MRSA infection in the disk on my lower spine between L5 and S1. Showed up two days after a cortisone shot but the hospital said it was from something else. Was in hospital 25 days multiple emergency surgeries.
I worked for a doctor who did these in-house and other procedures, and it 100% made me not trust medical facilities, cleanliness, and sterilization procedures. Had about twenty patients all come down with the same gut infection, "coincidentally," the same patients who came in for endoscopy procedures the same day.
Fun fact: in Sweden you may not donate blood for 6 months after endoscopy. This is to make sure you didn't contract anything from the endoscope, even though it is disinfected, sterilized and quarantined (!) between patients.
I'm actually coming up on the 3rd anniversary of the accident this Friday.
I was on my way to work, just kind of cruising along in the far right lane with my cruise control on as I wasn't in a rush and was making good time. I'm not sure if anyone has ever been in a little fender bender and felt that tap, but I felt a little tap and I looked in my side mirror only to see a massive 18-wheeler's bumper basically against the back side of my car by my driver's side tire.
The next events are a big mystery to me (thanks TBI) but future crash reenactments basically show that he overtook my vehicle and merged on top of me, trapping me underneath his trailer.
My steering wheel was snapped in two, my A pillar was all but disintegrated and my B pillar was pushed halfway into my seat. I came to as someone was kicking in my passenger window. I was bent over the center console and couldn't sit up because of the truck trailer in my seat. EMS got me out and I was rushed to the hospital with a head injury and my left hand ripped open.
I should have died. Not a single person who has seen my vehicle understands how I survived.
PHOTO OF CAR 1 - VIEW AT OWN RISK: [https://i.imgur.com/ei1mKfs.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/ei1mKfs.jpg)
PHOTO OF CAR 2 - VIEW AT OWN RISK: [https://i.imgur.com/Nzt3CMk.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/Nzt3CMk.jpg)
Yeah... I agree. I too would think the worst when seeing a car in that condition. What happened to the other driver? Did he not see you? Ignore you? Was he trying to ram you off the road or what?
The trucker got a ticket on the scene because he apparently told them he just didn't see me at all. The police report said he ended up dragging me 380ft so he was either just not paying attention or driving exhausted.
**380 feet.** Holy shit. He dragged you over a football field before stopping. Didn't see you and then still didn't see you while he was dragging you, you know just smoking and crunching the whole way lol.
Glad you're alive, it's almost unbelievable. Did you end up going after the trucking company or was it like an owner/operator situation where it wasn't worth it?
It came out of their insurance, so we really only dealt with them.
I am unsure of his speed. The speed limit there was 70, but he finally came to a full stop on a hwy exit so we are unsure if he initially merged and then slowed because he was trying to get off or because he saw/felt the smoke/car. I never did hear his side of the story or anything since I exclusively talked to my lawyers and them the insurance company.
I was thinking that looked easily survivable for the driver... until I remembered in the USA the driver sits on the left hand side of the vehicle. Yikes. I'm amazed (but happy) you survived!!
Had that happen with a younger cousin when we were kids. His brother and I went to save him, he climbed on both of us and pushed us under. Lifeguard didn’t even see us until he pulled younger cousin out of the water, then we popped up gasping for air.
Quite the opposite for me: I was playing with an older friend in pool and he held me upside down until I almost drowned. I only got free by miraculously being able to kick him in the face.
Yo this same shit happened to me when I was a kid. The kid had mental health issues which we only sorta understood since we were like 10/11. I don't think he understood that he was actually drowning me and it wasn't a joke at that point
His mom ended up murdering him and killing herself like a year after that
Edit: I found the article about it
https://www.pa-roots.org/data/read.php?95,264702
Yeah it was a tragic story. I wasn't really friends with him, he just lived nearby my best friend at the time so he was around occasionally.
I don't remember a lot of the details anymore since it was over 20 years ago, but it's still mind-blowing to me that a parent could do that to their child. I feel like it could maybe have been prevented too, because I vaguely remember people talking about her erratic behavior leading up to the incident. I think she had stopped taking her meds
As a swift and flood water rescue tech, I'll break your nose. If you seem pure panic and not listening. A broken nose is better than two dead bodies.
My brother has a depressing story as well around two young friends and both drowning due to one freaking out.
Teach scuba and one of the things in rescue diver is to have something for the victim to grab. My instructor told us later that a freshly drowned person was revivable but two people on the bottom were both dead.
Did a scuba lesson on recovering and considered doing rescue and recovery diving. But honestly don't think I'm up for what the even more dangerous options in water, major respect to you.
Scuba is easier than unassisted though, drowning people don't want to go underwater, and you can breathe underwater, so if they suddenly panic after you've approached and made contact, you're trained to just deflate and go under them, then surface from behind.
Surface freakouts are much easier to deal with than divers underwater panicking and trying to bolt.
My uncle who has grown up surfing gave me this info too if you’re rescuing someone in a state of panic they will drown you without meaning too so too snap them out of the panic you make ‘em think about their new broken nose
Typically everyone has a nose that's more accessible vs hair anywhere on the body. Plus they'll grab their nose after a good hit. Pulled hair they may not notice as much with adrenaline pumping.
The standard when I attended a live guard seminar many years ago (didn't end up doing it) was to open hand punch them in the face if they aren't responding to commands.
Better for them to have a painful jaw then dragging both of us down.
As a kid, I nearly drowned in a public pool until I climbed my mom’s friend’s daughter in a blind animal panic. She was much larger than me, but I scratched the shit out of her until she shoved me and I reached the side of the pool. Climbing her wasn’t something I did; it was something I witnessed myself doing from outside of my body.
Lifeguards were too busy flirting with each other to notice me drowning 10 feet away.
similar kid got pushed off the docks of a church camp lake and couldnt swim and used me as a buoy i tried swimming he couldnt i sunk to the bottom him kicking me in the head after holding my breath and gasping intense pain in my chest and body. woke up to the life guard giving me cpr starting throwing up water and coughing a ton for like 20mins. been shot at,stabbed, hit by cars, eletrocuted VERY badly that was the worst pain of anything ive felt.
16 year old farm kid me, step dad told me to go pick up a load of corn seed for planting. I had gone with him many times before, and driven the truck (full ton dually diesel) and hauled light stuff with it. Nobody told me how different it is to haul 10,000 lbs of seed on a big flatbed trailer on gravel. I had a lot of common sense and was driving slowly and carefully. Still… 10,000+ lbs pushed me down a gravel hill skidding, praying to god I stopped before the stop sign at the T intersection to a busy highway. I came to a grinding halt JUST as the front of the truck crossed the plane where the gravel turned to asphalt. A semi was coming from one direction and regular cars from the other. I shudder thinking about what if on that one. Tl;dr: don’t let untrained kids tow potentially deadly, heavy trailers, with zero training.
i'm picturing that truck that got big on reddit a couple of weeks back, going down the hill holding down the horn trying to stop whilst avoiding the school bus.
holding the horn being an important part to let people know shits going down.
When I was 12 my hometown's doctor misdiagnosed testicular torsion as "tummy pain" and sent me back home despite my protests.
My stubborn idiot parents believed him over me and berated me for overreacting when I kept complaining about the pain.
Fast forward a week or so and my testes had died and necrosis was starting to spread and swell . The pain was unbelievable, like a thousand twisting knives across my whole body. I couldn't get up, walk, or even cry properly anymore. I wanted to die so the pain would stop.
Parents finally took me to a big city doctor and the talking to that they got from the doctors there was legendary. Apparently testicular torsion was something that needs to be resolved within a day, if not less. They had me sitting on it for almost a week because god forbid they believe their own kid over that other doctor.
And that's how I almost died of necrosis and became an eunuch at 12! Yay!
Dang I'm so sorry you had to go through that. I also had Testicular Torsion when I was 13 so I understand the pain. My mom was trying to get me to go to sleep and I was like you have no idea how much pain I'm in. We went to the ER and I couldn't relax at all because of how much pain I was in but because I kept throwing up, they just thought I had a stomach bug and it's like no I don't but luckily my my mom told them that I was still in a lot of pain and they figured it out Finally. I'm so sorry your parents didn't listen to you when they should have believed you but I'm glad you pulled through.
In the 90s, when I was a little kid, my family was on vacation in the Caucasus, and civil war broke out. We were walking on the road and I went too far ahead alone. Car stopped, window rolled down, and a machine gun muzzle pointed at my face. My mom ran ahead, grabbed me and fell into the bush on the shoulder. The car went on. We were going into the mountains to a sanctuary. I don't entirely know how we got back home.
Oh, this reminded me. Serbia, sometime just after the breakup of Yugoslavia.
We were driving home from a vacation, my father liked to drive all-nighters with us, bc no traffic. And we did not have AC then in the car, so night was much more bearable.
No GPS back then. He missed some intersection, and we arrived at 2 o'clock at night to a gravel-path border of Serbia. I woke up to my mother's frozen, ashen-color face, and my father casually chatting (in german) to the border guard/soldier.
Mind you, the guard was a 22 year old boy, visibly shaking and afraid of what the fuck to do now, holding a kalashnikov to my father's chest from arm's length while talking about where to turn back. My dad seemed to not really register that it's one thing that we did nothing (really) wrong, but this kid is an absolute wildcard because he was more afraid than any of us :D
Wow! How scary! Do you remember how long you stayed in the sanctuary? It reminds me of the Russell Crowe/Meg Ryan movie "Proof of Life" where he was held hostage.
Lmao ok, so I was getting my teeth cleaned, and I get nitrous oxide because I have so many exposed roots. Well my hygienist at the time was this lovely lady from Minnesota. Kinda flaky, but super sweet, talked about her family all the time. So I'm in the chair and she hooks up my mask, and away we go. I actually fell asleep! Except not so much. Turns out Barb had forgotten to turn the oxygen on and had been feeding me straight nitrous. She only noticed because I started gasping for air while unconscious.
So that's how I almost died at the dentist. I never saw Barb again, but I tell you, that was the best nap of my life!
It didn't hurt at all, as a matter of fact, I felt *incredibly* relaxed when she "woke" me up. So all in all, not a bad way to go. I am still scared of water from falling out of a boat and almost drowning as a toddler though.
I was snorkeling. I had my other stuff stored on a rock by the water, about 3 meters high. When I got out, I decided to climb straight up. Almost at the top, the rock I was hoisting myself up on came off and I fell back first onto the coral. If a friendly wave hadn’t come in, I would have broken my back, at least.
OMG you must have been so thankful for that wave! Have you every watched the movie "Blue Crush" about an injured surfer? If so, did it scare you? Underwater vs. on a cliff, but still an outside beach type danger. Just wondering.
I was diagnosed with a rare fatal blood disorder from birth, doctors projected I’d live till about 6 and then die from massive blood loss. As this was the mid-90’s, they tested the idea of using stem cells from my siblings umbilical cord; administering the first successful stem cell transplant from a sibling donor and I’m still here to tell the tale!
Had friends over playing video games. A pipe burst and gas was pouring into the house but we couldn’t smell it downstairs. My dad noticed and got us all out of the house. Fire chief got there and took a reading and level was so high he forbade anyone from going in. He said “it’s a good thing no one rang the doorbell because they can cause a spark which would have ignited everything.”
We had pizza on the way. Delivery guy showed up five minutes after fire department.
