Have you ever had a moment where you literally almost died?

Nothing like that, or even remotely close, but I’m really glad you’re okay. What’s wrong with those guys, they should do seat checks every single time. :(

several times, been electrocuted, shot twice, stabbed, struck by lightening, and three times for medical reasons.

Once I was on an ER gurney, unable to move or speak, and heard the doctor say, “if he makes it through the night, I’ll operate.”

Struck by car (twice), grenade landing next to head (once), knife wielding sob (once), mixing around chemicals and making stuff that goes boom (too many times to count), suicide attempts (quite a few).

I’ve had a few asthma attacks that resulted in trips to the ER. Being unable to breathe is really scary. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

It’s creepy when you think to yourself “I actually might not survive this”.

I lost more than half my blood supply in a surgery and they didn’t realize it until the next day.
Some nurse kept trying to get me to get me up to walk and I was too weak. She actually said I was just being a big baby.

drug addiction in the 80s, and anaphlaxsis, a drug allegy where you head and throat swells up. Dont know why God takes care of my ornery butt, guess She loves me.

I was the victim of an assault, where I really thought the guy was going to kill me, but it turned out that he didn’t actually have the capacity, the weapon, or, in the end, the intention to kill me. He just wanted me to think that. Close enough to the real thing for me though.

Some kid almost drowned me at a community pool when I was in my teens, I got hit by a car on a big, busy road, I almost bled to death (from getting my tonsils out, of all things!) when I was 4, and I went into thyroid storm when I was 15.

I’m glad all of us survived our brushes with death!

At least 2 I can think of (not mentioning minor car accidents or once when I crossed a red light and went straight through speeding traffic on my motorbike like you see in movies).

When I was 10 I fell of our balcony onto my grandmother’s washing basin downstairs in the garden. That broke my fall enough to save my life, but I fell on the side and broke a couple of fingers. I remember at the time thinking I had died and gone to Heaven because of all the flowers around me. I remember thinking “how cliche! A flower garden!” it sounded as stupid then as it does now. Took me a few seconds to realise I was in this world.

In 2008 I was driving down a highway at top speed. It was a wonderful sunny day, there was no traffic and the road conditions were perfect. A bit too perfect. Then there was a sudden bend in the road, but even though there was a warning sign, I started swerving too late and lost control of the car. Later I found out that many other drivers made the same mistake on that exact same spot on the road because it’s a long straight line and you easily let your guard down. I remember I tried to get the car back on the road somehow, but couldn’t, and then gave up and thought “well, here goes nothing!” and went straight for the shoulder so that my side would get hit first and my daughter in the back seat would survive. The car was completely wrecked beyond repair, but we walked out of it with barely a scratch (I had a concussion for a while but nothing broken).

I nearly fell of the side of a mountain, hiking in New Zealand. Ended up having to climb up a nearly vertical side with no gear, just bear hands grabbing at tufts of grass and small trees that would sometimes pull out, nearly propelling me off the side.

Another time, I was in a rather abusive relationship with a man who felt the need to control me. He had been drinking rather heavily that day and I said the wrong thing. Before I realised it, he had be pinned down on the ground and was choking me. I didn’t think I was going to get up from that. That asshole became a cop. 6 foot 1 185 lbs vs. 5 foot 4 115lbs I wouldn’t have stood a chance.

Yes, several times.
One horse accident where I had to throw myself off when my horse bolted down a boulder strewn cliff after being spooked by a gunshot on trail. I was afraid she’d go down with me so I flung myself off at a full gallop and ended up with a dislocated shoulder, a sprained elbow and a concussion and numerous cuts and bruises.
Being shot at by a bow hunter on my horse off trail in the mountains, having branches dropped on my head by my redneck neighbor that used to shoot towards my property, a car wreck and several near drownings from my wild river rafting days.

Holee shit they should have checked that!

Well some of you must have some pretty interesting lives…

“how cliche! A flower garden!” – LOL! Awesome.

Yes. Got stranded in the ocean once in the middle of no where and someone with a boat eventually came by and gave me a lift. Would have been a long swim otherwise….

@cazzie Which track in NZ?

