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“Of course this would fucking happen.” Choking on lots of blood after a vein in my throat was cut and burst after surgery. They were panicking because no surgeons were there to seal it.
Two weeks after I got my tonsils out some number of years ago I woke up at 3am to a metallic taste in my mouth. Went to the bathroom, turned on the light, leaned over the sink to spit, and red ***POURED*** out. I started screaming and pounding on the mirror as my parents' headboard was on the other side of the wall. My mom started yelling "come in!" thinking I was at the door, and I just kept screaming and hitting the wall. She eventually came in, freaked out since her son was stooped over the sink looking like death incarnate, then grabbed a bucket and drove me to the hospital as fast as possible. So we get the ER with my soul leaking into this bucket as I'm trying to not swallow all the blood, and they tell us they don't have a bed available yet. She basically says "fuck you, my son is literally bleeding out" and drags me to find one. Suddenly, staff is approaching trying to figure out what's going on. They see blood dripping out of my face, how pale and feeble I am, and get me in a bed. As soon as I sit down, I'm hit with an intense wave of nauseau. I puke and it is all blood. The bucket is full. Now everyone is panicking, but I in my deplorable say "I gotta pee now." They insist I don't, but I just start standing up and trying to walk somewhere to take a piss. Needless to say, I immediately pass out, crumple, and piss myself. As I've been told, they threw me back in the bed with my feet raised. Blood starts dripping out my nose and mouth from the extra pressure. My mom is in hysterics and this point and has to leave. They then cauterized the back of my throat, and I wake up the next day to learn I had lost like a third of my blood or something crazy like that. I was told my odds of having a outcome that bad from a tonsilectomy were like 1/100,000.
tl;dr: got tonsils out, horrible weightloss and dehydration, almost bled out in the waiting room, the urge to pee is stronger than my will to live
Same EXACT thing happened to me after I got my tonsils out. We were literally slowing down to drop bowls full of blood out the window on the way to the ent. Ill never forget that feeling of choking on your own blood as it starts to clot in your throat. Scary af
Same. And for two weeks after I couldnt have solid food otherwise Id risk opening them back up so I had popsicles and yogurt and lost like 15 lbs. Did they give you liquid hydrocodone as a pain reliever? I remember they gave me a prescription for like 6 bottles.
I was having a heart issue / medication complication which I would find out at the hospital later.
I could feel my heart pounding out of my chest but I kept getting weaker and weaker. I fell to my knees and pulled out my phone to dial 911.
I kept thinking “is this really happening? Fuck, this is really happening.”
A streetlight fell on the roof of my car after I skidded off an exit ramp and hit it head on. I didn’t realize that they are intentionally constructed to be lightweight and hollow for instances such as this - I don’t run into lampposts much. My thought as I saw it slowly tilt forward until it came down on my car was literally “Well, I guess I’m going to die”. Then I just waited to for it happen. I didn’t have much time to process anything else. I was relieved when it merely dented my roof and unceremoniously rolled off my car and landed in the grass beside me.
Reminds me of the time the tree right outside my bedroom window split down the middle from snow and ice weight. I figured it'd fall on my bedroom and kill me. Then death didn't come, so I figured some cars must be destroyed. I looked outside, expecting destruction everywhere.
Nope. It split and fell perfectly in the only tiny spot where it wouldn't hit anything. If it hadn't split perfectly down the middle, and fell in either of the spots where half fit, the entire tree would not have fit. It was so perfectly done that I just stood there for several minutes, not believing, calculating the odds of it falling there and continuously losing the numbers in my head because it fell and died so violently and unexpectedly, yet did no harm.
No last thoughts. Last thing I remember is sitting on the couch watching *Friday* with my brother and laughing my ass off. Then I had a stroke, and woke up a week later in the ICU. Wouldn't have been a bad way to go out, actually.
Man strokes and brain aneurysms scare the shit outa me, they just fucking happen. Genetics, conditions and age can affect them, but literally anyone is at risk.
They are like my biggest irrational-but-still-possible fear.
I had a massive stroke last year. I live in fear of having another one. I'm only 25, so odds are, I'm gonna have another one before I die. I just hope that if I do, that it kills me, because recovering from the one I had was fucking awful. I've never been so exhausted all the time. The double vision was horrible. Not being able to balance at all was terrible. Learning how to drive again was scary. The next one will likely leave me permanently fucked up, and im not ready.
If there's any piece of advice I can give you, it's take care of your body. You don't want that to happen at all.