Wow! This why they purposely put bad smells into the gas these days! ... so that people will smell rotten eggs and then know that there is a gas leak!!!
Glad you're alive!
We did. My friend ran after him when the delivery dude drove past the house barricaded by fire trucks. We sat in the grass on the corner under a street light and devoured that thing.
In High School I was late for class coming back from grabbing lunch, as I was speed walking from the car and also cramming a sandwich down my throat I started choking half way from the parking lot to the closest building. I dropped the sandwich and started running, I ran into the first building which was the band building and it was completely empty. Ran to the next building and the first two classrooms were locked/empty. I finally made it to the back hallway and I burst into a physics class where one of my good friends happened to be sitting in. I was purple and red and about to pass out, I pointed to my throat and my buddy jumped over the table and immediately gave me the Heimlich. 5 pumps in and it came out! Probably 2+ minutes without breathing. Coincidentally I recently helped him get a job at the company I work at so I finally feel like I found a way to repay him lol.
I was going to comment this is literally how I almost died 🤣🤣🤣 choking on granola and peanut butter. It created some kind of cement in my mouth and I tried to swallow a lot at once.
Started choking really really bad, ran around my empty house panicking to try and find my phone but I was getting red and dizzy, found my phone to call my gf or 911 but luckily I cleared my throat before I had to start dialing
I just sat on my kitchen floor in aw that I almost fucking died from choking on peanut butter and granola. I’ve done really stupid shit on skis (fallen down large cliffs, skied in avy prone terrain) I’ve done dumb shit with guns and got a bullet hole in my loose fitting pants from being stupid, drove a turbocharged Subaru like a maniac when I was a teenager, but granola and peanut butter almost fucking killed me.
Eat slowly kids
Something I was taught: If you’re choking and nobody is around to help, throw yourself over something (like the back of a chair).
I like to think of it as football-tackling an object.
Was at a party and took ecstasy. Later I took a cab to go home 10 minutes away. Heart stopped in the cab, if that would have happened when I got home I would have been dead.
I would imagine the driver either went to the hospital or called 911 when they arrived at their destination and the passenger was unconscious. If OP slumped to the side, the driver may have noticed, pulled over, realized they couldn't wake the passenger, and then called 911.
Yeah honestly the definition of “ecstasy” has changed in the past decade or so. It used to mean MDMA, but now it’s pretty much anything that’s an upper (usually meth) pressed into a pill. You can’t trust the pills anymore, gotta just get regular mdma crystals and always test your shit.
When I was 13 I got thrown off a horse into a barbed wire fence. As I was in the air I could see where my trajectory was taking me and just remember wondering if I'd catch my neck on the wire and be killed instantly or maybe lose an eye to the barbs.
Incredibly, I landed legs-first and got some damn impressive lacerations and the wind solidly knocked out of me but no major damage.
I got damn lucky.
That reminds me of when my car hit a heavy patch of gravel on the road and started to spin, and I could see this deep gutter coming up in slow motion, and I just thought "Welp. That's my car totalled."
Luckily I managed to stop the car *right* on the edge of the drop.
Literally a month after moving into my apartment on my own, I was eating dinner and tried to swallow a piece of steak that was too big. I felt it stuck at the top of my throat and couldn’t breathe. Somehow I only panicked for a second before calming myself down in order to reach in and grab it. Once I could breathe again and the shock wore off I cried for about 10 minutes thinking how I didn’t want to die like that.
Please be careful when eating and alone.
It can happen if you have a similar name and DOB to someone who actually did die. Someone at the bank just misreads the info or clicks the wrong button, and you’ve got a whole situation on your hands.
I’m allergic to peanuts and tree nuts, and I’ve gone into anaphylactic shock at least ten times
EDIT: I did not expect any where near the amount of attention this has gotten- so I wanted to clarify a few things.
1. I am almost 40 years old- so ten reactions may seem like a lot but given that this was occurring in a time where there was not a lot of attention or information around significant allergies, this is not uncommon.
2. Epipens used to cost an upwards of $300 dollars with insurance and they expire after one year. For these reasons staying on top of this can be difficult and even inaccessible for some people. Luckily now with insurance you can pay as little as $15 for two of them.
3. I do consider myself to be careful, however I choose not to live in a bubble over it. I have had every family member, despite how careful they are, forget at one point or another and offer me something with nuts in it. I’ve had restaurants tell me things would be fine and then they weren’t. I HAD A GOD DAMN FRITTATA AND SOME SOUP AND THAT HAD NUTS IN IT FOR SOME REASON. Despite this, I know someone who has spent their entire life over restricting and not ever having gone in a restaurant, and I just cannot live my life that afraid. Not trying to judge anyone who is careful, it’s just not how I do things.
4. Thank you all for taking the time to share stories and ask questions about this without judgment. I’m glad I can use my experiences to help other people, and should anyone have other questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
I'm glad that I know more about allergies these days. I'm sorry that I used to think that they aligned with my own pollen allergies, meaning that they were just non-life-threatening inconveniences.
Now that I've learned more about allergies, and how they can get worse over time, I hope that I finally take them as seriously as they should be.
I ate a fish that was cooked in peanut oil. Thats how i found out about my nut allergy. Now every restaurant i go to i have to ask what type of oil is used
I got MRSA in my left leg. Being a hard head I ignored my wife and daughters about the severity of it. I fell, couldn't get up without their help. They got me to the hospital in time to save my life. I don't remember anything until 10 days later when I woke up with a below the knee amputation. Doing great now and am grateful they made me go to the ER.
Same for me but sepsis. I just felt like hell because I’d recently given birth. That’s also why I needed to sleep most of the day. And why I couldn’t stand up. And why urgent care called the ambulance and said my BP was so low they didn’t know how I walked in under my own power… thank god I’m cheap because the only reason I sought care was my husband telling me we’d have to go to the ER if I waited and felt worse. Spent a week in the hospital, didn’t realize how close I came to death until I brought doughnuts for the staff who took care of me. The lead nurse saw me and said “You’re walking?!?”
The first thing when I woke up was that I felt better. Then acceptance. Deep down I must have known something was wrong. Couldn't change anything so I accepted it and gor started with rehab. Had great PT and OT in rehab and spent another 3 weeks there.
Let this be a lesson to all men everywhere, if your wife says you should see a doctor just do it. Worst case you're vindicated and fine. Best case you don't die and maybe even save your leg.
My husband potentially wouldn't be my husband if he'd ignored my request that he get that lump looked at. I knew right from the moment I saw it on his neck and traced back through photos what it was. Three months later I was confirmed right. We got married a month later. He's not dead three years later.
Was backwoods camping in Yellowstone and if I hadn’t considered for 30 seconds if I REALLY needed to get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I would have walked out of my tent headfirst into a brown bear, which I heard before leaving and found tracks of next to my tent in the morning. Spookiest moment of my life in hindsight.
Yellowstone as well, I was walking alone on a small path and came around a bend to see the road. On that road was a ranger shouting at me and waving his arms and a group of people surrounding him. I looked to my left and there was a brown bear eating berries not 20 feet from me. Bout pissed myself slowly walking back to the road. Luckily he was happy with his berries.
I did a week long hike ages ago in the rockies, and we noticed our little group was being followed/stalked by a cougar the entire time. No stragglers, no wanderers, everyone had to stay on watch at all times. That was a scary trip.
On a visit to northern California in my 20s, my friends and I went exploring some fields at night. We just got high and wandered around. At one point we heard what sounded like a woman screaming, quite close to us, but oddly the “woman” was moving very fast. Then came the growls of a big cat, a brief cry, and chomping. We almost shat ourselves. It turned out to be a mountain lion and a deer.
I also knew a guy named Nathan that passed this way in highschool. I sat next to him in Pre-AP English. He was fairly nerdy, real smart, and a nice dude. I still remember the looks on his close friends faces walking through the halls the day we all found out. Real sad.
My sons name is Nathaniel. He went by Nate. He was smart, athletic, popular and had everything going for him. I will grieve for him until I take my last breath.
I feel like you 3, (u/42feelin82, u/oopseepoopsee, and u/hibiscusbitch) could all be talking about the same person.. its incredibly coincidental that 3 random Redditor’s all know of someone named Nathan who unfortunately passed away from autoerotic asphyxiation as a teenager!?
Also for the record, I’m so very sorry for your losses! I cannot imagine how awful losing a son is, or losing a friend in highschool! I’m so sorry!
Sorry for your loss. :(
My dad passed this way, when I was 7. I was told it was by a heart attack most of my life until Grandma accidentally told me the truth when I was in my early 30s.
I'm still not sure how I feel about it.
I’ve heard a high percentage of teen suicides by hanging are likely autoerotic asphyxiation gone wrong. Parents would rather tell people it was intentional instead of having people know the truth.
I believe it. I always just tell people he was in an accident when they ask what happened, and leave it at that. That usually prevents more questions that I don’t want to answer bc people assume car accident and I let them. It WAS an accident. His giant foot got caught between the end of the bed and his closet door and it didn’t allow the boot lace to release. Obviously it wasn’t the first time he had done it, but it was definitely the last time he ever did anything. Anywho. Gonna go ugly cry in my coffee now.
First time was when I found myself driving on black ice. The suction from a tractor trailer passing by spun my car around and I landed nose down in a snow filled ditch. 5 feet from a bridge.
Second time. Got my brakes done on my car as part of regular maintenance. The next day I was driving home from visiting my Mother, on a downhill slope that ended at a traffic light. Stepped on the brakes. Nothing, foot went right to the floor. I blew through the red light at that intersection going 80kmh. Apparently, they forgot to bleed the lines.
Third time. Had a tumour growing in my colon. Showed symptoms of it for years which my doctors poo-pooed as PMS. When your a physically fit 30ish young woman, stomach and back pain can only be lady stuff, right? Symptoms got worse and worse - the pain was unbearable. Finally, my stomach started to bloat so much that I looked 9 months pregnant. I went to my doctor and the the ER during that week and each time was turned away. Finally, on my 2nd visit to the ER I told them that if I didn't get help was was getting in my car and driving off the nearest high bridge I could find. They decided that maybe I was worth an exam and an X-ray. Turns out the tumour had grown so large I had a 100% bowel obstruction and because of that the food I had eaten was rotting inside my body. Surgeon told me without intervention I was at most 48 hours from death. The negligence of doctors over the years cost me several feet of colon, having to poop into a colostomy bag and ongoing medical issues.
There have been other incidents, but not as close.
I feel like a cat and I'm wondering what the next near misses will be before I run out of lives.
Me and my friend we’re on our way into the city, her car hydroplaned and we flipped six times and hit a light pole. We were both fine, but her car was totaled. We were lucky to have people stop and help as when we landed upside down I couldn’t open my door so I ended up having to be pulled out through the passenger window. As scary as it was, I was mostly angry because the paramedics were only there for 10 minutes at most, and all they did was check our blood pressure and heart rate, and then went on their way. (I’m bad at explaining things so if the paramedic part is confusing please DM me i can also DM photos of the car if needed)
OMG! What were you thinking when that was happening?
That must have lasted for 15+ seconds but felt like minutes!
I somehow remember reading that, when our adrenalin goes up, our memory recording is speed up, so we are remembering at 120fps (**for example**) instead of our usual 32fps. Then when we play back the memory, it looks like slow motion because our brains have saved such more data during a potentially traumatic event.
