the steering wheel. It was the second time I’d driven a car alone.

When I was a small kid, my father would play a game with me whenever we got in the car–if you caught the other guy without his seat belt on, he owned you a quarter. I made a lot of quarters that way. (In retrospect, he was deliberately “forgetting” to put on his belt, of course.) After a few weeks, putting on my belt as soon as I got in the car was instinctive.

Thanks, Dad.

22

Lying on the floor, idly reading a comic on a sunny day, chewing on something that had come to hand. I gathered my thoughts for a minute, and suddenly realized that I had the business end of a power cord in my mouth, and the other end was very solidly plugged into the wall.

Not as good as a lot of these stories (fucking hell, Bahimiron!), but it certainly sticks in my mind.

23

Holy cow, Bahimiron! You might as well forget the lottery or gambling in general. You’ve already used up all your luck!

24

Had some chest pains, but nothing matched heart attack or angina symptoms. I’d had a poker party starting in 2 hours or so that I’d had setup for weeks. I figured, eh, indigestion.

Next morning, it’s worse. My pulse is around 80 or 90. I’m having spasms in my chest. I go to the ER. Some quick tests later, I have a bleeding ulcer. My “crit” is low. The check me in immediately.

I was down 5 pints of blood. They rapidly infused 2 pints, but I could barely stand even so by the end of the night at the hospital. Standing pulse would rocket to nearly 200, freaked the nurse out and she had me stop standing for a BP/pulse test (for some reason they wanted one laying and one standing).

I over heard in the hall right outside my door at one point after some poor helper had come into my room and done something like emptied my trash, the nurse telling her not to disturb me for any reason, I was really, really sick. I wasn’t in critical care, but I guess I wasn’t in good shape.

Scared the living hell out of me. I still have chest pain now and then, but they tell me its just acid in my esophogas and I’m not bleeding. They say my original pains were my lower esophagas spasming due to the whole in it (BTW, I’m one of those few that’s “allergic” to advil and and due to a ruptured L5 I took it regularly. It ate whole in my stomach). My cardio endurance has never been what it was before,plus I get chest pain if I get my pulse/breathing too high, so I’m not sure I believe that all that rapid pulse and low blood flow didn’t damage something in me.

25

When my wife graduated we went to a little beach resort with family. Her uncle does a lot of kayaking and he brought one to the beach. I decided to give it a try since the surf was pretty mild. I was having a good time and just barely got caught by a wave and flipped over. I knew to pull the little wetsuit thing sealing me in (kayak geek will pipe in with the technical term I’m sure) but for some reason started grabbing the suit material itself around the lip on the kayak, momentarily forgetting about the pull handle. Figured that out while inverted under water and emerged safely with plenty of air left.

I don’t think I was that close to dying since her uncle could have gotten to me eventually, but near drowning always sucks.

Oddly enough, I took her uncle shooting one time and he told me a story about a near gun accident in his youth. Due to ignorance and lack of instruction, the kid pointed the gun at him and did one of those “don’t worry it’s not loaded” things before pulling the trigger and firing shotgun pellets (I think) into the room. I read those stories all the time and my uncle wasn’t aware of how lucky he was.

Bahimiron your story is scary but a malfunctioning or improperly used handgun by an incompetent criminal seems to save a lot of innocent victims over the years. I know if wound up in that situation, that’s what I’d be hoping for… it is terrifying that someone would turn a simple armed robbery into attempted murder though. That always worries me.

26

I apparently kept almost dying as an infant, as I would stop breathing and set off all sorts of alarms. My parents were told to prepare for the worst but it never happened.

But Jesus, Bahimiron. You’ve got fucking superpowers stopping the bullet like that. Twice.

27

Once at the Jersey shore when I was 7 or 8, my older brother and I did a swimming race from the beach out to sea, and I got tired and couldn’t make it back.