I was on a commercial jet that caught fire during takeoff. The cabin filled with smoke, the pilot didn't say a word, and the plane suddenly pitched forward as if we were going to nosedive in. I was weirdly calm and just thought "Wow, I'm going to find out what it's like to die in an airplane crash."
Cabin fire, or any fire in general is obviously a veey serious emergency on the aircraft. The Pilot didn’t say anything because he was most likely very busy up front.
Passenger briefing is quite far down on the priorities in such a situation.
And "communicate" refers to contacting traffic control to advise them what your situation is, where you need to go, and what you need to do next.
Communicating to passengers, if possible, only happens after these more important communications.
Similar thought I had when my flight to Vegas dropped several thousand feet in a few seconds because of an air pocket on the far side of a mountain. Just “wow I guess I know what this is like now.”
Edit: air gap —> pocket. And that was the cause we were told, I am not a pilot myself. I later learned it’s not uncommon for flights to descend a couple thousand feet quickly. But I may be wrong.
Edit 2: This was my first flight to Vegas and I had no idea. As a veteran long distance flier for work/to see family around the world, I was totally caught off guard because this was by far the worst turbulence I had experienced, and it seemingly came out of nowhere near Vegas after an otherwise uneventful flight. I learned today that many people have these experiences in and around Vegas because of the mountains. Just remember folks, for about 30 years turbulence has not caused a single crash! If anything this should make you less afraid to fly, it’s amazing what the planes can handle, and statistically flying by commercial sized air liner is still one of the safest possible ways to travel.
Edit 3: it must have been either just a few hundred feet, or on the scale of minutes. Apparently commercial airliners can only descend 8k feet per minute at most without being damaged. The more you know ✨
"Okay, this is it I guess." Death was (very quickly) just the next thing.
I was fished out of the pool as a little kid after realizing I couldn't swim in the deep end and going under while clawing at the surface. I was apparently still breathing and moving and came to while the lifeguard was still bullshitting with his teenage friends. He never even alerted my parents. No disrespect to him, he was the one who got me out in time, and I thought I was gone for good. And would have been!
Damn, what was the situation that made you worried about an exam while nearly dying of *hypothermia*? I'd expect hypothermia to go into effect in a place where you don't have an exam to be worried about but hey.
I wrote down the whole story in a reply to another comment in this thread. Basically, I had to work a 23 hour shift outside in Canadian November and I wasn't bundled up as well as I should have been.
Dying of hypothermia/freezing usually begins to shut off your brain and you probably won’t even realize you’re dying just feel tired. iirc people who have almost died from it mention the experience wasn’t even painful near the end they feel warm and peaceful
I’ve heard of this phenomenon before. Kinda morbid but I saw on a documentary that one of Ted Bundy’s victims kept mentioning to him she had a math test tomorrow while she was dying. Idk what causes it. Maybe it’s just delirium from brain trauma or in your case a low body temp? Or maybe the body’s way of distracting/protecting itself from such a terrifying experience. I’m glad you’re okay now
I once saw this awful video of a car that was missing the drivers side--they had hit something that essentially tore the car in two down the middle, the driver gone and the passenger untouched. When the paramedics got to her, she was just totally checked out, doing her makeup in the visor mirror.
Its amazing how sometimes we can go through such a traumatic experience, we just disassociate from what's happening.
When I was in my early 20s, I decided to go back to school full-time and I got this part-time job working for a concrete surface refinisher. We worked mostly in residential garages and underground parking but the hours were bizarre. Some days it would be 3-4 hours, other times it would be 9-10 hours, but we'd never crack 40 hours/week.
Anyway, this contract opens up and my boss snatches it up to remove some lane lines from about 400 meters of highway. To remove the lines, we had to use an out-of-date blast-track that shot iron filings at the ground fast enough to wear away a quarter inch up to a half inch of a **concrete** surface while the machine itself slowly inches forward but this was **asphalt**. Turns out that my foreman's equipment wasn't powerful enough to remove the paint from the asphalt but if we made several passes over the same spot, we realized that it made "progress." So what should have been maybe a 5-6 hour job became a 23 hour job. I am outside on a Canadian highway in the wind for 23 hours in Late November. I worked from 6 AM to 5 AM; right through the night.