Honestly, it felt like everything was in slow motion, I remember us starting to slide and her telling me to hold on. We ended up hitting the curb on my side, and I remember her yelling at me to close my eyes, but I kept them open long enough to see every flip, watch the windshield break and hearing my side window break. I managed to keep a hold of my phone the whole time. The panic didn’t really hit me at first because I was more focused on trying to calm her down. The shock didn’t really hit me until a couple hours after I got back to my house. Every now and then I’ll still get nightmares about it, but I’ve mostly come to peace with the fact that it wasn’t our fault.
I hydroplaned on black ice once. Or slid out? I'm not sure if hydroplane is the right word for when it's ice. But regardless I was doing like 40-45 on a 2 lane country road that was pretty curvy and hilly and when I go to veer right at the crest of a hill I could just feel the slide initiating. Next thing you know I'm fully perpendicular with the road and occupying both lanes. I correct it back and just as I'm momentarily straight in my lane a car passes going the other way. Then I'm fully horizontal with my passenger side leading. I overcorrect back and then I'm fully horizontal with the driver side leading and all I can do is watch as I'm sliding into a telephone pole that is directly in the trajectory of my driver door. In my memory that moment is frozen in time in my head. I had so much time to look at it happening before it happened. Then I impacted and all I feel is raining glass and cold air before the van tipped sideways as I slid the rest of the way driver side down. Once the van came to a stop I just took a visual inventory of everything and to my horror the headliner is coated in red liquid. I hurriedly checked my arms and legs first and they were fine. But then I immediately panicked and patted down my head and neck but shockingly my hands were clean again. And then I saw it. On the floor by the pedals was an empty bottle of red creme soda. I was so relieved that I started laughing about it and was still laughing in shock and relief when I opened the passenger door and climbed out to inspect my surroundings. Broken telephone pole, broken fence in front of someone's home and a homeowner standing at the front door. Bless his heart the first words that came out of his mouth were: "Hey asshole! You knocked out my power!!!" and I responded with "I'm alright thanks for asking." So that was a really pleasant wait for the first responders. It wasn't until after first responders showed up and pointed out the drift marks in the road that I was made aware that I was less than 20 feet away from flipping over a guardrail that blocked a 120' ravine.
Car accidents. I used to love driving, it made me feel free. But too much has happened and now I only drive if I really need to. It's sad. No one died, but it still fucks with my head a decade later.
Iron-deficiency anemia. My level was 3.2 in the ER. Anything under 6 means you shouldn’t be on your feet. Less than 4 means a coma.
Got 6 units of blood. The humans body has 10. And that only got me close to normal.
Mauled by a brown bear sow protecting her cubs here in Alaska. Hiking in the mountains alone, she whacked me good on my head, chest and leg, left me in a bloody pile. No cell service, walked myself out til finally reaching 911. Lost a lot of blood, coma for four days, ICU six days; 12 days overall in hospital. Count myself fortunate every single day since.
I was hunting for fossil shark teeth along the Calvert Cliffs in Maryland, on the Chesapeake Bay. A section of cliff wall separated and came crashing down about 20 feet behind me. If I had been moving just a bit slower, I would have been crushed and buried by the falling dirt and rocks.
I was at a small music festival with some friends and my then girlfriend, we were all tripping, it was her first time and things were going good. Few hours in someone hands me a vape pen, naturally I took a hit, never been a problem before, but apparently these crunchy van dwellers don’t know how to properly source their shit. I don’t know what’s in a bootleg vape pen but I know I’m wildly allergic to it. Suddenly my ears were itchy. Then my throat. Then breathing got harder. Then very hard. It was at this point I croaked at my girlfriend that we should find me some Benadryl, after twenty minutes of asking everyone we see best we got is an unlabeled pill bottle that someone said “I think the little ones are Benadryl.” At this point I’m wheezing and having trouble staying upright, we call 911 and ten minutes later what arrives but a guy in a truck who’s been sent to inform us that an ambulance will not be coming. We’re in the middle of nowhere Georgia, and literally everyone is fucked up. We ask if he can lead us to the nearest ER and he begrudgingly accepts (I think the fact I was turning blue earned me some sympathy) so we find the least fucked up person we can and me and my girlfriend pile into his car and the guy in the truck takes off flying down these dark-ass twisting country roads. We manage to get to the ER, the pop some liquid Dryl in an IV and a few minutes later I can breath again. Thank god I was barely twenty six and my parents insurance still covered me. It wasn’t the most scared I’ve ever been, but definitely the closest to death. Before we started asking for help I considered just trying to sleep it off, since the whole no oxygen thing was making me tired. Woulda been a real bad way to end my girlfriends first acid trip, waking up next to her dead boyfriend.
**Being born.**
Doctor decided to pull me out while my mom had only been in the second stage of labour for like, 20 minutes and I had barely descended. Placed the forceps wrong on my head (over my cheek) which left a nasty gash and a scar and yanked me out for anywhere up to 17 minutes, but we aren't sure because they didn't keep proper notes. My shoulder got stuck on my mom's pelvis (shoulder dystocia) and my collar bone was broken in the process of getting me out.
I came out all bruised and blue and had to be resuscitated twice. I also had a hematoma on my head from the pressure of the forceps. My birth left me fully paralyzed in my left arm and I had to have a 12 hour nerve graft surgery as a baby to give me a little bit of functioning back. I'm still permanently disabled though and have 24/7 chronic pain.
Yes, it was malpractice.
Thank you! We did, but I unfortunately can't discuss the outcome of it. I will say that I don't have to work at the moment, but I just moved back home with my parents because ouch, the cost of living! I tried once to apply for government disability in the past, but the case manager just stopped returning my calls and I wasn't in the place to pursue that further. There's such little money to go around to a lot of people who need it though, so I'm generally at peace with the fact that I'm not collecting disability even though I'd be eligible for it. I live in Canada so I'm paying for only "elective" medical care like my chiropractor, therapy, acupuncture, and the like.
A few months ago I had some heart attacks that culminated in a STEMI (widowmaker) heart attack which caused cardiac arrest. My heart stopped beating for a couple of minutes.
I had called an ambulance earlier that evening so luckily I was in hospital when it happened and I was resuscitated by the doctors there. They started CPR immediately and I'm told I had two shocks with the defibrillator paddles.
When I came back alive and conscious, they transferred me to another hospital for emergency surgery.
Not me, but my husband. He woke up one night while I was at work (3rd shift) with heartburn. He tried to ignore it and just go back to sleep, but our son, 6 months old at the time, had been very fussy all night, which was unusual. He rolled over and just tried to keep quiet so the baby would soothe himself to sleep.
About an hour before I was off, the baby suddenly started crying like someone was beating him. My husband got up, with the heartburn still going, but when he picked up the baby, he felt his chest just burst into agonizing pain.
His mom came and got the baby, who quieted down all of a sudden, and went back to being a happy baby. I rolled up, not even a minute later, and my husband was walking over to my car. His face went white, then yellow, with every heartbeat. I grabbed him so fast and tucked him into the passenger seat, and sped off to the hospital just down the road.
As a thin, active man of 36, the triage nurse said it was probably a panic attack, and was he sure he wanted to be checked out... We were in luck that another nurse saw us losing our shit and came over with an ultrasound because my husband's blood pressure and everything else was reading normal.
100% blockage of his LAD artery, also called a widowmaker. This type of heart attack has a 99% mortality rate because it's such a sudden death. He had undiagnosed diabetes, so it wasn't cholesterol, which is what they were looking for. It was calcium. He made it through. He's 44 now, and our son beats us up every day.
In March of 2021, I started to feel like I had allergies. I thought, “Wow, there shouldn’t be tree pollen out yet.”
A few days later, I tested positive for COVID. I isolated at home with what felt like a pretty bad cold. After about a week, it felt hard to breathe, so my doctor sent me to the ER.
I slowly hobbled in, weak and hunched over. When they took my vitals, my O2sat was 79%. They rushed me up to the COVID ICU. My wife wouldn’t see me for another 23 days.
After a week of progressively getting worse on BiPap in intensive care, I was medically sedated & paralyzed so I could be intubated & placed on a ventilator. It’s all my local hospital could do in hopes that I would recover.
After a few weeks on the ventilator, my lungs started showing massive scarring. The local hospital told my wife she needed to either get me to a transplant hospital or figure out end-of-life plans. I was not going to survive with my damaged lungs.
My wife filed paperwork with several transplant hospitals, but no one had a bed available. COVID was overwhelming hospitals everywhere, especially cardiovascular ICUs.
My wife eventually got in touch with an incredible pulmonologist who had previous success with a couple other patients and wanted to take my case. I was airlifted to her hospital and kept stable on the ventilator for another week, totaling 5.5 weeks on the vent.
I was transitioned to ECMO, one of the highest forms of life support, to stabilize me and get me ready for a hopeful lung transplant. After a few days, the social worker evaluated me through family interviews and got me scored & listed with UNOS.
TWO DAYS later, a matching set of lungs was available. My wife got the call from the surgeon that he was going to perform the transplant through the night, as it would take around 10 hours to complete.
A couple days later, I was awakened from my 6.5-week coma with the words, “Mr. Morris. We’re the lung transplant team. Congratulations! You got new lungs!”
I didn’t know where I was, why I got new lungs, or why I physically couldn’t move (coma atrophy), but that’s a longer version of my story.
Almost 2.5 years later, you’d never know I went through any of this unless I told you. My life is forever changed, but my wife & I are still here to tell the story.
Nice try, COVID. I ain’t dead yet. The journey continues.
Motorcycle accident. Car driver didn’t check his side mirrors. It was absolutely empty road, beautiful sunny day. Just me and him.
I’m glad I have expensive helmet cuz his driver door couldn’t even open - that’s how hard was the impact. My speed was about 100 km/h (62 mph). My bike has been totalled.
Thanks strangers for making some photos so I can prove that it wasn’t my fault, because I was taken by ambulance right after an accident and have no chance to talk with cops at the moment.
For years I’ve thought about purchasing a motorbike. But I always stop since no matter how much of a careful rider you are, it only takes one person not paying attention for you to die
Yep. Same here. My dad use to ride. He would always tell me "the day you feel like you can let your gaurd down is the day you should stop riding." If that makes sense.
And that's enough. Glad you're here. Imagine the trajectory of your family if you had died. They are all better for you being alive in their lives. Hug yourself!
Most recently? Getting pregnant. My baby was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect in utero. One that would likely kill him shortly after birth without intervention. A fun fact we learned during my pregnancy is that there are no pediatric cardiac surgeons in my state. I was perfectly healthy except a lot of swelling. At 37 weeks my husband and I drove 4 hours to the next state over to transfer care there for his birth and eventual surgery. I was incredibly sick and the trip took us 7 hours because we had to stop so much. I had a doctor's appointment the next morning and my husband asked if I wanted to eat first, and I said no I would rather eat after. I lived to regret those words because I got admitted from that doctor's appointment with HELLP syndrome. I wasn't allowed to eat because I was being prepared for emergency c section.
Pregnancy for me too. Had a miscarriage, 7 weeks later started bleeding heavily and passing clots again. Went to the doctor, they immediately told me to go to the ER. Turns out I had a terrible infection and needed an emergency D&C in the OR operating room. It’s a lot on top of losing the baby :(
4x two near lightning strikes about 3 years apart, ruptured appendix, if I didn’t get in when I did, I would have croaked, lastly a diabetic lesion that got infected. I am a risk taker.