My brother signaled to my other brother who was on the beach and he asked some other dude on the beach to help. This guy must have been on a lunch break (fully dressed for work–white shirt, slacks, socks, etc.) or something but he was hanging out on the beach /w this gal, and he jumped in, swam out, grabbed me by my hair and coordinated with some surfer dudes to borrow a board, so he could drag me out. The board must have been necessary b/c I was panicked out of my mind and basically trying to crawl over people to get out of the water.

When we finally got to the beach, I just slogged off and forgot to even thank him. Walking back to the towel, my brothers were like: Don’t tell mom.

Thank you anonymous dude on the beach! I hope your bravery and quick wits earned you more points with your date later that day then they did with me post rescue.

28

At 6 months of age during surgery I started having strokes which were very close to fatal.

At the age of 5 I was in a car accident without a seat belt on. Head went through the wind shield, broke a bunch of ribs and my right leg was broken below and above the knee.

At age 7 at the end of my corrective heart surgery they had significant troubles restarting my heart and the doctor was getting ready to call it when it started back up. A death certificate was already written up with a time of death.

/update
At age 18 my appendix burst, took a few hours for people to get me to the hospital and to see someone. times. I was in the first semster of college taking my mid term in Calculus. I’ve been having stomach pains since I started but I was sure that this was just stress from just starting college. Right as I began the test it felt as someone stuck a knife of fire into my belly and started to gut me. I knew something was wrong. I told the instructor I needed help. He started to scold me for being a freshmen and not knowing to study for the test. I told him I needed an ambulance. He was yelling at me for making up some lame excuse that wouldn’t work in high school. At which point I vomited and passed out from the pain. When I came too I had been drugged out into the hall. I begged for someone to call me an ambulance. No one did. What happen some 70 year old guy who was a student there carried me out to he car and drove me to the hospital. Note he got lost and had to ask direction. Once I got to the hospital the old guy just sat me in the waiting room and left. I started crawling towards a group of people who I assume were doctors and nurses. I told them what had happen and they they quickly got me on a bed and rolled me towards an exam room. They quickly found out what happen and prep me for emergancy surgery. While laying there I over heard the doctors talking about my case and they were concern that I wouldn’t make it. Well I did make it but I was in the hospital for a month while they helped my body fight off the infection. I don’t remember the first week.

29

One Friday evening during my freshman year college I was having dinner in the dining hall. I got a dinner roll and took a big bite of it while filling up my tray. It was too big of a bite, and when I tried to swallow it on my way back to the table it lodged in my throat and cut off my air supply. It wasn’t a restricted air supply, no air was getting in or out, not even a whisper. I remained calm and walked to my table where I gave the chocking sign, but as someone finally got up to do something I spontaneously expelled it out on to the table.

Not too close of a call as people were around and I’m certain that if I didn’t expel it on my own I would have had help, but it was an incredibly helpless and claustrophobic feeling that I never before, or since, felt.

30

At 47 my wife unpacked my suitcase when I came home from a business trip. She found a bra in the suitcase.

The only thing between me and death was that she soon realized it was her bra, and it was in the section of the suitcase in which she had tossed in a pile of my underwear she had pulled out of the dryer right before I left.

But for about 10 minutes the man with the dark robes and scythe had me in his sights.

31

I’m rafting down the Merced River in a rather small non-self bailing raft. The three of us are getting exhausted by constantly having to paddle and then bail like crazy for the next rapid. I finally convinced our macho-man captain to pull over as the third man is lying exhausted on the bottom of the raft, and I’m starting to suspect I’ll be too tired to do myself any good if I end up in the water (and I had been doing a lot of body surfing at the time and was experienced with dealing with surging water).

So I transfer over to the oar boat, which is a hell of a lot more stable and I can rest. The oar boat promptly gets out of shape, gets hung up on a rock, the people in it are too inexperienced to go to the high side, and it flips.

I find myself underwater with something hard hitting me on the head. It’s the wooden seat near the middle of the boat. Time to get out from under it or drown - thankfully I wasn’t knocked unconscious. Dodge bullet number one.