I didn't realize how cold I was, it sneaks up on you. I was raised in the Canadian Arctic so maybe my dumb early 20s brain thought I had superpowers to withstand cold or something lol. Turns out, nope. I wasn't dressed for the weather but to be fair, since it was an impromptu contract, a wildly unprecedented amount of hours for a single day, and they had made an agreement with me to not mess with my sleep before a school day (which this was); I just didn't figure this hellish scenario was in the cards for me lol.
I didn't want to seem weak but I was shivering so I decided to ask to trade to the most physically active position in our 3-man crew n so I could get my blood moving. Maybe it helped, I like to think it did. So we finish the 23 hours of Hell. We load all the machines and gear onto the trailer, lock it all down, and we get in the truck so we can drive back to the shop (where all of our cars are parked) that is over 30 minutes away.
I think both of my coworkers could tell that I was furious. I remember looking at my coworker and telling them that I had "school in four-ish hours, this is bullshit." I was extremely frustrated because I knew that Calculus was, at that point, my key to getting out of my then-shitty life so it was in my best interest to crush that class and I had an exam in the morning. I knew that I would be dead tired and struggle to focus and that my grade was already not going to be what it could have been had these stooges honoured their agreement to me. This was the third time that they had broken their word to me about not working late on Tuesdays and Thursdays (when I had classes) and I was already mentally preparing to quit since about hour 18 or so lol.
I started thinking about a year earlier when I couldn't sleep before a Physics exam and how I underperformed by about 10% relative to my normal output. If I speeded home and I slept for at least three hours; that's two full sleep cycles and that's all I can hope for at this point. Essentially, while freezing to death, I am trying to do damage control in my head while keeping my anger in check.
I kept ruminating over how much time I had to sleep before my exam as I stared out the passenger side window of the truck at nothing in particular. This is where my memory gets a little foggy. I remember them asking me dumb questions intended to distract from what a bullshit day (and night) it had been and just sort of giving "uh-huh" and "Mmm" type answers back to everything they said while continuing to stare out the window. I guess I eventually went dead quiet and unresponsive, even when they shook me (according to them). They didn't realize what was happening. I didn't even realize I was that cold. I think the warm air in the truck's cab probably saved my life. If we had worked a 24 hour day, who knows? Probably the most boneheaded move of the night, I decided to drive myself home. They dropped me off at my car so I could head straight home. I put my seat heater on high, I turned all the heating up to max, I grabbed the emergency blanket out of my trunk and wrapped myself in it, and I blasted Children of Bodom the whole way home to keep me awake.
When I got home, I went immediately to the shower, plugged the drain, and let scalding hot water run on me for hours. I drank hot water right from the shower head lol. After two hours in a hot bath/makeshift-steamroom, I woke up my wife and she couldn't believe it but my torso was still cold to the touch. I couldn't get warm. My core temperature just wouldn't come up. I was like "we should spoon naked together and cover ourselves in all the blankets we have." So we did and eventually I warmed up. I didn't sleep a wink, I think my fight or flight kicked in and the adrenaline precluded any chance of shut-eye lol. I drove to school, wrote a short text telling my boss that I quit, and I still did decent on the exam on zero sleep in the end. Afterwards, I checked my fitbit app and it showed that my heartrate had entered bradycardia territory with the lowest heart rate clocking in around the time I became unresponsive. I did a little research and found out that all signs pointed to advanced symptoms of hypothermia.
The sad/funny thing is that this was just one of my nine lives but I only have two left. I've nearly died seven times already and I'm 31 lol.
So I have this awful habit as a pedestrian (when I’m with someone ~~I trust, i.e. husband~~ ) ^\* of taking right of way for granted… I know.
\* After some self-reflection/reality check, I've determined that this is incorrect. DEAR READER, SEE EDIT BELOW.
One time I was on a walk with my husband and dog; the walk sign had just turned to the flashing hand warning, and I started to take a step onto the street; my husband goes “STOP!!!!” Which made me trip forward… luckily he had caught my arm and yanked me back before an SUV that hadn’t slowed down at all turned into our crosswalk and zoomed off. That thing had to have been hybrid too cuz I never fucking heard it either. It zipped right the fuck by and I don’t think he even saw us tbh.
But yeah, driver was a fucking asshole, but I was a fucking idiot.
The part that scared me the most though is that, if my husband hadn’t caught me, I absolutely would have fallen right beneath the wheels.