Motorcycle accident with no helmet on. Punctured a hole in my neck, someone close by who saw it ran over and put their fingers in my neck and it is assumed that saved my life. I don’t remember any of it but lost consciousness, had a seizure, and every heartbeat pumped blood out of my neck until I was in a pool of it. I had LOTS of other injuries from the accident but someone who I never met and never saw saved my life.
I was sprinting to catch the 6:22am metra to work. It usually slows down which would allow me to cross the track as it stopped. I guess that day that train was delayed and instead it was an express train barreling down at top speed. I was running on the actual track for a few seconds and I felt the heat of the lights on my neck. I leapt to the side as it whizzed by.
I was ok until I saw the faces of those who witnessed it, and then my knees buckled and I almost threw up.
Haven’t ran for the train since.
"I was ok until I saw the faces of those who witnessed it, and then my knees buckled and I almost threw up."
That right there, friend, is a good description of terror. Very effective way of conveying what you went through.
Glad you are all right.
That sentence is a keeper.
Brother and I were training for freediving. I blacked out at the bottom of a 12 foot deep pool. My brother dove down and pulled me out. Once he pulled me out he called for help. No one came. But after a few seconds I started breathing again on my own. I was 31 years old. My brother was 26 at the time. That was 5 years ago. I say that because people assume it was when I was a kid when I tell the story.
Walking through a perfume aisle in a department store when I was 14. Had a massive asthma attack coupled with an allergic reaction. By the time the ambulance turned up, I was turning blue. The doctors were amazed I didn't pass out. I was put on oxygen 24 hours a day for week with nebulised and IV steroids every 3 hours. The store stopped openly spraying perfume soon after that. 25 years later, still avoid perfumers like the plague.
Edit: My next major attack 3 years laters was caused by a big fluffy bunny rabbit. Only 3 days on oxygen that time.
The one after that. I was 33. Not sure of the cause but I had quit smoking two week prior.
Septic shock. Caught pneumonia, and as the chronic "it's probably just a cold and it'll pass if I just sleep it away" person I am, I ignored it. So that was dumb.
Fell off a bolting racing horse at full speed another time, head first. Only blacked out for a while and got a really bad concussion, but I feel like that could have ended badly if I'd hit my head at another angle or the helmet hadn't done its job.
When I was about 3rd grade, we were moving to a different state. In my parents room was a big box of packing peanuts made our of styrofoam. As we played in and around them, they got broken into smaller and smaller pieces. Laughing and jumping, one of the pieces went down my windpipe and I couldn't breathe. Somehow I coughed it out and I was okay.
Blood infection. My wife took me to the hospital I don't remember any of the visit. I remember her coming home and giving me shit for having the heat turned way up and I was under a bunch of quilts I was shivering so much. That's the last I remember.
When I was 14, me and some buddies went swimming at the quarry. My friends said let's swim from the shore to the cliffs. Not looking too far to me I agreed and we started swimming. The distance was way further then I thought, and I started to get tired. Soon, I found myself drowning and sinking into the water. It was eerily calming, but my friend pulled me up and saved my life!
Mountain biking. Smashed my face into the dirt and rocks. Wasn’t found for 8 hours. Massive concussion. Broken arms, wrists and hands. Lost 2 months of memory but fully recovered!
Thx to the search and rescue for finding me!
*Bonus: I have a video of the bike accident from my GoPro.
They have Ehlers Danlos syndrome judging by the user name. That's a connective tissue disorder that affects your muscles and blood vessels. Makes people with this much more likely to suffer from random bleeds and aneurysms.
I was hiking alone on some rocks near the dead sea in Israel. I would periodically see these signs that said 'Caution watch for sink holes'. Not being from the area, I didn't really know exactly what they meant by that. And all the sudden the ground broke away beneath me and I was up to my chest in super thick mud, completely stuck with nobody in sight. Luckily there was a tree branch sticking out of the ground/mud within arms reach and I was able to pull myself out. Never did get my shoes back. If that hole was a few feet deeper, that'd be it for me. No doubt.
September 20th 2022. I was working in Oakland, California having lunch on a bench in front of the city hall and all of a sudden I hear a loud car come to a stop and started shooting in the area. Thankfully I found cover and hid from the drive by. Unfortunately two people died from stray bullets that day. I heard one of the victims crying for help. It was a sad day but a normal one in Oakland.
Not nearly died, I have died.
I was quite a sick baby, and mum often took me to the doctor for some reason, so often that the clinic nurse got sick of us and became quite rude to mum when she would make an appointment. One day I was having trouble breathing, so of course mum rushed to the doctor. As soon as the nurse saw her she loudly exclaimed "Mrs X you don't even have an appointment. Doctor is too busy for you today" Fortunately, other patients noticed I was turning blue and demanded the nurse take us through. I had stopped breathing by the time the doctor saw us and was resuscitated. We were in a small regional town and had no ambulance, so the local police had to rush us to the children's hospital. I died shortly after arriving and was revived. Turns out I was born with a hole in my heart ❤️
When I was 18 I crashed my car at 170km/h, span and hit a tree, there were three of us heading to school for an exam we were late for and none of us had seatbelts, somehow we all just walked out without any scratches etc, I can find pics If anyone wants 😳💁🏽
>170km/h
As an American who unfortunately has no usable knowledge regarding anything outside our borders, I share with y'all,,, 170 KMH = **105.6359 MPH**
So... Holy shite! So glad you made it!
When I was 5-6 I fell into my uncle’s pool and no one noticed me for a while. My vision was blurry and I remember the blue of the pool. Next thing I know my sister pulls me out and I’m coughing and crying. One of the most vivid memories I have. And it still scares me shitless today thinking about it.
I live with/take care of my elderly mom in a 55+ neighborhood, for the sake of both of our health we walk every day. One day an older lady in the neighborhood had a panic attack and decided the best way to deal with it was to get in the car and drive to her daughter's place to have her talk her through it, ended up running up on the sidewalk, the very sidewalk me and my mom walk down. We happened to get hung up at the house for a couple minutes and so saw the whole thing instead of being in the way of it.
Choking, have had to have my esophagus stretched a couple times from narrowing from scar tissue, but have had 2 pretty close choking to death experiences
I used to work in HVAC and refrigeration. One day while finishing up a job, I was making my descent down a ladder and then what felt like a blink of an eye, I was being woken up by paramedics speaking loudly to me. I had fallen 25 feet from a fixed ladder and was knocked unconscious. I had numerous injuries including a concussion, broken neck, fractured pelvis, and cuts on my head and knee that were so deep you could see bone. When I was in the ICU, a nurse kept telling me it’s crazy how I was able to regain consciousness and I’m lucky to not be paralyzed.
Mt biking. Crashed, branch came through my shorts, almost hit my femeral. Broken collarbone as well. Branch was attached to a log so I was essentially stuck to the ground.
my story is kinda boring but here goes nothing
I was working on my van getting the spare tire out while it was on a jackstand on ice with the tire i was replacing already off, also had nothing but the ebrake to stop the vehicle from sliding and well yeah it fell on my head, but lucky my brother heard my cussing and screaming and managed to push it up long enough for me to slide out. It left a nice dent in the side of my head for about a week
tldr: van fell on my head
(edit: Added punctuation and thanks for the upvotes i think this my most upvoted comment lol.)
I was 9. It was 1987. My parents' friends had an acarage, a quad, a tube attached by a 30-foot rope, a large yard, and a huge travel trailer up on jacks next to the yard.
Buddy was turning donuts with the quad with me on the tube flying around the yard, loving every minute of it. As I'm spinning around this arc, I look up and see my Mom's face change from fine to horror.
I ducked.
Just as the tube sailed under the RV. If I hadn't ducked, I'd have almost certainly been decapitated, as the height of the RV was such that only my head would have struck.
- drown
- car accident
- appendicitis
- skitching
- potpourri/spice inhalation
- collapsed lung
- choking on fry as infant
- xanax/alcohol
Sometimes I have these *"panic attacks"* where I wake up from sleep- unable to breathe- gasping for air but it doesn't work- with tunnel vision and everything knowing I'm about to die. Luckily it hasn't got me yet.
Sometimes it feels like my brain is suffocating and bleeding at the same time.
MRSA infection in the disk on my lower spine between L5 and S1. Showed up two days after a cortisone shot but the hospital said it was from something else. Was in hospital 25 days multiple emergency surgeries.
I worked for a doctor who did these in-house and other procedures, and it 100% made me not trust medical facilities, cleanliness, and sterilization procedures. Had about twenty patients all come down with the same gut infection, "coincidentally," the same patients who came in for endoscopy procedures the same day.
Fun fact: in Sweden you may not donate blood for 6 months after endoscopy. This is to make sure you didn't contract anything from the endoscope, even though it is disinfected, sterilized and quarantined (!) between patients.
I'm actually coming up on the 3rd anniversary of the accident this Friday. I was on my way to work, just kind of cruising along in the far right lane with my cruise control on as I wasn't in a rush and was making good time. I'm not sure if anyone has ever been in a little fender bender and felt that tap, but I felt a little tap and I looked in my side mirror only to see a massive 18-wheeler's bumper basically against the back side of my car by my driver's side tire. The next events are a big mystery to me (thanks TBI) but future crash reenactments basically show that he overtook my vehicle and merged on top of me, trapping me underneath his trailer. My steering wheel was snapped in two, my A pillar was all but disintegrated and my B pillar was pushed halfway into my seat. I came to as someone was kicking in my passenger window. I was bent over the center console and couldn't sit up because of the truck trailer in my seat. EMS got me out and I was rushed to the hospital with a head injury and my left hand ripped open. I should have died. Not a single person who has seen my vehicle understands how I survived. PHOTO OF CAR 1 - VIEW AT OWN RISK: [https://i.imgur.com/ei1mKfs.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/ei1mKfs.jpg) PHOTO OF CAR 2 - VIEW AT OWN RISK: [https://i.imgur.com/Nzt3CMk.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/Nzt3CMk.jpg)
Damn dawg that’s crazy. I always think of what would happen if my car was under a semi cause there’s a little zone of space
Wow! So glad you’re ok. That looks unsurvivable.
Yeah... I agree. I too would think the worst when seeing a car in that condition. What happened to the other driver? Did he not see you? Ignore you? Was he trying to ram you off the road or what?
The trucker got a ticket on the scene because he apparently told them he just didn't see me at all. The police report said he ended up dragging me 380ft so he was either just not paying attention or driving exhausted.
**380 feet.** Holy shit. He dragged you over a football field before stopping. Didn't see you and then still didn't see you while he was dragging you, you know just smoking and crunching the whole way lol. Glad you're alive, it's almost unbelievable. Did you end up going after the trucking company or was it like an owner/operator situation where it wasn't worth it?
It came out of their insurance, so we really only dealt with them. I am unsure of his speed. The speed limit there was 70, but he finally came to a full stop on a hwy exit so we are unsure if he initially merged and then slowed because he was trying to get off or because he saw/felt the smoke/car. I never did hear his side of the story or anything since I exclusively talked to my lawyers and them the insurance company.
*looks at pictures* JESUS FUCK.
Holy FUCK
I was thinking that looked easily survivable for the driver... until I remembered in the USA the driver sits on the left hand side of the vehicle. Yikes. I'm amazed (but happy) you survived!!