I get out from under and hang onto the side of the raft with one arm and try to bring the other up. It won’t. There’s a rope wrapped around it. Everyone else is busy saving themselves. I can’t get the rope off without letting go with my other hand, but I’m in real trouble because I can’t do a damn thing except hang on. I decide to let go to free my other hand. It works. Dodge bullet number two.

Still in the middle of a really rough rapid, and I am now separated from the boat. Not a problem, I’m a good swimmer with a life vest on. The thing you are supposed to do is put your feet up and float down with your legs in front of you - if you extend down into the water and get wrapped around a submerged log, water pressure can pin you there and you can drown. I do this - my head promptly goes under water - they gave me a life jacket inadequate for my size. I’m now fighting a powerful current and having to struggle in cold water - recipe for rapid exhaustion. I realize I’m in real trouble at this point. Bullet number three isn’t going for the feints.

As I’m coming around a bend - I see a large overhang with a rope coming off it all the way to the water. With my last energy, I’m able to beat the current and grab onto the rope, where I can rest long enough to swim the rest of the way to the shore in the calmer water. I taunt bullet number three as it passes on by.

Safe! I’m not moving! Nothing is prying me from that rope - at the very moment those thoughts are coursing through my water-logged brain, a rather weak, in a sort of “I’m really sorry to bother you” way, “Help” wafts my way. I look back and see a fellow rafter who is not a very good swimmer at all struggling to follow me to the rope. I let go, swim over to him, and help him to the rope. At a certain point I decide further rest is offset by cold, and we struggle to shore.

I vowed never to let Lorini talk me into anything involving risk and water again.

(which is a story for another day, but it involved warm Mexican water, a parachute, a towboat with a bad motor, Lorini taunts that a macho-coworker wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to go up in the air, and some vaguely hungry sharks…)

32

Just this past christmas I was out with my brother, and we were just driving around in his big Jeep Grand Cherokee. We were going up a hill, it was dark, low visibility, and since it was a highway we were going fast. Suddenly, there are two lights facing us in our lane through some fog/smoke/snow, only one is directly above the other. Oh, and they were about 10 meters in front of us.

He slams on the brakes, but it’s icy and the ABS is fucking with it. He manages to squeeze to the left, next to the cement meridian. We don’t even realize what it was until we passed it – a small truck (Chevy S10 type) on its side, facing us, in our lane. If my window had been open, I could have touched the truck without effort as we passed it.

He finally manages to get his vehicle to a stop, we look at each other with this crazed expression. He says “Holy fuck!”, I say “Oh shit!” He jumps out to do his thing (he’s an EMT) while I dial 911 and run down the road in the middle of the highway to flag traffic away so there’s no pile up.

It took me six tries to dial 911 I was shaking so badly. I don’t know that it would’ve killed us, but there’s a good chance we’d have ended up over the meridian in oncoming downhill traffic. Barring that, we definitely would’ve killed the old couple trapped in their truck, since the front of the Cherokee would have smashed directly through the windshield of the truck, probably ripping them in half.

After the police and ambulance showed up and we were giving our statements, the cop looked at the tiny space between the truck and meridian, looked at the Cherokee, and said “You fit THAT though THERE?” And as my brother said later, “If I had tried to drive through there slowly, I’d have hit something”.

Edit: Oh yeah, and I’ve been hit by a car twice. Both times it just ended with me up on the hood. But it could’ve been worse.

33

I’m sure I’ve told the story here before (google search only brings up a few mentions that I’ve made of it), but when I was younger I gashed open my wrist on a broken bottle while jumping off of a ledge.

Bled a fuck ton. About enough to die, especially for as small of a kid as I am.

I got into a car accident recently too, but that would’ve only been deathly if the car had swung the other way.

34

Pretty sure I’ve told the story before, but I was driving home with a friend at about 2AM after a Bad Movie Night. On Beverly in the middle of Hollywood a white Escalade ran a stop sign out of a side street and slammed into the front right of my car, knocking us into oncoming traffic. Luckily there was no one right there heading at us, but the Escalade woman promptly drove away before I could get out of the car, leaving her bumper at the scene.

