What is the closest you ever came to death

[skace]

Originally posted by: Scouzer
When I was roughly 7 years old, my dad and I were driving at about 4AM on a 2 lane road. We were just reaching the apex of a hill in the road, and over comes a pickup truck passing another pickup truck blocking the whole road. I was sleeping and I still remember waking up to the headlights moments before my dad swerved off the road two wheels in the ditch barely getting us around the truck.

DON'T FVCKING PASS AT THE CREST OF A HILL, IT'S SO FVCKING STUPID!

Heh that reminds me of a time my brother and I were driving to a pizza place at night. It was snowing out and they had some pretty big trucks driving all over the roads keeping them clear. Well, I'm driving up this hill and coming the opposite direction had to be the biggest truck I've ever seen. I can't actually see it because all of the lights on the thing are staring directly down at me (it's at the top of the hill) but it had 3 rows of lights, the top row being oddly high. So even though I can't see it, I get the feel this thing needs extra room and I pull the car way over to the right hand side of the road. Just as I get over there, the thing passes me and we can finally see the plow on the front just barely miss our side. I'm looking at my brother going how the friggen hell can they be safely driving this thing down the road when it's clearly in my lane as well. Ah well, it was pretty scary at the time.

 

[Gdepp519]

I was 16-17yrs old.. and over the summer.. caught a mutant form of the hepatitis virus (wasn't classified in any other categories like a,b,c) I initially just had a high fever and a bad headache.. I was taken to the hospital and given Biaxin... I was allergic to the medicine.. it caused jaundice (all my skin, eyes everything was yellow), then I broke out in hives and then my skin started to peel off..

Then I started getting really sick.. and my liver started to shutdown.. it doubled and almost tripled in size.. it looked like I had a pot belly.. it got so big.. and I was going to get a liver biopsy.. then I was in the bed for 2 weeks.. and at the time i was 6"3 and 165 or so.. and I lost 25-30 lbs.. I was so weak I couldn't do one situp or pushup.. and just walking was incredibly hard.. along with showering and so on...

Doctors told my parents I was going to die...

Then i got better... for some weird reason I became deathly allergic to any and almost all foods like tomatoes ,peanutbutter, wheat.. and that lasted for about a yr... and currently I'm healthy 6'5 220lbs my livers working great.. I can eat anything I want.. and I am extremely healthy according to my doctor.. ( I thank cross country for that 😀 )

 

[Tarrant64]

Can't remember what age. Around 10 or a little bit younger than that.

All I remember was playing with some sand, got tired. Woke up on babysitters couch. Couldn't move. Extremely tired. Took temperature, was at 99. No big deal.

Parents came to pick me up, couldnt move, so was carried back home. Hot and cold, hot and cold. Temperature apparently was above 104. Woke up in hospital. Surrounded by doctors, wondering where my parents were. Felt needle in arm, woke up couple hours later. Was fine. Mom told babysitter should have called sooner because had I not had medicine probably could have died within that 12 hour period of getting sick. Wish I knew what playing in a sandbox could have killed me.

All within 4-5 hours I guess. My bed was soaked when I got back home from my sweating the short time I was there. I remember being cold. Never did understand that.

I shrug it off. Haven't really been sick since. Stuffy nose, that's about it.



Oh, and every once in awhile I wake up suffocating. I have asthma, never had a severe asthma attack though. Sleep apnea maybe?

 

[BZeto]

When I was driving with my uncle from Orlando to Tampa at about 12am when he was drunk. I was about 17 and I could tell he had too much to drink, I offered to drive even though I didnt really know the exact route to take (I was only visiting Florida). He insisted he would be fine.

20 miles later cruising down I-4 doing 85mph the car drifts to the side right at a concrete barrier. They were doing alot of construction on this stretch of I-4 at the time, concrete dividers were everywhere. I just remember seeing the bright concrete in the headlights, I immediatly reach over and yank the wheel. The tires screeched and I thought we would roll over but the car stayed under control.

Scariest night of my entire life. The stupidest part about it is I let him drive the rest of the way to his house in Tampa. The whole time I was wide eyed watching his every move ready to grab the wheel. I remember how relieved I was to step out of that damn car.

 

[Bumrush99]

I was probably 12 or 13 but a buddy of mine and his dad decided that they were sick of the city life and wanted to move to a large open piece of land they acquired in the country. They also purchased several rifles to go hunting with. So my buddy shows me one of the rifles, which he claims is not loaded. He attempts to clear the chamber and it seemed jam. He then hits the barrel very hard with his hand and boom I hear a loud pop a second later. I look at the gun and see that it is smoking. The bullet hit the desk I was sitting against and was lodged in the wood. It missed me by 2 feet.