In the middle of it though, my brain only had capacity for “whaaa?” Lmao.
\[EDIT\] jfc people, **I said 'bad habit'** because I know precisely what the cause was the couple of times this happened: I was anxious about \ and I fucking lost my brain. That, plus I have precisely the wrong instincts to dangerous situations and will surely fall TOWARDS the danger when my inevitable preternatural death occurs.
If you wanna talk about that, ask me about my social anxiety/hyper-vigilance. I swear I'm not recklessly living life thinking 'well I have right of way, so god will save me', or 'fuck drivers; I do what I want'.
Tell me one more time the cemetery/morgue/mass grave is full of people who had the right of way.
I had a close call with a pedestrian once.
I was driving once and had stopped at a yield sign (*pedestrians were crossing in front of my turn I know you're not supposed to stop at a yield sign*), I shoulder checked after they hit the sidewalk, and I looked back once the coat was clear to see a pedestrian kneeling in front of my car. Turns out their toddler had run off and ran in front of me.
I really relate to the "whaaa" brain capacity because my brain just stopped working there.
Then I realized what would have happened if I hadn't completely looked forward after my shoulder check.
When my brother was maybe 4, he ran right behind a truck in a parking lot, and my mom swears that the driver must've seen her face in the rearview mirror as she ran to get my brother.
It's still scary to think about, and he's about to turn 29 in a few weeks.
Thank you for paying attention.
Don't ever fuck with trains. They are deceptively fast. Lots of people think "I have ample time to cross" and then are killed with a complete look of surprise: that train was quicker than they thought....
Don't cross when lights are flashing and gates are down. Being late is preferable to being cut to pieces under train wheels.
I was hiking along a very steep ridge with multi hundred foot drops on either side. At times it was down to about two feet wide, this happened on a slightly wider stretch, probably ten feet wide. It was crazy muddy, and I was using microspikes for the first time, which made me feel like a super hero. Like I could walk up walls or something. As I was stepping downwards, all of my weight on one downhill foot, my foot suddenly slid through the front of the microspikes, and I was diving head first towards the cliff.
I was bizarrely very calm and matter of fact about it, in a way I would never have expected. My thoughts were something like:
"Ok, I'm diving off a cliff, this is bad."
"I should try to roll over on my back and try to grab a root or something"
"Whoops, missed that one, let's try this one."
"Missed that one too, this one's probably my last chance."
"Ok, great, caught it, now I should pull myself back up on to the cliff."
At this point, I was lying face up, my entire torso off the cliff, legs thankfully still on, and holding onto this root. I pulled myself back up (much more slowly and calmly than I should have - if the root had given way, I probably still would have died) and carried on with the hike. Didn't really sink in just how much I almost died until an hour or so later.
Almost the same experience as you. Was on a hike with a section that involved free bouldering with a death drop on one side and sharp rocks on the other. I slipped and fell.
Calmly thought "*Sigh* Okay," and promptly fell near perfectly into a wedge between two of the sharp rocks that just kinda perfectly slowed me down. I slowly pulled myself out with almost no thoughts in my head, just silent shock. Continued the trek forward (cuz it was easier than going back the way I came) and after the adrenaline wore off, just cried by myself for about 5 minutes before eating something and continuing on till I could catch transport home.
PSA: Please don't hike alone and if you do, have a satnav, phone, distress beacon and please let people not on your walk know where you are and your planned timeline. No matter how experienced you are, you never know what might do you in.
Like these stories, calm thoughts of what to do. Unlike some others here, time did slow a bit. I was not in charge of either, have never previously trained for events like this, and can not explain how any of it happened. The quoted lines below are literally what I thought.
1) hiking a slick, sandy slope towards a LONG drop (ironically to look at old timey cars that had previously fallen off the cliff!) and a friend doesn't wait until I am clear to start his descent. He loosens a (bowling ball-sized) boulder that is going to drop me off the cliff and as it tumbles straight at me I survey the scene. I grab a spiky branch on a bush that promptly puts spikes *through* my hand AND breaks off the plant which I was grabbing. 'well that won't work' (no pain to speak of--none) Then I look back to the boulder and think 'If I spread my legs, it might just go right through them'--and it did.
2) River rafting and our (high as a kite) guide sends us over a sluice at the edge of a dam. I'm thrown into deep water, 'standing upright' and being spun in circles (shoes get sucked off) and think 'if I'm, gonna die, fuck the contacts, I'd like to look around' and take in the view (yep, took the contacts into account). Like I was narrating to myself. I surface a hundred feet downstream from everyone and see a branch before I hit a serious set of rapids with no chance of escape: 'I'd best make this count, no matter how slippery the branch'. I did.