I was 6 when I had my first asthma attack. In those days my dad worked long hours in another city quite far away, and my mum couldn’t drive.
My didn’t know what was happening to me, so she tried to help me by laying me down and what not but obviously it wasn’t working.
I remember being in so much difficulty and I was so scared. I don’t know how much time after that but my mum called my aunt to drive us to the local GP. That would have taken another 15 minutes.
When we did get there the doctor gave me an enabliser to calm the situation down and I could breathe again. She then turned around and told my mum:
“It’s a good thing you got her here when you did. Another 10 minutes and she probably wouldn’t have made it.”
That moment, hearing the doctor say those words has stayed with me all my life, and I can recall that day as clear as if it were yesterday.

@wallabies It was in an area around the Manawatu gorge. It had been raining quite a bit and the person I was with said they knew the track, but then seemed to lose his way and we got in trouble. The area is quite unstable, as evidenced recently.

Yes, I almost drowned once, when I was 17. Scary as hell, yet somehow peaceful. It was weird.

I was 4 years old riding my tricycle on the ice of a lake behind our house in Wisconsin. I peddled out too far. The thin ice gave way. A big boy quickly came out of nowhere and saved me.

@gondwanalon Whew! You really were riding a Tri-ice cicle. lol

@cazzie Well I’m glad you made it out OK! I actually walked around there, too, a while ago, but it was a pretty tame track, probably not the same one you were on..

@WillWorkForChocolate Yes, that was my experience as well. I thought, I’m not ready to go yet, I’m gonna have to swim or something! And then the cold swells turned into sunny glassiness and I thought, well this is actually a really beautiful day in a gorgeous place, if only I had my f-ing boat!

@Coloma Tricicle love it.

Yep, septic shock. I understood the situation was bad just because there were about a hundred doctors at my bedside, but I didn’t really know anything about sepsis at the time (thank goodness), and I really didn’t feel like I was dying, so I wasn’t very scared. It was only when I read afterwards that as much as ⅔ of people who reach that stage of infection die that I understood how lucky I had been.

I forgot to add, this was the 5th tallest roller coaster in America; Millennium Force in Ohio at Cedar Point.

Came close on a couple of occasions, the first when I was a kid. I was playing football with my brothers whilst on holiday, I ran to retrieve the ball before it went over the edge of this cliff & I ended up saving the ball with a sliding tackle, but was left clinging to the edge.
Thankfully, a combination of upper body strength & helful siblings saved my bacon.
Second time was when these drunken bastards drove onto the pavement I happened to be passing, hit me on the back of my legs, sending my head crashing through the windscreen.
Several stitches & a lot of luck later & I was fine.

Wow! So many close calls. For me, I was in a car accident a couple years ago where my car rolled-over. My life didn’t flash before my eyes, because it happened so fast, but I did think that this might be the end for me. But I had only a whiplash injury, and a few cuts that happened as they removed me from the vehicle.

I am curious if anyone who’s had these experiences had a spiritual change of heart because of it. One patient of mine had died in a cardiac arrest but was amazingly revived, and he had the opposite of what some people describe as their near-death experiences with the bright light and family members and out-of-body visions—he said it was just a black nothingness. Have any of you had that close of a call, where you were literally on the brink, and what did you experience?

@hearkat I had an exact same car accident. I had horrible whiplash, and then I didn’t even know if I was alive.

@blueberry_kid: Fortunately, I knew I was alive when the car came to rest on the driver’s side. My iPhone was right there, so I immediately dialed 911, and a trooper was on the scene very quickly. The poor guy who rear-ended me and caused the spin and roll looked worse than I did, only because he was sick with worry that he might have caused someone serious injury.

Yes, I’ve realized “I am about to die” several times, from severe low blood sugar episodes (I’m type 1 diabetic). If not for the help of friends or strangers on 4 or 5 occasions, I would have just gone into seizures and died pretty soon.

During a motocross race I was involved in a crash where I suffered chest and head trauma. The paramedics lost the pulse because my heart stopped apparently, but this was all news to me .No there was no bright light or anything like that.

Forgot to answer the other question: I did see a bright light once, and I am a religious person (but not a monotheist) but at the time, I attributed it to my vision being about to fail because of lack of glucose in my brain (and the brain is exclusively fueled by glucose). It started as patches of white in my field of vision and then went to almost all white.

I’ve worked as an industrial electrician most of my life, so I did have a few close calls. I’ve come close to being electrocuted a few times, and I’ve fallen off of a ladder already. I’ve been involved in a few vehicle accidents too.