 

[zinfamous]

Driving back to Raleigh from a concert in Charlotte late one summer night, along Interstate 40. Our driver (short-ass punk that could barely see over the wheel of his 1990ish pos Camaro), neglected to inform us that he had been tripping balls for the majority of the evening, on top of an undisclosed amount of alcohol coursing through his bloodstream. The 5 of us crammed into his camaro were nodding off....as was he. Just around a bend, an elderly fella was pushing his small pickup out of the way (left two lanes), as he had been recently involved in a minor fender-bender himself. Well, here comes the alcohol-fueled concert traffic (between Greensboro and Burlington at this point).

Luckily, the elderly gentleman saw our car bearing down on him, and ducked out of the way before our driver plowed the camaro into the back of the guy's truck. We survived this initial collision with no real injuries to speak of. 3 of us (including myself) decided to plop ourselves down against the concrete wall separating the east and west-bound sides of the interstate. So here we are, our legs outstretched into the far left lane, sobering up rather quickly. The majority of traffic had not arrived, and the accident scene was not well-marked at this point--let alone being on the other end of a blind curve. Just as I was contemplating this situation, a sedan comes screaching around the curve in the left lane, bearing down on my friends and I. Luckily my friends and I pulled our legs towards us in time (losing them would have been the least of our injuries had we not), and the car hit the concrete wall ~3 feet past where the 3rd friend was sitting. All I could really see and here at the moment was screeching breaks, a blurry metal thingy, and a shower of sparks when the car hit. One friend bolted straight up the wall, assuming that dashing across oncoming traffic at 2am was the best option. We dragged him down, and went over to the embankment and waited out the rest of the evening.

I vaguely remember almost drowning at the family lake house when I was ~4-6 years old.

 

[cherrytwist]

Congestive heart failure at age 29 due to misdiagnosis of faulty aortic valve.

Even though I made three trips to three separate ERs within a month (and informed them I had Marfan Syndrome each time), they missed it the first two times.

The third time, I was literally turning blue and gasping for air before they finally performed the proper test to determine that the valve was failing (transesophageal electrocardiogram), at the insistence of my poor mother.

After nearly 9 hours of open heart surgery, they replaced the valve with a synthetic one (St. Judes for any doctors out there) and I've been in relatively good shape since.

 

[zinfamous]

Originally posted by: cherrytwist
Congestive heart failure at age 29 due to misdiagnosis of faulty aortic valve.

Even though I made three trips to three separate ERs within a month (and informed them I had Marfan Syndrome each time), they missed it the first two times.

The third time, I was literally turning blue and gasping for air before they finally performed the proper test to determine that the valve was failing (transesophageal electrocardiogram), at the insistence of my poor mother.

After nearly 9 hours of open heart surgery, they replaced the valve with a synthetic one (St. Judes for any doctors out there) and I've been in relatively good shape since.

man...how long ago was this? there's very well documented links to Marfan's and certain heart conditions. The sad thing is, your experience (concerning medical evaluations) is not terribly unique.

Plenty of doctors have a very base understanding of simple genetics, which has lead to some pretty devastating mis- and non-diagnoses (In one case in a hospital where I worked, telling a family that because they already had 2 children born with heart disorders, it was genetically impossible for them to have another child born with any heart disorder)

 

[Safeway]

I almost got hit by a car ... like really close.

 

[cherrytwist]

Originally posted by: zinfamous

Originally posted by: cherrytwist
Congestive heart failure at age 29 due to misdiagnosis of faulty aortic valve.

Even though I made three trips to three separate ERs within a month (and informed them I had Marfan Syndrome each time), they missed it the first two times.

The third time, I was literally turning blue and gasping for air before they finally performed the proper test to determine that the valve was failing (transesophageal electrocardiogram), at the insistence of my poor mother.

After nearly 9 hours of open heart surgery, they replaced the valve with a synthetic one (St. Judes for any doctors out there) and I've been in relatively good shape since.

man...how long ago was this? there's very well documented links to Marfan's and certain heart conditions. The sad thing is, your experience (concerning medical evaluations) is not terribly unique.

Plenty of doctors have a very base understanding of simple genetics, which has lead to some pretty devastating mis- and non-diagnoses (In one case in a hospital where I worked, telling a family that because they already had 2 children born with heart disorders, it was genetically impossible for them to have another child born with any heart disorder)

I had my aortic valve replacement on 12/31/1999.

I've always make the joke that it wasn't Y2K compliant 😉

edit: It's important to note that my symptoms were coughing when lying down (any pamphlet on congestive heart failure will tell you this is a definitive indication), however I had no pain whatsoever. That's what threw most of the doctors off, I think. When my father had his aortic dissection, the pain manifested itself in the lower back. (*I had a slight aortic dissection and graft of the aortic arch during my surgery as well)

 

[Zenmervolt]

Originally posted by: Luthien
Same motorcycle was going about 70 on a 30mph road this POS pulls out from a left side street blocking me

Probably because he expected you to be going 30 mph and not more than double the speed limit.

Dumbass.

I have no sympathy whatsoever for people who get into accidents while speeding like that.

ZV