80 Life-or-Death Moments When Gut Feelings Became Unshakeable Lifelines
I’m in the right lane (In a Mitsubishi galant), aford explorer in left lane, we’re both going 60 because that’s the speed limit, and this little honda darts in front of the SUV to turn on to the road. The explorer, tries to not hit it and swerves into my lane which causes me to swerve as a knee-jerk reaction. Except I swerve into the grass over a bumpy patch, flip my car 3 times.
It was bad, I saw blood running down my arm and glass embedded in it, everything hurt, my brain hurt, the whole works. Witnesses told the cops what happened, as did the suv driver, and I concurred with them. My car looked like an empty can someone tried to crush sideways. An ambulance came by I declined and just had my parents take me to the er (yeah another person not wanting to get hit with a huge ambulance bill). They spent 2 hours digging glass out of my arm from it going through the windshield and making a perfect hole, which surprised me because I thought windshields were supposed to pop out or some s**t. No stitches needed, just badly bruised and sore. Parents were pissed at me for totaling the car because they had just taken off gap on it only a couple days prior.
Needless to say, I think I wouldve been thrown from car and killed had it not been for the seatbelt.
Edit: someone pointed out that putting gap insurance helped them out, and made me realize I meant to say they took it off.
When I was like 13 I Got in a Bad skiing accident, I accidentally went down a double black diamond course (the hardest one) and got out of control. There was a small shed about halfway down, right in front of a cliff face that became super steep and I made the decision to slam into the shed instead of continuing down the mountain( I was going about 80 mph so I probably wouldn’t have survived if i kept going) When I was about 100 feet from the shed I passed out from fear and I woke up with a broken arm and a lacerated liver. I was in the hospital for two weeks.
Was surfing while exhausted. My board strap came unvelcroed and my board floated away.
I am swimming to shore but at one point hit that tired state where the current is stronger than I am swimming and I realize I am not moving towards shore anymore.
I panic, which doesn’t help my swimming any.
Suddenly, I remember the surf instructor saying there is a reef far out from shore, but whatever you do don’t stand on it unless you want really bad coral cuts. I was so panicked, I thought, what the hell, maybe the reef is there.
So, I kind of just stood up on the middle of the water. My foot hit something (the reef, I assume) and I was able to stand there with my head barely above wave height and rest.
Once I got my strength back, I swam back to shore and have not gone surfing since.
Edit: Many kind people are sharing their true near drowning experiences while surfing in nasty waves. They are the true near drowning while surfing survivors! Rather embarassingly, I should say the waves were not very big where I was at. I was very near drowning, but mainly from exhaustion (I had played a 3 day tournament just before and had been surfing for hours) and not knowing how to manage the smallish waves I was in as I had only really swam in pools and rivers before this experience. For me, the near drowning was very much an open water near drowning more than a surfing near drowning.
I decided to change hospitals the last month of my pregnancy. Lucky me, the first hospital took on dozens of patients from a wreck the night I went into labor. They would have been too busy to catch my heart attack. The hospital I went to was basically empty and a nurse was sitting with me the whole time cause I was scared. She caught the signs so quick and put me in OR for a c section. I changed hospitals cause the wallpaper color in the first one made me nauseous.
Nothing spectacular but I worked for 3 weeks in a fishing boat (prawns). We would collect and throw creels which spanned a mile long so you can imagine that there was a lot of rope on board. So I was new to this job and while I am throwing off a big chain (that’s tied to the spoils of rope) I kinda get an off feeling that my foot was in the wrong place. I look down and it’s in between one of the spoils. If I hadn’t of removed my foot it could have dragged me off the boat and pulled me under water.
I was having breathing problems, gaining weight, and trouble sleeping accompanied by difficulty waking up once I did get to sleep.
One night, late, while watching tv on the couch, I got up and walked across the apartment to go out on the balcony and smoke a cigarette. I saw stars after doing that. Booked an appointment with a family doctor who suggested I might have anemia because of my pale color, but ordered blood tests.
Turns out both my kidneys were completely failed and probably had been for weeks or months. Doctors said if I’d waited just a few more weeks I probably would have slipped into a coma and died. I was sent to the ER, placed into ICU, recieved a catheter in my upper chest, and started emergency dialysis the same day the results came back.