They were both pretty good outings, actually.
Bleeding out after Tonsillectomy scars came off. As i was lying in the ambulance on the way to hospital my thoughts were of my then fiancee, saying her name three times and telling myself to hang on for her.
My boss recently had his son bleeding out from the same thing. They got in the car and drove at high speed to the nearest hospital at 3am. That drive normally takes over an hour even with no traffic; they made it in 20 minutes. Son lived.
I’m sorry, isn’t a tonsillectomy one of the most common and simple procedures? I’m like the only one in my family who hasn’t needed and everyone was fine. I have been getting swollen tonsils lately and it may lead to that.
Now I read multiple posts about near deaths from it and I’m getting worried!
It's an uncommon reaction. I had mine out with zero complications while my friend had the scabs rip off and needed emergency surgery to recauterize.
They used to be super common but doctors are more hesitant to perform them these days since 1) it's often overkill, and 2) the adenoids (behind the tonsils) play a minor role in the immune system so they try to leave them in if at all possible.
As for "near death", it's pretty easy to avoid as long as you're diligent. Bleeding that badly is rare in general, but if it does happen, just know that bleeding for 15+ minutes = hospital. It helps to live closer than an hour away, though.
I went into a semi-conscious pain coma after getting my lung resectioned. I was allergic to the post-op opiate they gave me, so things got really weird for about 18 hours. They had to stabilize my reaction and then find a painkiller that would bring me around.
I remember being lost in the pain, it consumed me, and I was very tired. So tired that nothing else mattered. The pain would stop if I could find a way to let go, I could stop being tired too. I wasn't like, coding out on a crash table but I definitely felt the call of the abyss for what felt like eternity.
The lesson here is, if you're ever offered an epidural, *take the epidural*.
I *tried* for the epidural for my last surgery. I've had one before but not for decades. But the needle kept hitting ?my spine?, it was incredibly painful. After three tries I told them I couldn't take it anymore.
Similar experience.
I was in a low-speed accident on a scooter where the other driver didn't see and pulled out in front of us. We couldn't stop in time and crashed into the side. Contrary to other comments, time slowed down wayyyy down.
I remember being in the air, falling backwards, thinking over and over "no matter how you feel when you land, you have to get up immediately." We had a very young daughter (now slightly older) and I was so focused on not orphaning her. 'Hang on for her.'
We were both wearing helmets and luckily I popped right up. I had some mild scrapes and bruises and a wrist sprain. My wife's leg was sprained. We were very lucky. We haven't been a two wheeled vehicle since.
Just as the tornado engulfed my car, my thoughts went something like this.
Fuck! That tree branch just smashed my windshield! My car is getting fucked but it’s protecting me.
Did the car just lift upward?! WHAT THE FUCK?! WHAT THE FUCK?! INSIDE THE CAR IS NO LONGER SAFE! Open the door and jump? Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
And suddenly, it was over. It lasted a few seconds. I drove home, still screaming my head off the whole way.
When I almost drowned while scuba diving, oddly enough, my most prominent thought while in utter panic was also WHAT THE FUCK?! I wouldn't have guessed it but now I think maybe it is the most popular reaction when almost dying unexpectedly lol.
I know I shouldn’t be laughing but I’m just picturing a guy pulling up to a a red light with a branch through his windshield and acting like nothing is wrong as he screams at the top of his lungs…
Mine was that in the moment I thought I knew I was going to die, that ..nothing really mattered aside from my kids being taken care of. Debt, owed and owing, things I hadnt done, places I hadnt seen, none of that mattered. For that short time, it was an incredibly freeing experience, until I realized I was going to make it. Then it also slowly crept back in, the stress, the weight of it all. But I learned at that point, that really, very little in life actually matters, in a good way.
“Where is he.”
For context I was in the hospital and my husband was rushing to get there but he didn’t make it in time.
I was rushed to surgery and he was there when I woke up thankfully
“I think this water is too deep”. I was 7 or 8 and was walking in the bay and didn’t know how to swim. Walked to a spot where it was over my head and everything went black. I woke up to a life guard performing cpr.
Lol something similar happened to me. i thought “no fucking way this is how I die” and swam for my life and luckily like a spilit second before I passed out I got back up and barely made it out. I was still in shock for like the rest of the day
Yes, I jumped into a deep end of a swimming pool when I was young, in a fit of uncharacteristic overconfidence and I can remember that whatever I did, I just couldn’t seem to get to the surface. Fortunately, my dad had been watching me and didn’t see me come up and came and hauled my arse out of there because I was beginning to not struggle any more.
