Anybody have any close calls with death?

For me, a picture at a motel fell from the wall and nearly slit my throat. I've also almost drowned as a kid. Oh yeah, and I totaled my car during the first snow of winter.

How about you?

I had cancer back in 2007. Was given a good chance to beat it from the start though.

I did get choked out by Santa Claus till I blacked out when I was 14 or 15.

Almost got hit by a car while out biking at a nearby park once. Like, less than a metre short, and I was down on the ground with the headlights looming over me.

I don't think I ever went biking there again.

fell from a hotel balcony in 2010 in South Korea. Broke my spine and back, had a backtrace for like 6 months after.

when I was little I was going down a water slide at a water park and almost slid off the top and died. luckily I didn't slid to the left.

Quite a few times actually now that I think about it...not chronologically but....

When I was a baby, my four/five year old sister tried to kill me (smothered me with a pillow and tried to push a knitting needle through my ears)!

As a teenager, I was zooming down a steep road on my BMX and my mother turned a corner in her car and I was literally inches from being run over.

A huge tree fell behind me when I was walking to school one winter heavy snow morning (probably around 3 metres behind me but the tree was probably around 20 metres tall).

For an unknown reason I had aspergillosis in my lungs but fortunately I recovered (it can be deadly)...

I fell off a mountain in Thailand (around 30 metres) and luckily I only had a few bad cuts that needed stitches. I somehow stuck to the side of the mountain breaking the drop.

A week after I passed my driving test I had a head on car crash and the other driver flew out the window and crashed into mine. I only got a broken arm and a massive nose bleed. (Was not my fault the other driver slid onto my side of the road).

A drug dealer ran after me and my friend with a hammer in London because we were trying to save my friend’s sister from being abused.

And finally...again when I was a teenager I fell into an old monk’s grave in an abandoned church when it was being turned into a new car park. I was returning some videos (VHS) from my local video store.

If you don’t hear from me again on GS, the chances are I probably had an accident and died...

Luckily the coffin was removed but the hole was really deep and it took me quite a while to climb out....

i have a list.. a long list.

anyhow it would have been a week and a half ago. i was at a 4 way stop . i got a sound from phone . look down at it. by the time i look up(light turn green a few sec before) some f 150 ran the light and would have killed me in my suv.

When about 8-9 was fighting two kids and when turned round to walk back he threw a rock at my head and pierced my skull.

Heroically, the first thing he did was point at his other freind and say "it was him, he did it". And that personality trait carried him through to his 30s.

Sounds like a Simpsons episode. Care to go into more detail or is it too personal for you?

@DEVILinIRON: Was at a mall in Newark Ca. with some friends one night. A couple of my friends were stealing shit. One of the stores they stole from was in front of the Santa station. He saw them stealing and alerted security. When my friends left the store and walked over to us, security swooped. Rounded us all up. Took some time but the ones stealing copped to it and even the store employees said I was never in the store so they let me and one other friend go.

As they are letting us leave, Santa gets all huffy and can't understand why we get to leave. The guy is still half dressed in his Santa suit and looks like your typical middle aged biker. Security explains the situation but he didn't care. He starts talking smack, I talk smack back. Eventually he shoves a styrofoam cup in my face (which reeked of alcohol). I grab the cup from his hand and bounce it off the side of his head. He then wraps his hands around my neck ( much like Homer up above) and I wake up on the floor with security holding Santa in half nelson.

After regaining my senses, security apologized but kind of ushered us out quickly. Probably more worried about being sued than anything. Being the dumb kids that we were, we thought it was the funnies shit ever. Heard many Santa jokes in the years following.

I had acute lymphoblastic leukemia back in 2014. I guess it nearly killed me multiple times, from having it untreated to just getting sepsis from not being careful. The doctors looked pretty scared that I might actually die. Antibotics worked greatly and I was good to go.

I guess another one would be when I almost drowned in a river when I was like 5 yrs old.

Destination of some sort, hold on, dude

I crossed a very busy throughway high AF when I was a teenager I almost had a heart attack.

I remember when I accidentally swallowed a quarter when I put it in my mouth when I was like in middle school age, and I was choking on it for a little, but I was able to swallow it, though. I think I had to get some water, too.

@heathen75:

That is nuts lol, sounds like a scene from a bad Christmas movie.

I’ve had a few close calls with my job as an arborist. Had guys almost drop a 60’ tree on me, or go too hard on the rigging while I’m tied in and almost fail the tree I’m climbing. Zapped myself on a power line once going into a backyard, I have been super careful working around then since, that was a wake up call that I was taking too big of a risk working close to hydro.

A few, but the closest was a botched biopsy on a tumor in my chest. Surgeon sliced through it into my subclavian artery and I bled out on the table. Woke in the ICU too weak to even lift my arm more than a few inches off the bed. Doctors told me I lost 75% of my total blood volume and was on the verge of heart failure before they got it under control. Only way they managed to save me was by sealing off all arterial blood flow to my left arm, which is now only supplied by the smaller vessels.

Two moments stand out to me:

1. I was a early teenager, going with a friend and his dad to go skiing. There was a snowstorm in the city and the roads were a mess. On the onramp to get onto the highway, there was an insane ice-sheet and a huge car pileup in progress. Cars crashing into each other and spinning out all along the ramp. We managed to stop, but there was a bus behind us that was sliding towards us. Somehow the bus missed and went sliding into a nearby ditch. A pickup truck behind the bus did hit us, but had at least slowed down. That hit propelled us through the chaos and out onto the highway, somehow we didn't hit/get hit by anyeone else with only moderate damage to the back of the car.

At the time, it felt like a near-death experience and certainly scared the shit out of me.

2. I was climbing a mountain with a friend. It was rated as a "difficult scramble" ie. no need for ropes, just a helmet and ice axe for any snowy sections. However, we got off course and ended up traversing across a super sketchy ledge for a few hundred meters with a death drop on one side and class-5 (ie ropes required) terrain on the other. Finally the ledge ran out, and my friend who was a stronger climber decided to try going straight up from there while I waited below.

After a few minutes, I heard him yell "rocks!" meaning he'd loosed some rocks which were falling towards me. I could only see the cliff a few meters above me and couldn't see my friend or the rocks, just hear them falling. I was wedged into a small gulley with the death drop a few feet behind me. I didn't have any time or room to move so I just turned sideways and looked up. Then two softball sized rocks bounced over the cliff right above me, one was coming for my head, the other was coming lower. I managed to get my hand up and deflect the one coming for my head, the other rock smashed into my hip.

If I hadn't managed to deflect the higher rock, or the second rock had hit somewhere else and knocked me off balance, I probably wouldn't be here today. As it stood, I just had a pretty good gash in my hip and a massive bruise a few days later.

@ewan-sp: No doubt. I've had a couple scares. Had to get the Covid test. Luckily my illness was not CV19.

Not to my knowledge.

Not sure if it counts but I've been threatened with a knife on two different occasions. Once in the woods when I was little and once by a junkie who was stealing from the pharmacy I work at.