I was mostly okay, except for a gash on the head and a nasty bruise where the seatbelt buckle had dug into my side due to the sideways motion. My friend had slammed his head on the window frame and was barely conscious. I spent the rest of the night in the ER with him as he slowly fought his way back from 10-second-span amnesia. He couldn’t remember anything and would reset every few seconds. He also had forgotten the previous three months or so. Eventually he got back to normal.

So yeah, full collision with both vehicles at about 30 mph each, never found the other driver. One of three times I’ve been hit by someone in Los Angeles, all three were hit and runs. Classy town we got here.

Visual aid:

It wasn’t raining that night, the force of the impact knocked the wipers into a vertical position. I always thought that was kind of funny.

35

Hmm. Let’s see…

According to the World Health Organization, Pneumonia is the leading cause of death in children worldwide. I came down with a case of it when I was four or five years old. Obviously, I survived, but apparently it could have been much worse.

And when I was seven, one of the neighborhood kids chased me down the street with his father’s shotgun. Same kid chased my sister around the neighborhood with a bow saw, trying to cut her head off. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was rung up on some criminal charge or another by now.

Oh, and when I was 11 or 12, one of the older jerks on my block held one of his father’s guns to my head, and asked me, point-blank (ha!), what I thought would happen if he pulled the trigger.

So, yeah. Brushes with death, but fortunately they all turned out in my favor.

And, in closing, I was once approached by some creepy guy on the playground at the Burger King in Cornwall, Ontario. He wanted me and/or my sisters to come with him. They almost complied, but I grabbed them and pulled them back into the restaurant, because I knew full well not to talk to strangers. Who knows how that would have ended, otherwise?

36

When I was about 10, my then-6-year-old sister and I thought it would fun to fold each other up in the hideaway sofa-bed thingy. So I folded her up in it, and in a few seconds when she realized she really couldn’t breathe in there, I pulled it back out.

When my turn came, she wasn’t strong enough to pull the bed back out with me in it. And there was NO air in there. I remember trying to crane my neck to get my face pointing toward the edge of the mattress, but I was taking my last breaths when my mom happened to walk in and see (and hear) what was happening.

We got in SOOOO much trouble.

37

Well I used to live on a Canadian army base and once wandered onto the firing range as a wee lad.

I do remember my mom being particularly mad at me that day.

38

When I was an undergrad, I fell off a third-floor balcony onto concrete. I was falling headfirst and did indeed see my life flash before my eyes.

I made kind of a puddle on the sidewalk, but I was moaning and trying to stand up by the time the police arrived. They basically carried me a block to GW Hospital, where I got put back together. Jaw, elbows, ribs, concussion, knee… got my best GPA that semester too.

39

The worst part of our new internet culture is that prospective employers apparently google your name, and I like posting under my actual name on Qt3…

40

When I was about fourteen, my Dad took my sister and I out to the State Park in January to go walk around on Lake Michigan. While the big lake never freezes over completely, it does get a nice, thick ice shelf (thick == effectively over ten feet in spots where snow has drifted up and packed down) around the shoreline – they open the park and people go walking around on it (I’m assuming they still do, although I haven’t been out there in winter for over 20 years, for reasons you can probably predict).

Anyway, I’m off in an area about forty or fifty feet away from anyone else, and the ice abruptly crumbles beneath my feet, and I drop like a stone into the water – if it weren’t for my sharply arcade-honed reflexes, I would’ve just vanished under the ice, and nobody would’ve noticed until well after it was too late. Fortunately, as soon as I started to drop, I stuck my arms out sideways, and caught myself on either side of the 2-3’ hole that had opened up.

I started yelling for my Dad, but he just glanced over and waved – he said afterward that he thought I was just joking around. I managed to throw my weight forward and slither out of the water and onto the ice, and from there crawl back to where it was thicker.

My pants froze solid on the way back to the car; once we got home, I was still shivering after sitting in a hot bath for a couple hours.

Needless to say, I’ve never gone on ice that goes over any sort of water ever again.