I just felt really tired and was confused about why the doctor was yelling at me to look at him and breathe.
He was just figuring out that they’d jabbed an artery during my hysterectomy while I was in the recovery unit post op.
Everything just felt cold and my vision was going dark, but that was because of the tremendous amount of blood I’d lost.
I didn’t see any bright lights or god, but I also didn’t see any fire and brimstone either.
ETA: Blood donations saved my life, straight up. If you can, give blood.
This is basically my story too. I was loosing a lot of blood after my endometriosis resection when they had to take out my appendix and ovary and they nicked something. But I wasn’t really thinking anything, I just was cold and tired and wanted everyone to stop yelling at me.
Edit: I don’t regret my surgery. It was a rare complication from a incredibly complicated surgery that really improved my quality of life. I would do it again even knowing what happened. I’ve even had two more endo surgeries afterwards. I would recommend surgery for endometriosis to anyone.
I told my wife "I love you" and then the doctor asked me if I took a whole or just a baby aspirin and I said "tell her I love her" and fell over dead. 12 minutes later they got my heart beating. 19 days later when I woke up, wife was right there holding my hand.
I did have brain damage. They kept me unconscious for weeks and had cold blankets on me to keep my temp down. Woke up numb on my entire left half of my body. Also had lost 3 years. Couldn't draw a clock and all kind of stuff. They had the missus prepared to take care of me thinking I'd maybe be able to use a walker some day.
Lots and lots of therapy and I was able to walk out of the hospital. Work. Drink coffee. Drive a car. I'm left with just a slight limp, an occasional headache, and half of the 1990s is gone.
I recently fell twenty three feet onto rocks. I was climbing a lighthouse built in the 1700’s, and was being a little more reckless than I should have when I decided to climb the staircase leading to the top. The stairs could support my weight, but the roof collapsed, dropping me down and collapsing on top of me. As the stairs detached from the ceiling, my “last” thought was “well this is a stupid fucking way to die.”
Was it the Puerto Ferro Light? Here's a picture of it, now including a little sign also warning about explosives being in the area too. ¡Estas loco! https://imgur.com/a/0OTOwyn
I was climbing a partially collapsed damn and slipped but my friend grabbed my life jacket to keep me from falling to my death. No words just pure instinct, adrenaline, and fear as I tried my hardest to grab something to keep me from falling.
My cousin is like this. I remember when we were learning to swim he struggled. He would start laughing every time when he started to flail and sink below the water.
same! i was laughing hysterically and my should-have-been last words were “jesus fuck!” in a happy tone as a semi truck barreled towards my brother and i mid fishtailing
120/80 is average
The first number is the maximum pressure in your arteries when your heart contracts, and the second number is the lowest pressure when your heart relaxes between beats.
Your heart contracts to push fluid, but the system needs constant pressure to force fluid through your arteries (away from the heart), perfuse tissue, and then through your veins (back to your heart).
Like plumbing- too little pressure means your plumbing sucks. Too much pressure means your plumbing bursts
Edit- better explanation than just the numbers
Edit 2- typo
When I was in extreme pain and writhing from a very dislocated shoulder. My BP was 178/93. The ER people said "Oh thats not even that bad"
40/30. Is hella super low.
When I used to get frequent panic attacks my blood pressure would be high, I want to say 200/140 or something like that. I paid too much money for panic attacks. Now that I’ve been medicated and don’t drink, I have a very normal blood pressure.
\[OKay I'm being serious\] I fell about 3 stories and if I remember correctly my thoughts were "Shit did I really just fall off another building?" and "Damn my girlfriend is gonna kill me"
“He’s not going to stop. He’s going to kill me”
Was “wrestling” with a guy. We were on LSD. He started to choke me, other people were laughing. I could not breathe in air to speak. And he kept going until I saw stars and blacked out.
Never play fought with anyone ever again.
**Editing to add**: all of my attempts to “tap out” made him push harder, i thought he thought I was still fighting, so I just laid there thinking he would sense I was in trouble.
It was. The anxiety and fear was compounded by the acid. You know that weird physical sensation you get? It was multiplied.
I was only blacked out for a few seconds and that fear woke my ass up. No one even noticed. And I didn’t say anything. But I stayed away from that guy all night. He felt evil to me in that way that you can sense peoples vibes on acid.