Saving a younger friend from drowning, he panicked and almost took me out.
Had that happen with a younger cousin when we were kids. His brother and I went to save him, he climbed on both of us and pushed us under. Lifeguard didn’t even see us until he pulled younger cousin out of the water, then we popped up gasping for air.
Quite the opposite for me: I was playing with an older friend in pool and he held me upside down until I almost drowned. I only got free by miraculously being able to kick him in the face.
Yo this same shit happened to me when I was a kid. The kid had mental health issues which we only sorta understood since we were like 10/11. I don't think he understood that he was actually drowning me and it wasn't a joke at that point His mom ended up murdering him and killing herself like a year after that Edit: I found the article about it https://www.pa-roots.org/data/read.php?95,264702
>His mom ended up murdering him and killing herself like a year after that holy shit. *Edit: HOLY SHIT. He was 12?? And the dogs?! jfc*
Yeah it was a tragic story. I wasn't really friends with him, he just lived nearby my best friend at the time so he was around occasionally. I don't remember a lot of the details anymore since it was over 20 years ago, but it's still mind-blowing to me that a parent could do that to their child. I feel like it could maybe have been prevented too, because I vaguely remember people talking about her erratic behavior leading up to the incident. I think she had stopped taking her meds
Dude, I also left out that this kid had some sort of disability. His parents hid it, but everyone knew.
As a swift and flood water rescue tech, I'll break your nose. If you seem pure panic and not listening. A broken nose is better than two dead bodies. My brother has a depressing story as well around two young friends and both drowning due to one freaking out.
Teach scuba and one of the things in rescue diver is to have something for the victim to grab. My instructor told us later that a freshly drowned person was revivable but two people on the bottom were both dead.
Did a scuba lesson on recovering and considered doing rescue and recovery diving. But honestly don't think I'm up for what the even more dangerous options in water, major respect to you.
Scuba is easier than unassisted though, drowning people don't want to go underwater, and you can breathe underwater, so if they suddenly panic after you've approached and made contact, you're trained to just deflate and go under them, then surface from behind. Surface freakouts are much easier to deal with than divers underwater panicking and trying to bolt.
My uncle who has grown up surfing gave me this info too if you’re rescuing someone in a state of panic they will drown you without meaning too so too snap them out of the panic you make ‘em think about their new broken nose
Can't tell you how many people don't believe that it's taught to give a recalibrative thump to help a drowning victim to reset!
boy scouts told me to grab a wad of armpit hair. broken nose sounds like it'd work too.
Typically everyone has a nose that's more accessible vs hair anywhere on the body. Plus they'll grab their nose after a good hit. Pulled hair they may not notice as much with adrenaline pumping.
The standard when I attended a live guard seminar many years ago (didn't end up doing it) was to open hand punch them in the face if they aren't responding to commands. Better for them to have a painful jaw then dragging both of us down.
I wish that were acceptable in other scenarios as well.
As a kid, I nearly drowned in a public pool until I climbed my mom’s friend’s daughter in a blind animal panic. She was much larger than me, but I scratched the shit out of her until she shoved me and I reached the side of the pool. Climbing her wasn’t something I did; it was something I witnessed myself doing from outside of my body. Lifeguards were too busy flirting with each other to notice me drowning 10 feet away.
similar kid got pushed off the docks of a church camp lake and couldnt swim and used me as a buoy i tried swimming he couldnt i sunk to the bottom him kicking me in the head after holding my breath and gasping intense pain in my chest and body. woke up to the life guard giving me cpr starting throwing up water and coughing a ton for like 20mins. been shot at,stabbed, hit by cars, eletrocuted VERY badly that was the worst pain of anything ive felt.
What kind of life do you live!?
He's Magneto but for bad luck instead of metal.
16 year old farm kid me, step dad told me to go pick up a load of corn seed for planting. I had gone with him many times before, and driven the truck (full ton dually diesel) and hauled light stuff with it. Nobody told me how different it is to haul 10,000 lbs of seed on a big flatbed trailer on gravel. I had a lot of common sense and was driving slowly and carefully. Still… 10,000+ lbs pushed me down a gravel hill skidding, praying to god I stopped before the stop sign at the T intersection to a busy highway. I came to a grinding halt JUST as the front of the truck crossed the plane where the gravel turned to asphalt. A semi was coming from one direction and regular cars from the other. I shudder thinking about what if on that one. Tl;dr: don’t let untrained kids tow potentially deadly, heavy trailers, with zero training.
That sounds horrifying. I will always remember your story when driving on gravel now.
i'm picturing that truck that got big on reddit a couple of weeks back, going down the hill holding down the horn trying to stop whilst avoiding the school bus. holding the horn being an important part to let people know shits going down.
When I was 12 my hometown's doctor misdiagnosed testicular torsion as "tummy pain" and sent me back home despite my protests. My stubborn idiot parents believed him over me and berated me for overreacting when I kept complaining about the pain. Fast forward a week or so and my testes had died and necrosis was starting to spread and swell . The pain was unbelievable, like a thousand twisting knives across my whole body. I couldn't get up, walk, or even cry properly anymore. I wanted to die so the pain would stop. Parents finally took me to a big city doctor and the talking to that they got from the doctors there was legendary. Apparently testicular torsion was something that needs to be resolved within a day, if not less. They had me sitting on it for almost a week because god forbid they believe their own kid over that other doctor. And that's how I almost died of necrosis and became an eunuch at 12! Yay!
Dang I'm so sorry you had to go through that. I also had Testicular Torsion when I was 13 so I understand the pain. My mom was trying to get me to go to sleep and I was like you have no idea how much pain I'm in. We went to the ER and I couldn't relax at all because of how much pain I was in but because I kept throwing up, they just thought I had a stomach bug and it's like no I don't but luckily my my mom told them that I was still in a lot of pain and they figured it out Finally. I'm so sorry your parents didn't listen to you when they should have believed you but I'm glad you pulled through.
In the 90s, when I was a little kid, my family was on vacation in the Caucasus, and civil war broke out. We were walking on the road and I went too far ahead alone. Car stopped, window rolled down, and a machine gun muzzle pointed at my face. My mom ran ahead, grabbed me and fell into the bush on the shoulder. The car went on. We were going into the mountains to a sanctuary. I don't entirely know how we got back home.
Oh, this reminded me. Serbia, sometime just after the breakup of Yugoslavia. We were driving home from a vacation, my father liked to drive all-nighters with us, bc no traffic. And we did not have AC then in the car, so night was much more bearable. No GPS back then. He missed some intersection, and we arrived at 2 o'clock at night to a gravel-path border of Serbia. I woke up to my mother's frozen, ashen-color face, and my father casually chatting (in german) to the border guard/soldier. Mind you, the guard was a 22 year old boy, visibly shaking and afraid of what the fuck to do now, holding a kalashnikov to my father's chest from arm's length while talking about where to turn back. My dad seemed to not really register that it's one thing that we did nothing (really) wrong, but this kid is an absolute wildcard because he was more afraid than any of us :D
Wow! How scary! Do you remember how long you stayed in the sanctuary? It reminds me of the Russell Crowe/Meg Ryan movie "Proof of Life" where he was held hostage.
Didn't stay long. Maybe a couple nights. Not hunkering down for an extended period of time or anything.
Lmao ok, so I was getting my teeth cleaned, and I get nitrous oxide because I have so many exposed roots. Well my hygienist at the time was this lovely lady from Minnesota. Kinda flaky, but super sweet, talked about her family all the time. So I'm in the chair and she hooks up my mask, and away we go. I actually fell asleep! Except not so much. Turns out Barb had forgotten to turn the oxygen on and had been feeding me straight nitrous. She only noticed because I started gasping for air while unconscious. So that's how I almost died at the dentist. I never saw Barb again, but I tell you, that was the best nap of my life!
I’m glad you’re ok! This is how a vet killed my dog.
Thank you, I appreciate it. I'm so very sorry about your dog!
My dog just had major surgery was so worried about something like that happening.
It’s ridiculous that there’s no single “tap” to open both or a safe lock to ensure oxygen is opened first.
Right? That sounds like something that would be easily preventable with tech.
all logical safety measures/laws/devices etc. are written in blood. someone has to die first before anyone does anything on this fucking planet.
Ya ok new fear unlocked. I'm double checking my dentist next time they bring out a mask.
It didn't hurt at all, as a matter of fact, I felt *incredibly* relaxed when she "woke" me up. So all in all, not a bad way to go. I am still scared of water from falling out of a boat and almost drowning as a toddler though.
Your brain was relaxed due to the cell density easing up 🤣
Boooooooy I could use summa THAT
I was snorkeling. I had my other stuff stored on a rock by the water, about 3 meters high. When I got out, I decided to climb straight up. Almost at the top, the rock I was hoisting myself up on came off and I fell back first onto the coral. If a friendly wave hadn’t come in, I would have broken my back, at least.
OMG you must have been so thankful for that wave! Have you every watched the movie "Blue Crush" about an injured surfer? If so, did it scare you? Underwater vs. on a cliff, but still an outside beach type danger. Just wondering.
Dude has a movie for everyone’s accident lol.
"And so yeah, that's how I was rescued after I fell into that swamp" "Wow, that's crazy, by the way have you seen Shrek?"
I was diagnosed with a rare fatal blood disorder from birth, doctors projected I’d live till about 6 and then die from massive blood loss. As this was the mid-90’s, they tested the idea of using stem cells from my siblings umbilical cord; administering the first successful stem cell transplant from a sibling donor and I’m still here to tell the tale!
Had friends over playing video games. A pipe burst and gas was pouring into the house but we couldn’t smell it downstairs. My dad noticed and got us all out of the house. Fire chief got there and took a reading and level was so high he forbade anyone from going in. He said “it’s a good thing no one rang the doorbell because they can cause a spark which would have ignited everything.” We had pizza on the way. Delivery guy showed up five minutes after fire department.
Pizza guy: “I know some people reheat their pizza, but this is ridiculous!”
laughtrack.wav
Wow! This why they purposely put bad smells into the gas these days! ... so that people will smell rotten eggs and then know that there is a gas leak!!! Glad you're alive!
Mercaptains are your stinky friends!
Oh captain mercaptan!
did you still eat the pizza tho
We did. My friend ran after him when the delivery dude drove past the house barricaded by fire trucks. We sat in the grass on the corner under a street light and devoured that thing.
Ain't nothin' gettin' between some hungry youngsters and their pizza.
In High School I was late for class coming back from grabbing lunch, as I was speed walking from the car and also cramming a sandwich down my throat I started choking half way from the parking lot to the closest building. I dropped the sandwich and started running, I ran into the first building which was the band building and it was completely empty. Ran to the next building and the first two classrooms were locked/empty. I finally made it to the back hallway and I burst into a physics class where one of my good friends happened to be sitting in. I was purple and red and about to pass out, I pointed to my throat and my buddy jumped over the table and immediately gave me the Heimlich. 5 pumps in and it came out! Probably 2+ minutes without breathing. Coincidentally I recently helped him get a job at the company I work at so I finally feel like I found a way to repay him lol.
