#12

Collapsed in my bathroom at 5am on a Sunday, May 2013 with massive chest pains

When I came to I was sat on a chair in my hallway with the tv & 2 ambulance staff. After asking me a couple of questions they put me in the back of the ambulance, gave me a shot of morphine, hooked me to an antibiotic drip and took my ecg. They were communicating with a doctor at the hospital, trying to send my ecg results but I live on the top of a hill and we were in some kind of radio shadow so the results wouldn’t send. They slowly drove the ambulance around the top of my hill to find a better signal and the second that the results showed at the hospital the doctor’s voice came over the little loudspeakers in the back of the ambulance :ambulance: and he said something like “fucking hell, get him here as fast as you can”

They banged on the lights and sirens and screamed through Stockholm to the hospital and just as we were arriving in the emergency bay I lost consciousness again for about another minute due to the pain & they gave me another shot of morphine

I was in hospital for 6 days & five nights. It took them 3 days of all possible tests to find out what was wrong with me. I had a chronic embolism in my chest, a huge infection that had very nearly killed me but I was lucky because the infected tissue happened to be between my heart and my left lung - had it been in either of those organs I wouldn’t be typing this

#13

In Bali, backpacking, years ago. Got sucked off a surfboard by a wave waayyyy beyond my (modest at best) ability to catch, after getting caught in a riptide and ending up much further away from the beach than intended. Ended up treading water coughing seawater out of my lungs a very long way from the shore. No idea how long I had to swim for to get to the shore, but it felt like at least 15 minutes. Developed a certain respect for the idea of not doing stupid things in water.

#14

appendix burst

#17

And that’s why 12 year olds shouldn’t drive

#18

fell about 20 foot off a rope swing into a pile of junk metal and bushes. missed the metal somehow, but escaped with a bad concussion (couldn’t remember about 6 month’s worth of events for a few weeks after).

#19

got into an unlicensed cab in Bolivia and the driver promptly pulled out a gun, got blindfolded and taken to an office to get robbed.

Luckily I had absolutely nothing of worth on my person and I was in the habit of leaving my wallet in my hostel and carrying cash only so they took my £20 and called me a son of a bitch when they found out my bag had a sweatshirt, a flask and a pack of nuts in it. They didn’t even bother to re-blindfold me and dump me somewhere, just got a slap and sent on my way.

Key lesson here is be very careful getting cabs in countries where your mere Western-ness marks you out as a walking bag of gold

This wasn’t a near death experience per se but there was definitely a tense 5 minutes where I was considering that I was about to die and it was not, shall we say, relaxing

#21

Yeah i kow right.

Not a near death experience and he didnt follow the rules!

3 Likes
#22

Talk about ‘insult to injury’ :open_mouth:

#23

Got on a cable car last year and my boyfriend freaked out that the doors weren’t shutting so jumped off and I jumped off after him…about 5cm from the cliff edge. The doors shut behind me and grazed my ankle. I still get so freaked out that I could have caught my foot in it and got dragged off the side of the mountain.

Other than that:

  • choked very badly twice (once on a lego brick, once on food)
  • got punched and almost fell in front of a bus on a main road in that process
#24

I remember this :frowning_face:

#25

Not long after that we watched a One Punch documentary and I was like oh shit could have actually died

Amazingly my cornflake incident this morning happened just across the road from the punch incident. I must start taking another route as that road is doomed for me.

3 Likes
#26

Your cable car story reminds me…

Few years ago was getting off a chairlift whilst snowboarding. If you’ve snowboarded you’ll know how such lifts are just not designed for snowboarders at all. I stumbled getting off the lift, which had slowed right down to let people on and off. I fell to my knees leaving the board facing upwards. The chair behind came through and jammed against my board (which was still attached to my legs) I couldn’t move and the lift was moving forward, kind of scraping against my board and wedging against it. The people operating the lift were chatting and not paying attention and I had to scream at them to stop the lift. A few seconds more and my legs would’ve been snapped in two. Probably wouldn’t have died though.

#27

Had a few scrapes which could have resulted in more serious, if not life ending injury but thankfully didn’t (knocked off bike etc). I think my “favourite” ones were

  • I used to take my then girlfriends little brother to the beach when she was at work. He was in a rubber dinghy and I was swimming alongside one afternoon when we were all of a sudden sucked out to sea on a stupidly intense rip tide (there were warnings dotted about, but this sucka seemed to come out of nowhere). We were out there for what seemed like an age, I tried swimming us in, but obviously this didn’t work. Could feel myself getting sucked under, I was clinging onto the dinghy with a sobbing 12 year old in tow). The life guard eventually rescued us, but it was a veeeeeery tense episode.
  • Me and the missus went on our honeymoon to Sorento. Beautiful place. The Hotel we were staying at was only a 45 minute walk from the centre (so said the sat nav), so when we arrived we thought we’d have a go and walk. Turns out this was inaccurate, and we ended up scaling a not insignificant hillside that started out as a pathway, but soon became a sheer drop. I was back against the wall, “Indiana Jones”-ing my way across what was once upon a time possibly a walkway but now a teensy ledge that started crumbling away when I was halfway across. I had to dive across to safety. Had I fell, I would have deffo been a goner
#29

Do hangovers count?

4 Likes
#30

Was lost at sea in an inflatable dingy until my dad swam out to get me

#31
  • When I was about 6, a rusty metal garden slide fell with it’s full weight on me, leaving me with a scar right above my eye that on my adult head is about four inches long. A centimetre lower and it could have been an altogether different outcome
  • Appendix burst when I was about 11. My mum thought I was faking illness because I didn’t like the supply teacher at school so put off doing anything
  • Passenger in a car accident driving back from Stanstead Airport when I was about 30. The car came off the road and slid on a muddy back into an advertising hording, which smashed through the windscreen stopping where my head would have been if I hadn’t leant to the side. That was one of those real everything-feels-like-it’s-happening-in-slow-motion moments, where it was actually seconds.
#32

Come on. This is DiS. Surely some indie try hard has actually died and come back to life ?

2 Likes
#33

Nearly drowned when I was 12. That wasn’t fun.

#34

So how bad did she feel?

#35

I’ve been the golden child who can do no wrong ever since :innocent:

2 Likes