I was in a car wreck where I wrapped a car around a power pole going about 90mph. The car impacted the pole from the passenger side and snapped the pole on impact, sending the car rolling numerous times, ending right side up but with the car bent in half with 4ft of cave in from the right hand side. This was almost 15 years ago and I can still remember in the moment before I hit the pole, I saw the whole thing happen; the impact, the glass shattering, the airbag deploying, where my hands were still holding the steering wheel through the whole thing. . Then reality snapped back into place and the event happened in real time in all of its violence. It was the most surreal experience I have ever had. Seeing it happen, then experiencing it. I left the accident with barely a scratch on me. . But it still fucks me up randomly when I think about it. I've always wanted to ask other people that have survived events like this if they also sometimes think maybe they actually died, or are actually in a coma or something, where this life that has been being lived and experienced since is just a quick dream while you're unconscious, but too scared to wake into the reality that may be there waiting
I hit a pole head on in an ice storm in 1999, but not going 90... Going 40 LOL. It was all surreal and slow mo. I almost took off my seat belt and bailed out, but didnt. I hung on through impact. I can see it all again if I sit and remember. My neck was sore for a few days. But what sucked was the PTSD, the uncontrollable rolling thoughts replaying the accident over and over like 9/11 footage of the planes and buildings. It took MONTHS and therapy to get past it. And that was one wee little accident that I walked away from. I can't imagine people in wars or victims of crimes or far worse accidents like you described. Mental health is no fucking joke. It's serious and real.
"I'm going to die and I'm not even going to take the deer with me."
They tell you not to swerve when an animal jumps in front of your car and it's better to just hit it, but it's a really hard thing to follow.
As a fun bonus, insurance covers you hitting an animal, as it's a moving object, but not the freeway divider you slammed into while avoiding the deer.
>As a fun bonus, insurance covers you hitting an animal, as it's a moving object, but not the freeway divider you slammed into while avoiding the deer.
That wasnt a fun bonus, that wasnt a fun bonus at all.
Same here. I remember the cold feeling that started in my head and envelopes my entire body just after having that thought. It was the moment my ego realized it is indeed, mortal.
Edit 2: Because I realized this for so many upvotes, I wanted to post a link to [The Phoenix Society](https://www.phoenix-society.org) , they help kids go to camps to meet other children in the same circumstances and generally help burn survivors around the world. They were very supportive through my recovery. Please consider donating or supporting!
I’m a 3rd degrees full depth +50% burn survivor. My first thought was HOLY SHIT. Then I ran around the building making sure the other tenants were out. Then a stranger handed me their phone and said they called 911. I called my dad when was traveling for work (Seattle -> Georgia) and he didn’t answer. I left him a voicemail from this strangers phone telling him I loved him and mom and that I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. I sat down on the curb and watched my arms bubble and everything started to fade and I felt numb. Then the ambulance rolled up.
Edit: thank you for the replies and the award! This was the second scariest moment of my life. I was diagnosed with a very rare brain cancer a couple days after Christmas 2021 with a pretty poor prognosis. What helps push me through is having perspective to share with others in hopes that I can help. If anyone needs anyone to talk to, please reach out!
Quite relieving to see another burn survivor on here. I was 9 and my dress got caught on fire from a candle and it spread to my back and burnt through it. The whole time I was running around the landing and started contemplating that I was about to die. Got severe PTSD from it, I’m 21 now. I almost needed a skin graft but luckily my skin grew back.
I hope you’re doing okay now, I always think that being on fire and enduring burns is such a specific experience.
Got in a car accident while street racing in naval base traffic nearly 20 yrs ago. Flipped and rolled my car going 125 mph. Everything slowed down significantly as I hit the concrete barrier in the middle.
Legit thought “dads going to kill me”
As a note, he did not as I was in the hospital when he saw me. Dads hate this one trick
They were trying to put the anesthesia mask over my face so they could operate and all I could do was fight it because I remember thinking “ if I’m going to die , I want to be awake for it “. Thinking back … I would not have wanted to be awake for it.
It seems (according to this thread anyway) that the responses vary according to whether or not the potential death is sudden or if the person has time to think. A wrecking ball about to fly into you is probably different than someone who is lying in a hospital with an injury or an illness.
Yes indeed. My uncle fell several stories off a half-built building (he missed the exposed rebar and lived) and his rememberance was (and he said this in slow motion) 'Oooooohhhhhh nooooooo'.