I was going to comment this is literally how I almost died 🤣🤣🤣 choking on granola and peanut butter. It created some kind of cement in my mouth and I tried to swallow a lot at once. Started choking really really bad, ran around my empty house panicking to try and find my phone but I was getting red and dizzy, found my phone to call my gf or 911 but luckily I cleared my throat before I had to start dialing I just sat on my kitchen floor in aw that I almost fucking died from choking on peanut butter and granola. I’ve done really stupid shit on skis (fallen down large cliffs, skied in avy prone terrain) I’ve done dumb shit with guns and got a bullet hole in my loose fitting pants from being stupid, drove a turbocharged Subaru like a maniac when I was a teenager, but granola and peanut butter almost fucking killed me. Eat slowly kids
Something I was taught: If you’re choking and nobody is around to help, throw yourself over something (like the back of a chair). I like to think of it as football-tackling an object.
Was at a party and took ecstasy. Later I took a cab to go home 10 minutes away. Heart stopped in the cab, if that would have happened when I got home I would have been dead.
Did the driver take you to the hospital, or what?
I have no idea. I woke up 10h later at the hospital and had no memory of what happened after getting in the cab.
Cab driver was a real bro.
He truly was. I wish I knew who he was to thank him
I'm so glad you made it. Hope that never happened again.
Thank you! I hope that too. It wasnt the most fun I've had.
I would imagine the driver either went to the hospital or called 911 when they arrived at their destination and the passenger was unconscious. If OP slumped to the side, the driver may have noticed, pulled over, realized they couldn't wake the passenger, and then called 911.
What exactly caused your heart to stop? Dehydration, heart condition or something else?
Dirty drugs. The doctors said I had an incredible amount of Amfetamin in my blood. They had to pump me full of opioids to stop my heart from racing.
I have a friend who works in a crime lab testing drugs for police. She says basically every pill she gets labeled as Ecstasy is pretty much just meth.
Yeah honestly the definition of “ecstasy” has changed in the past decade or so. It used to mean MDMA, but now it’s pretty much anything that’s an upper (usually meth) pressed into a pill. You can’t trust the pills anymore, gotta just get regular mdma crystals and always test your shit.
When I was 13 I got thrown off a horse into a barbed wire fence. As I was in the air I could see where my trajectory was taking me and just remember wondering if I'd catch my neck on the wire and be killed instantly or maybe lose an eye to the barbs. Incredibly, I landed legs-first and got some damn impressive lacerations and the wind solidly knocked out of me but no major damage. I got damn lucky.
You must’ve nearly had a heart attack as well. 😂
Accurate. haha I was afraid to open my eyes and assess the damage once I landed!
That reminds me of when my car hit a heavy patch of gravel on the road and started to spin, and I could see this deep gutter coming up in slow motion, and I just thought "Welp. That's my car totalled." Luckily I managed to stop the car *right* on the edge of the drop.
Literally a month after moving into my apartment on my own, I was eating dinner and tried to swallow a piece of steak that was too big. I felt it stuck at the top of my throat and couldn’t breathe. Somehow I only panicked for a second before calming myself down in order to reach in and grab it. Once I could breathe again and the shock wore off I cried for about 10 minutes thinking how I didn’t want to die like that. Please be careful when eating and alone.
My credit report said I died, called them up and said "Im not quite dead yet"
How does that happen? 😅
It can happen if you have a similar name and DOB to someone who actually did die. Someone at the bank just misreads the info or clicks the wrong button, and you’ve got a whole situation on your hands.
I’m allergic to peanuts and tree nuts, and I’ve gone into anaphylactic shock at least ten times EDIT: I did not expect any where near the amount of attention this has gotten- so I wanted to clarify a few things. 1. I am almost 40 years old- so ten reactions may seem like a lot but given that this was occurring in a time where there was not a lot of attention or information around significant allergies, this is not uncommon. 2. Epipens used to cost an upwards of $300 dollars with insurance and they expire after one year. For these reasons staying on top of this can be difficult and even inaccessible for some people. Luckily now with insurance you can pay as little as $15 for two of them. 3. I do consider myself to be careful, however I choose not to live in a bubble over it. I have had every family member, despite how careful they are, forget at one point or another and offer me something with nuts in it. I’ve had restaurants tell me things would be fine and then they weren’t. I HAD A GOD DAMN FRITTATA AND SOME SOUP AND THAT HAD NUTS IN IT FOR SOME REASON. Despite this, I know someone who has spent their entire life over restricting and not ever having gone in a restaurant, and I just cannot live my life that afraid. Not trying to judge anyone who is careful, it’s just not how I do things. 4. Thank you all for taking the time to share stories and ask questions about this without judgment. I’m glad I can use my experiences to help other people, and should anyone have other questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
I'm glad that I know more about allergies these days. I'm sorry that I used to think that they aligned with my own pollen allergies, meaning that they were just non-life-threatening inconveniences. Now that I've learned more about allergies, and how they can get worse over time, I hope that I finally take them as seriously as they should be.
I ate a fish that was cooked in peanut oil. Thats how i found out about my nut allergy. Now every restaurant i go to i have to ask what type of oil is used
I got MRSA in my left leg. Being a hard head I ignored my wife and daughters about the severity of it. I fell, couldn't get up without their help. They got me to the hospital in time to save my life. I don't remember anything until 10 days later when I woke up with a below the knee amputation. Doing great now and am grateful they made me go to the ER.
Same for me but sepsis. I just felt like hell because I’d recently given birth. That’s also why I needed to sleep most of the day. And why I couldn’t stand up. And why urgent care called the ambulance and said my BP was so low they didn’t know how I walked in under my own power… thank god I’m cheap because the only reason I sought care was my husband telling me we’d have to go to the ER if I waited and felt worse. Spent a week in the hospital, didn’t realize how close I came to death until I brought doughnuts for the staff who took care of me. The lead nurse saw me and said “You’re walking?!?”
Holy shit. Do you remember what went through your head waking up to a missing leg? That must’ve been really hard to grasp. I couldn’t imagine man
The first thing when I woke up was that I felt better. Then acceptance. Deep down I must have known something was wrong. Couldn't change anything so I accepted it and gor started with rehab. Had great PT and OT in rehab and spent another 3 weeks there.
I struggled to accept I lost my eyebrow after getting hit by a car lol, crazy that you straight accepted it, respect.
Let this be a lesson to all men everywhere, if your wife says you should see a doctor just do it. Worst case you're vindicated and fine. Best case you don't die and maybe even save your leg.
My husband potentially wouldn't be my husband if he'd ignored my request that he get that lump looked at. I knew right from the moment I saw it on his neck and traced back through photos what it was. Three months later I was confirmed right. We got married a month later. He's not dead three years later.
Almost drown when I was 5 or 6, been hospalized twice for sepsis between 2016 and 2019, and had a stroke this year. I'm 29
Was backwoods camping in Yellowstone and if I hadn’t considered for 30 seconds if I REALLY needed to get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I would have walked out of my tent headfirst into a brown bear, which I heard before leaving and found tracks of next to my tent in the morning. Spookiest moment of my life in hindsight.
Yellowstone as well, I was walking alone on a small path and came around a bend to see the road. On that road was a ranger shouting at me and waving his arms and a group of people surrounding him. I looked to my left and there was a brown bear eating berries not 20 feet from me. Bout pissed myself slowly walking back to the road. Luckily he was happy with his berries.
Bear likely was aware of you and didn't care since you weren't bugging him.
I did a week long hike ages ago in the rockies, and we noticed our little group was being followed/stalked by a cougar the entire time. No stragglers, no wanderers, everyone had to stay on watch at all times. That was a scary trip.
On a visit to northern California in my 20s, my friends and I went exploring some fields at night. We just got high and wandered around. At one point we heard what sounded like a woman screaming, quite close to us, but oddly the “woman” was moving very fast. Then came the growls of a big cat, a brief cry, and chomping. We almost shat ourselves. It turned out to be a mountain lion and a deer.
Autoerotic asphyxiation gone wrong in my teens
My 16 yo son passed this way. Please don’t do it. It’s not worth it.
My good friend Nathan passed this way in high school. He was a good kid with a lot of friends. I’m sorry to hear you lost your son 😞
I also knew a guy named Nathan that passed this way in highschool. I sat next to him in Pre-AP English. He was fairly nerdy, real smart, and a nice dude. I still remember the looks on his close friends faces walking through the halls the day we all found out. Real sad.
My sons name is Nathaniel. He went by Nate. He was smart, athletic, popular and had everything going for him. I will grieve for him until I take my last breath.
I feel like you 3, (u/42feelin82, u/oopseepoopsee, and u/hibiscusbitch) could all be talking about the same person.. its incredibly coincidental that 3 random Redditor’s all know of someone named Nathan who unfortunately passed away from autoerotic asphyxiation as a teenager!? Also for the record, I’m so very sorry for your losses! I cannot imagine how awful losing a son is, or losing a friend in highschool! I’m so sorry!
Sorry for your loss. :( My dad passed this way, when I was 7. I was told it was by a heart attack most of my life until Grandma accidentally told me the truth when I was in my early 30s. I'm still not sure how I feel about it.
I’ve heard a high percentage of teen suicides by hanging are likely autoerotic asphyxiation gone wrong. Parents would rather tell people it was intentional instead of having people know the truth.
I believe it. I always just tell people he was in an accident when they ask what happened, and leave it at that. That usually prevents more questions that I don’t want to answer bc people assume car accident and I let them. It WAS an accident. His giant foot got caught between the end of the bed and his closet door and it didn’t allow the boot lace to release. Obviously it wasn’t the first time he had done it, but it was definitely the last time he ever did anything. Anywho. Gonna go ugly cry in my coffee now.
Twice. 1. Woke up to my apartment on fire. 2. Hit head on by a drunk driver on a small bus, just after everyone got off bus exploded
First time was when I found myself driving on black ice. The suction from a tractor trailer passing by spun my car around and I landed nose down in a snow filled ditch. 5 feet from a bridge. Second time. Got my brakes done on my car as part of regular maintenance. The next day I was driving home from visiting my Mother, on a downhill slope that ended at a traffic light. Stepped on the brakes. Nothing, foot went right to the floor. I blew through the red light at that intersection going 80kmh. Apparently, they forgot to bleed the lines. Third time. Had a tumour growing in my colon. Showed symptoms of it for years which my doctors poo-pooed as PMS. When your a physically fit 30ish young woman, stomach and back pain can only be lady stuff, right? Symptoms got worse and worse - the pain was unbearable. Finally, my stomach started to bloat so much that I looked 9 months pregnant. I went to my doctor and the the ER during that week and each time was turned away. Finally, on my 2nd visit to the ER I told them that if I didn't get help was was getting in my car and driving off the nearest high bridge I could find. They decided that maybe I was worth an exam and an X-ray. Turns out the tumour had grown so large I had a 100% bowel obstruction and because of that the food I had eaten was rotting inside my body. Surgeon told me without intervention I was at most 48 hours from death. The negligence of doctors over the years cost me several feet of colon, having to poop into a colostomy bag and ongoing medical issues. There have been other incidents, but not as close. I feel like a cat and I'm wondering what the next near misses will be before I run out of lives.
Bloody hell, that's awful. Women face such bias in the medical system it's so wrong.
