80 Life-or-Death Moments When Gut Feelings Became Unshakeable Lifelines
Sidenote, often during the visits, they’d have me blow into a tube hooked up to a computer to check my lung strength or capacity or something. It was synced to a three little pigs animation, and the harder you blew, the more houses would fall down. It was good if you could get the brick house down.
So we tell the doctor that I’m having a hard time breathing, they take me to the lung test, and I can’t even get the first house down. They rush me to a bed, are checking my blood pressure, which is going down fast. They put me on oxygen, and do two shots of epinephrine, an adrenaline type shot that gets your heart pumping. They told my dad to call my mom because they weren’t sure if I’d make it.
Turns out I did make it, and I’m not allowed to get allergy shots anymore, and since I was only 4 of the 5 years, my allergies are still here, and it’s annoying as ever.
That’s my story of how I almost died, but survived almost solely because I stayed longer than I needed to even though I had the opportunity to leave the clinic. Had we left, I would have been a couple miles away from the clinic and who knows if there would have been time to get back or know what was wrong.
Just after I turned 21, my best friend wanted me to go out with him on St Pattys day to bar hop. There is nothing that prevented me from going, I had to work the next day but that never stopped me before. My gut told me no. I declined. A few days later I ran into his ex, and he had an accident, got his cousin to go with him. He ended up off the road, hit a ditch and flipped the car several times, his cousin died and he lived.
Might not have died, but a serious injury was close. Made a wrong manœuvre while landing with my parachute after a skydiving jump. Found myself at low altitude going with the wind instead of against the wind at quite a high speed. Managed to go with side wind still (second wrong manœuvre due to slight panic). Last second just before impact I remembered to put my legs together and slightly bend my knees, a tip I got from a more experienced skydiver after some other student broke his ankle. I fell on my side, my parachute dragged me for a few meters, but besides a dirty suit and a scare I didn’t have anything. Others who saw my hurrendous landing had already jumped into the van to come see if I was OK.
It was my 15th jump, 8th solo jump. Not jumping anymore.
I was walking my dog around 11:30 PM some months ago. I had studied all day for my midfinals and needed some fresh air. I headed towards our local park and met up with one of my neighbours. We talked for a bit. Mid conversation I spot a man walking into the park, clothes blacked out, no dog with him. At that time, you were only allowed to be out of house to walk your dog or for medical reasons. Strange, I thought.
When I finished my conversation with the neighbour, I noticed the SAME man, walking the SAME path, heading into the park. A few minutes had passed since I first saw him, so I thought to myself, something is not right here. I decided to take a different route, not in the park.
After the walk I went home and straight to bed. The next morning I woke up and read the local news. There had been multiple gunshots at that park, about twenty minutes after I had left.
I was up in the mountains snowboarding with my family, I was at the top of the mountain, my mother at the bottom having already gone down on her skiis and was at the bottom.
There was a old, broken down fence along the side of the mountain, a very steep drop covered in rocks, ice, and trees on the otherwise.
People going down around me as I headed down along the fence to the black diamond hill. And there was a child who had tried go around me, clearly much younger on their skiis. The kid had rammed into the back of me, causing me to go off course towards the broken fence.
I fell over, feeling that of I had more friction on the snow I wouldn’t fly over the edge. I’ve tbe right call, I slammed into the fence while laying on my back as my board hung over the side, as I desperately held onto the wood, and digging my hands into the snow.
I didnt fall, thankfully.
I have Crohn’s and colitis so severe gut pains were nothing new. I stood up and felt like I was stabbed in the stomach. I went and told my boss I had to go home. By the time I got home I could barely stand up. My wife insisted I get checked out. She ended up driving and every single pothole was unbearable(we live on a dirt road 40 min away from the hospital). I could hardly walk by the time we got there. Turned out I had a ruptured ulcer through both sides, technically a perforated colon. After a week of IV antibiotics I was released. After a few days at home on antibiotics I woke up one day feeling terrible. Back to the hospital. The perforation had closed but turned into an abscess. They took this 2ft needle and stuffed it in through my side to install a drain in the abscess. Spent another week on IV antibiotics while admitted. I was out for a week and had the drain removed still on antibiotics. A few days later I woke up sick as a dog and went back to the hospital. I had developed a septic infection. Time for a colon resection. They split me from my pelvic bone to my sternum and removed a little over a foot of my colon. 10 days later had a pic line put in for antibiotics and IV nutrients. Another 6 days I was released. I spent 26 days in the hospital and out of work for 4 months. Scar tissue from Crohn’s was the cause of the tear. Due to the amount of radiation from all the the scans I’ve had, cancer is how I go out…. 2 years post op with an ileostomy, I feel great. Other than the bag situation life is good. In short, a literal gut feeling almost killed me.
So it’s a low key one but, when I was in high school we were driving to our local grocery store, and as we pulled up to the last stop light before the store. I had this “tingle” and told the driver to slow down instead of running the yellow light. After a very quick argument she slowed down and came to a stop but not before the the car next to us shot through the light and as they did, they were T-Boned and pushed into oncoming traffic which ended up killing the driver and hurting the passengers. I sat in the front seat of that truck in disbelief, and to this day won’t run yellow lights.
Not my decision, but it still saved my life. I was about 2 years old when it happened. My big sis was 14 at the time, and she was like a second mother to me, always checking after me, taking care of me, etc. One day, while it was nap time, she randomly decided to check in on me. So she silently entered my room and found me in my bed. I wasn’t breathing and was blue. Panicked, she took me in her arm and shook me (“never shake a baby”). After a short while, I started breathing again, and I went to the hospital. She acted fast and saved my life, so I could never thank her enough.
I was about 7 years old and had just left parents evening, i used to always sprint across the road as fast as i could but one night I decided not to. It was around 8:30 at night and just had a feeling of walking instead of running. I clipped that car’s wing mirror whilst they were going around 70 mph. They didn’t even stop to see if I was alright.
I chose to buy a scratch off ticket the night I was planning to potentially k**l myself. After winning, I have done a complete 180 from that night and I sometimes look back thinking how surreal it all unfolded.
Toddler me, in the mid 80s, apparently hated the belt of my car seat one night going home. In order to placate me, my parents made a big show of putting on THEIR seat belts, instead of ignoring me or letting me sit without it. (This is before seat belts were required by law in Alberta.)
On the highway home, in the dark, another driver suddenly swerved into our lane at top speed. My dad swerved, we hit the ditch, and the car rolled.