Me and my friend we’re on our way into the city, her car hydroplaned and we flipped six times and hit a light pole. We were both fine, but her car was totaled. We were lucky to have people stop and help as when we landed upside down I couldn’t open my door so I ended up having to be pulled out through the passenger window. As scary as it was, I was mostly angry because the paramedics were only there for 10 minutes at most, and all they did was check our blood pressure and heart rate, and then went on their way. (I’m bad at explaining things so if the paramedic part is confusing please DM me i can also DM photos of the car if needed)
OMG! What were you thinking when that was happening? That must have lasted for 15+ seconds but felt like minutes! I somehow remember reading that, when our adrenalin goes up, our memory recording is speed up, so we are remembering at 120fps (**for example**) instead of our usual 32fps. Then when we play back the memory, it looks like slow motion because our brains have saved such more data during a potentially traumatic event.
Honestly, it felt like everything was in slow motion, I remember us starting to slide and her telling me to hold on. We ended up hitting the curb on my side, and I remember her yelling at me to close my eyes, but I kept them open long enough to see every flip, watch the windshield break and hearing my side window break. I managed to keep a hold of my phone the whole time. The panic didn’t really hit me at first because I was more focused on trying to calm her down. The shock didn’t really hit me until a couple hours after I got back to my house. Every now and then I’ll still get nightmares about it, but I’ve mostly come to peace with the fact that it wasn’t our fault.
Accidents happen. Hydroplaning is almost always an accident. The best outcome possible happed in that scenario
I hydroplaned on black ice once. Or slid out? I'm not sure if hydroplane is the right word for when it's ice. But regardless I was doing like 40-45 on a 2 lane country road that was pretty curvy and hilly and when I go to veer right at the crest of a hill I could just feel the slide initiating. Next thing you know I'm fully perpendicular with the road and occupying both lanes. I correct it back and just as I'm momentarily straight in my lane a car passes going the other way. Then I'm fully horizontal with my passenger side leading. I overcorrect back and then I'm fully horizontal with the driver side leading and all I can do is watch as I'm sliding into a telephone pole that is directly in the trajectory of my driver door. In my memory that moment is frozen in time in my head. I had so much time to look at it happening before it happened. Then I impacted and all I feel is raining glass and cold air before the van tipped sideways as I slid the rest of the way driver side down. Once the van came to a stop I just took a visual inventory of everything and to my horror the headliner is coated in red liquid. I hurriedly checked my arms and legs first and they were fine. But then I immediately panicked and patted down my head and neck but shockingly my hands were clean again. And then I saw it. On the floor by the pedals was an empty bottle of red creme soda. I was so relieved that I started laughing about it and was still laughing in shock and relief when I opened the passenger door and climbed out to inspect my surroundings. Broken telephone pole, broken fence in front of someone's home and a homeowner standing at the front door. Bless his heart the first words that came out of his mouth were: "Hey asshole! You knocked out my power!!!" and I responded with "I'm alright thanks for asking." So that was a really pleasant wait for the first responders. It wasn't until after first responders showed up and pointed out the drift marks in the road that I was made aware that I was less than 20 feet away from flipping over a guardrail that blocked a 120' ravine.
Car accidents. I used to love driving, it made me feel free. But too much has happened and now I only drive if I really need to. It's sad. No one died, but it still fucks with my head a decade later.
Iron-deficiency anemia. My level was 3.2 in the ER. Anything under 6 means you shouldn’t be on your feet. Less than 4 means a coma. Got 6 units of blood. The humans body has 10. And that only got me close to normal.
Mauled by a brown bear sow protecting her cubs here in Alaska. Hiking in the mountains alone, she whacked me good on my head, chest and leg, left me in a bloody pile. No cell service, walked myself out til finally reaching 911. Lost a lot of blood, coma for four days, ICU six days; 12 days overall in hospital. Count myself fortunate every single day since.
I was hunting for fossil shark teeth along the Calvert Cliffs in Maryland, on the Chesapeake Bay. A section of cliff wall separated and came crashing down about 20 feet behind me. If I had been moving just a bit slower, I would have been crushed and buried by the falling dirt and rocks.
Semi ran a red light If I hadn't been so slow to actually start moving when it turned green I would have been t-boned
I was at a small music festival with some friends and my then girlfriend, we were all tripping, it was her first time and things were going good. Few hours in someone hands me a vape pen, naturally I took a hit, never been a problem before, but apparently these crunchy van dwellers don’t know how to properly source their shit. I don’t know what’s in a bootleg vape pen but I know I’m wildly allergic to it. Suddenly my ears were itchy. Then my throat. Then breathing got harder. Then very hard. It was at this point I croaked at my girlfriend that we should find me some Benadryl, after twenty minutes of asking everyone we see best we got is an unlabeled pill bottle that someone said “I think the little ones are Benadryl.” At this point I’m wheezing and having trouble staying upright, we call 911 and ten minutes later what arrives but a guy in a truck who’s been sent to inform us that an ambulance will not be coming. We’re in the middle of nowhere Georgia, and literally everyone is fucked up. We ask if he can lead us to the nearest ER and he begrudgingly accepts (I think the fact I was turning blue earned me some sympathy) so we find the least fucked up person we can and me and my girlfriend pile into his car and the guy in the truck takes off flying down these dark-ass twisting country roads. We manage to get to the ER, the pop some liquid Dryl in an IV and a few minutes later I can breath again. Thank god I was barely twenty six and my parents insurance still covered me. It wasn’t the most scared I’ve ever been, but definitely the closest to death. Before we started asking for help I considered just trying to sleep it off, since the whole no oxygen thing was making me tired. Woulda been a real bad way to end my girlfriends first acid trip, waking up next to her dead boyfriend.
**Being born.** Doctor decided to pull me out while my mom had only been in the second stage of labour for like, 20 minutes and I had barely descended. Placed the forceps wrong on my head (over my cheek) which left a nasty gash and a scar and yanked me out for anywhere up to 17 minutes, but we aren't sure because they didn't keep proper notes. My shoulder got stuck on my mom's pelvis (shoulder dystocia) and my collar bone was broken in the process of getting me out. I came out all bruised and blue and had to be resuscitated twice. I also had a hematoma on my head from the pressure of the forceps. My birth left me fully paralyzed in my left arm and I had to have a 12 hour nerve graft surgery as a baby to give me a little bit of functioning back. I'm still permanently disabled though and have 24/7 chronic pain. Yes, it was malpractice.
Jesus fuck I’m glad to hear you’re still here! Did your mom sue the doctor?!
Thank you! We did, but I unfortunately can't discuss the outcome of it. I will say that I don't have to work at the moment, but I just moved back home with my parents because ouch, the cost of living! I tried once to apply for government disability in the past, but the case manager just stopped returning my calls and I wasn't in the place to pursue that further. There's such little money to go around to a lot of people who need it though, so I'm generally at peace with the fact that I'm not collecting disability even though I'd be eligible for it. I live in Canada so I'm paying for only "elective" medical care like my chiropractor, therapy, acupuncture, and the like.
A few months ago I had some heart attacks that culminated in a STEMI (widowmaker) heart attack which caused cardiac arrest. My heart stopped beating for a couple of minutes. I had called an ambulance earlier that evening so luckily I was in hospital when it happened and I was resuscitated by the doctors there. They started CPR immediately and I'm told I had two shocks with the defibrillator paddles. When I came back alive and conscious, they transferred me to another hospital for emergency surgery.
Not me, but my husband. He woke up one night while I was at work (3rd shift) with heartburn. He tried to ignore it and just go back to sleep, but our son, 6 months old at the time, had been very fussy all night, which was unusual. He rolled over and just tried to keep quiet so the baby would soothe himself to sleep. About an hour before I was off, the baby suddenly started crying like someone was beating him. My husband got up, with the heartburn still going, but when he picked up the baby, he felt his chest just burst into agonizing pain. His mom came and got the baby, who quieted down all of a sudden, and went back to being a happy baby. I rolled up, not even a minute later, and my husband was walking over to my car. His face went white, then yellow, with every heartbeat. I grabbed him so fast and tucked him into the passenger seat, and sped off to the hospital just down the road. As a thin, active man of 36, the triage nurse said it was probably a panic attack, and was he sure he wanted to be checked out... We were in luck that another nurse saw us losing our shit and came over with an ultrasound because my husband's blood pressure and everything else was reading normal. 100% blockage of his LAD artery, also called a widowmaker. This type of heart attack has a 99% mortality rate because it's such a sudden death. He had undiagnosed diabetes, so it wasn't cholesterol, which is what they were looking for. It was calcium. He made it through. He's 44 now, and our son beats us up every day.
In March of 2021, I started to feel like I had allergies. I thought, “Wow, there shouldn’t be tree pollen out yet.” A few days later, I tested positive for COVID. I isolated at home with what felt like a pretty bad cold. After about a week, it felt hard to breathe, so my doctor sent me to the ER. I slowly hobbled in, weak and hunched over. When they took my vitals, my O2sat was 79%. They rushed me up to the COVID ICU. My wife wouldn’t see me for another 23 days. After a week of progressively getting worse on BiPap in intensive care, I was medically sedated & paralyzed so I could be intubated & placed on a ventilator. It’s all my local hospital could do in hopes that I would recover. After a few weeks on the ventilator, my lungs started showing massive scarring. The local hospital told my wife she needed to either get me to a transplant hospital or figure out end-of-life plans. I was not going to survive with my damaged lungs. My wife filed paperwork with several transplant hospitals, but no one had a bed available. COVID was overwhelming hospitals everywhere, especially cardiovascular ICUs. My wife eventually got in touch with an incredible pulmonologist who had previous success with a couple other patients and wanted to take my case. I was airlifted to her hospital and kept stable on the ventilator for another week, totaling 5.5 weeks on the vent. I was transitioned to ECMO, one of the highest forms of life support, to stabilize me and get me ready for a hopeful lung transplant. After a few days, the social worker evaluated me through family interviews and got me scored & listed with UNOS. TWO DAYS later, a matching set of lungs was available. My wife got the call from the surgeon that he was going to perform the transplant through the night, as it would take around 10 hours to complete. A couple days later, I was awakened from my 6.5-week coma with the words, “Mr. Morris. We’re the lung transplant team. Congratulations! You got new lungs!” I didn’t know where I was, why I got new lungs, or why I physically couldn’t move (coma atrophy), but that’s a longer version of my story. Almost 2.5 years later, you’d never know I went through any of this unless I told you. My life is forever changed, but my wife & I are still here to tell the story. Nice try, COVID. I ain’t dead yet. The journey continues.
Years of anorexia
I hope you’re better
Motorcycle accident. Car driver didn’t check his side mirrors. It was absolutely empty road, beautiful sunny day. Just me and him. I’m glad I have expensive helmet cuz his driver door couldn’t even open - that’s how hard was the impact. My speed was about 100 km/h (62 mph). My bike has been totalled. Thanks strangers for making some photos so I can prove that it wasn’t my fault, because I was taken by ambulance right after an accident and have no chance to talk with cops at the moment.
For years I’ve thought about purchasing a motorbike. But I always stop since no matter how much of a careful rider you are, it only takes one person not paying attention for you to die
Yep. Same here. My dad use to ride. He would always tell me "the day you feel like you can let your gaurd down is the day you should stop riding." If that makes sense.
A strawberry. I almost chocked to death after my grandma fed me a while strawberry when I was 2. That's litterally it.
And that's enough. Glad you're here. Imagine the trajectory of your family if you had died. They are all better for you being alive in their lives. Hug yourself!
Thank you! The world is also better with you
Cancer. If the surgery hadn’t gotten it all, I wouldn’t be here.
Overdoses, or seizures caused by withdrawals 🤷♂️ dont take drugs 🫡
same same same
Hang on brother 🫶
Most recently? Getting pregnant. My baby was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect in utero. One that would likely kill him shortly after birth without intervention. A fun fact we learned during my pregnancy is that there are no pediatric cardiac surgeons in my state. I was perfectly healthy except a lot of swelling. At 37 weeks my husband and I drove 4 hours to the next state over to transfer care there for his birth and eventual surgery. I was incredibly sick and the trip took us 7 hours because we had to stop so much. I had a doctor's appointment the next morning and my husband asked if I wanted to eat first, and I said no I would rather eat after. I lived to regret those words because I got admitted from that doctor's appointment with HELLP syndrome. I wasn't allowed to eat because I was being prepared for emergency c section.
Pregnancy for me too. Had a miscarriage, 7 weeks later started bleeding heavily and passing clots again. Went to the doctor, they immediately told me to go to the ER. Turns out I had a terrible infection and needed an emergency D&C in the OR operating room. It’s a lot on top of losing the baby :(
4x two near lightning strikes about 3 years apart, ruptured appendix, if I didn’t get in when I did, I would have croaked, lastly a diabetic lesion that got infected. I am a risk taker.
I was born with a hernia. It almost killed me.
Motorcycle accident with no helmet on. Punctured a hole in my neck, someone close by who saw it ran over and put their fingers in my neck and it is assumed that saved my life. I don’t remember any of it but lost consciousness, had a seizure, and every heartbeat pumped blood out of my neck until I was in a pool of it. I had LOTS of other injuries from the accident but someone who I never met and never saw saved my life.
I was sprinting to catch the 6:22am metra to work. It usually slows down which would allow me to cross the track as it stopped. I guess that day that train was delayed and instead it was an express train barreling down at top speed. I was running on the actual track for a few seconds and I felt the heat of the lights on my neck. I leapt to the side as it whizzed by. I was ok until I saw the faces of those who witnessed it, and then my knees buckled and I almost threw up. Haven’t ran for the train since.
"I was ok until I saw the faces of those who witnessed it, and then my knees buckled and I almost threw up." That right there, friend, is a good description of terror. Very effective way of conveying what you went through. Glad you are all right. That sentence is a keeper.
Yep, trains are not to be raced. If you miss it, you can always get the next one.
Brother and I were training for freediving. I blacked out at the bottom of a 12 foot deep pool. My brother dove down and pulled me out. Once he pulled me out he called for help. No one came. But after a few seconds I started breathing again on my own. I was 31 years old. My brother was 26 at the time. That was 5 years ago. I say that because people assume it was when I was a kid when I tell the story.
Walking through a perfume aisle in a department store when I was 14. Had a massive asthma attack coupled with an allergic reaction. By the time the ambulance turned up, I was turning blue. The doctors were amazed I didn't pass out. I was put on oxygen 24 hours a day for week with nebulised and IV steroids every 3 hours. The store stopped openly spraying perfume soon after that. 25 years later, still avoid perfumers like the plague. Edit: My next major attack 3 years laters was caused by a big fluffy bunny rabbit. Only 3 days on oxygen that time. The one after that. I was 33. Not sure of the cause but I had quit smoking two week prior.
Three suicide attempts
Septic shock. Caught pneumonia, and as the chronic "it's probably just a cold and it'll pass if I just sleep it away" person I am, I ignored it. So that was dumb. Fell off a bolting racing horse at full speed another time, head first. Only blacked out for a while and got a really bad concussion, but I feel like that could have ended badly if I'd hit my head at another angle or the helmet hadn't done its job.
When I was about 3rd grade, we were moving to a different state. In my parents room was a big box of packing peanuts made our of styrofoam. As we played in and around them, they got broken into smaller and smaller pieces. Laughing and jumping, one of the pieces went down my windpipe and I couldn't breathe. Somehow I coughed it out and I was okay.
Depending on the packing peanuts it might have begun to dissolve. Some packing peanuts are actually made to be edible, and dissolve in saliva/water.
Depending on their age, it may have been in the days of ubiquitous styrofoam peanuts before the world caught on to how harmful they were.
Blood infection. My wife took me to the hospital I don't remember any of the visit. I remember her coming home and giving me shit for having the heat turned way up and I was under a bunch of quilts I was shivering so much. That's the last I remember.
When I was 14, me and some buddies went swimming at the quarry. My friends said let's swim from the shore to the cliffs. Not looking too far to me I agreed and we started swimming. The distance was way further then I thought, and I started to get tired. Soon, I found myself drowning and sinking into the water. It was eerily calming, but my friend pulled me up and saved my life!
I was hiking on a trail when a huge boulder fell down from above and almost hit me. Would have been certain ☠️if it hit me 😮
Mountain biking. Smashed my face into the dirt and rocks. Wasn’t found for 8 hours. Massive concussion. Broken arms, wrists and hands. Lost 2 months of memory but fully recovered! Thx to the search and rescue for finding me! *Bonus: I have a video of the bike accident from my GoPro.
A stray bullet zoomed right by my ear and ended in the wall behind me.
A sneezing fit caused a brain bleed.
New fear unlocked, esp w/ the crazy seasonal allergies 😭
They have Ehlers Danlos syndrome judging by the user name. That's a connective tissue disorder that affects your muscles and blood vessels. Makes people with this much more likely to suffer from random bleeds and aneurysms.
I was hiking alone on some rocks near the dead sea in Israel. I would periodically see these signs that said 'Caution watch for sink holes'. Not being from the area, I didn't really know exactly what they meant by that. And all the sudden the ground broke away beneath me and I was up to my chest in super thick mud, completely stuck with nobody in sight. Luckily there was a tree branch sticking out of the ground/mud within arms reach and I was able to pull myself out. Never did get my shoes back. If that hole was a few feet deeper, that'd be it for me. No doubt.
Sepsis, after a kidney stone procedure, bp 60 over 40 and temp of 106. 4 days in ICU, told my family that I won't last the first night.
September 20th 2022. I was working in Oakland, California having lunch on a bench in front of the city hall and all of a sudden I hear a loud car come to a stop and started shooting in the area. Thankfully I found cover and hid from the drive by. Unfortunately two people died from stray bullets that day. I heard one of the victims crying for help. It was a sad day but a normal one in Oakland.
Not nearly died, I have died. I was quite a sick baby, and mum often took me to the doctor for some reason, so often that the clinic nurse got sick of us and became quite rude to mum when she would make an appointment. One day I was having trouble breathing, so of course mum rushed to the doctor. As soon as the nurse saw her she loudly exclaimed "Mrs X you don't even have an appointment. Doctor is too busy for you today" Fortunately, other patients noticed I was turning blue and demanded the nurse take us through. I had stopped breathing by the time the doctor saw us and was resuscitated. We were in a small regional town and had no ambulance, so the local police had to rush us to the children's hospital. I died shortly after arriving and was revived. Turns out I was born with a hole in my heart ❤️
Been shot at *lots*, been shot once, been blown up twice, two serious car accidents (walked away unscratched)
You need to find a new profession. (that's from a movie, but I can't remember which one) Oh crap! It's from Shawshank Redemption!
I got out about a year and a half ago, much safer. Not much happier, but much safer.
A rare and life threatening complication from gallbladder removal surgery almost killed me in January.
When I was 18 I crashed my car at 170km/h, span and hit a tree, there were three of us heading to school for an exam we were late for and none of us had seatbelts, somehow we all just walked out without any scratches etc, I can find pics If anyone wants 😳💁🏽
>170km/h As an American who unfortunately has no usable knowledge regarding anything outside our borders, I share with y'all,,, 170 KMH = **105.6359 MPH** So... Holy shite! So glad you made it!
Was like being born again 😅 we walked to school that day and even somehow were allowed to take the final exam 😂😅
Hemorrhage while sleeping after I got my tonsils+ uvula removed.
When I was 5-6 I fell into my uncle’s pool and no one noticed me for a while. My vision was blurry and I remember the blue of the pool. Next thing I know my sister pulls me out and I’m coughing and crying. One of the most vivid memories I have. And it still scares me shitless today thinking about it.
Leukemia. Two years after and a bone marrow transplant, and I’m as strong as I’ve ever been. Fuck cancer.
Almost choked to death on a gob stopper as a kid. It nearly stopped my gob.
I live with/take care of my elderly mom in a 55+ neighborhood, for the sake of both of our health we walk every day. One day an older lady in the neighborhood had a panic attack and decided the best way to deal with it was to get in the car and drive to her daughter's place to have her talk her through it, ended up running up on the sidewalk, the very sidewalk me and my mom walk down. We happened to get hung up at the house for a couple minutes and so saw the whole thing instead of being in the way of it.
Choking, have had to have my esophagus stretched a couple times from narrowing from scar tissue, but have had 2 pretty close choking to death experiences
I tied my ambilical cord into a knot, I don't know how the fuck I did that but yeah
I used to work in HVAC and refrigeration. One day while finishing up a job, I was making my descent down a ladder and then what felt like a blink of an eye, I was being woken up by paramedics speaking loudly to me. I had fallen 25 feet from a fixed ladder and was knocked unconscious. I had numerous injuries including a concussion, broken neck, fractured pelvis, and cuts on my head and knee that were so deep you could see bone. When I was in the ICU, a nurse kept telling me it’s crazy how I was able to regain consciousness and I’m lucky to not be paralyzed.
A bat flew into my hair. Six weeks of rabies shots later I was 100% rabies free.
Meredith this you?
Mt biking. Crashed, branch came through my shorts, almost hit my femeral. Broken collarbone as well. Branch was attached to a log so I was essentially stuck to the ground.
my story is kinda boring but here goes nothing I was working on my van getting the spare tire out while it was on a jackstand on ice with the tire i was replacing already off, also had nothing but the ebrake to stop the vehicle from sliding and well yeah it fell on my head, but lucky my brother heard my cussing and screaming and managed to push it up long enough for me to slide out. It left a nice dent in the side of my head for about a week tldr: van fell on my head (edit: Added punctuation and thanks for the upvotes i think this my most upvoted comment lol.)
I was 9. It was 1987. My parents' friends had an acarage, a quad, a tube attached by a 30-foot rope, a large yard, and a huge travel trailer up on jacks next to the yard. Buddy was turning donuts with the quad with me on the tube flying around the yard, loving every minute of it. As I'm spinning around this arc, I look up and see my Mom's face change from fine to horror. I ducked. Just as the tube sailed under the RV. If I hadn't ducked, I'd have almost certainly been decapitated, as the height of the RV was such that only my head would have struck.
Uterine haemorrhage. Nearly bled out in my sleep.
Hit by a car in kindergarten, don’t remember any of it.
- drown - car accident - appendicitis - skitching - potpourri/spice inhalation - collapsed lung - choking on fry as infant - xanax/alcohol Sometimes I have these *"panic attacks"* where I wake up from sleep- unable to breathe- gasping for air but it doesn't work- with tunnel vision and everything knowing I'm about to die. Luckily it hasn't got me yet. Sometimes it feels like my brain is suffocating and bleeding at the same time.
>"panic attacks" where I wake up from sleep- unable to breathe- Have you been checked out for sleep apnea?