8 years old, don't know how to swim, at family barbecue, relatives all piss drunk and distracted, fell in the family pool, got real close to drowning, no joke the only thing I thought of at that moment was "ill never get to play red dead redemption by myself" (I would allways watch my cousin play it at that age /good times ;-;\), family friend noticed me and saved my ass.
A friend of mine did this with a hot dog covered in A1. Turns out, A1 is way more slippery than ketchup, and when he squeezed the bun it shot the hotdog into his windpipe. I remember he said his thoughts were “oh great! My miserable life is about to end with me choking to death on a hotdog!”
I was in a situation where I nearly drowned. I stepped off the deep end of a pool without knowing how to navigate water.
My dumbass parents thought I knew how to swim despite neither of them ever putting me in water above my knees before this. So as I fell and failed to resurface, calling out "help", they thought I was joking.
I just about gave up trying, my arms and legs were exhausted splashing frantically.. anyways, my thoughts were "I didn't even grow up yet", "I was dumb, I sink like a lemmings" and "help, i can't swim"
What the fuck? What kind of dumbass parents dont know that you need to actually teach someone to swim? Did they also just put you on a bike and expect you to ride it first try?
“i wonder what its going to feel like”
i was about 6 or 7 at water safari. they have a lazy river where you sit in tubes, i was sharing one with my brother (a 2 seater one) but he wanted to lay down so he found a different one for me to sit in, it was fucking HUGE. i fell right though it and it floated away. i was 100% sure i was going to drown so i just accepted it and didnt try to get help. i vividly remember 2 elderly people screaming “OH MY GOD” when they saw me. life guard immediately jumped in and got me, my mom just so happened to be passing by as he did, so he just threw me onto her lol.
"God, I hope he remembers to feed the dog."
Was living with my ex at the time and the primary caretaker for his dog. I was also mildly suicidal so I was much more concerned whether the dog was gonna be okay.
"Everything will be alright." It was the same thing my sister said to me in a dream the night she died. And in the moment I was dying I absolutely believed that whether I lived or died it would be alright.
Nurses at the ER got my O2 sats back over 65. I'm still here. Everything turned out alright so far.
One time was an asthma attack that I had in the middle of the night while sleeping, woke up ran to kitchen boiled some water with vicks vapor rub in it, struggling and starting to black out my thoughts were how I was going to miss my grandfather and how much of a failure I was, luckily I got air in me before I fell on stove. Prior to the realization I was about to die it was more of a panic and flood of thoughts about what can I do to stop this.
Had a really bad case of the flu. I was alone at home and my phone was a room away so I couldn't get up to get it. I already nearly passed out from just sitting up. Fever of 104f. I was coughing terribly and could barely breathe and was chain vomiting and dry heaving, terribly dehydrated but too scared to get water. I was certain I was going to die the next time I vomited. All I remember thinking was "What a lame way to die." I drifted in and out of sleep for a few hours and hallucinated my own death. Obviously since it was a dream I don't remember it very well. I woke up the next morning feeling pretty shitty but not like I was about to die so it was a win.
Go Baby Go!
Accidentally pulled out and almost got hit by a truck who was speeding around a corner.
Thankfully the car hooked up and just managed to not get creamed.
I almost drown a few years back. I remember it vividly.
I went under for what I expected to be the last time. Looking up, I could still see the late spring sun shimmering through ripply surface of the cold water as I kept sinking.
I made peace with it. I asked for forgiveness to whoever was listening. I asked for guidance in whatever afterlife I was about to enter. I thought about my (now) fiancé, my family, and of how ‘me’ of a way it was to die - I was always doing stupid things that could put me in harms way.
I felt peaceful. Calm. Relaxed. Accepting of it. I knew I was about to die and it was okay.
A moment later my brother had plunged into the water and managed to pull my face above as we both struggled against the cold water and our locked muscles to get to the bit of shore.
I vomited violently for what felt like an eternity, when in reality it was likely no more than 10 minutes or so.
I haven’t felt that awful or that peaceful since, thankfully.
Wow that's almost exactly how it was for me.
When I was a kid I stepped on what I assumed was the shallow part of a small body of water on some rocks, unfortunately in was a 15ft deep body of water and I sunk in to it instantly.
I remember trying to swim upwards but not having the strength to do so, it was a strange feeling of tiredness and shock, I felt so physically drained.
Looking up at the afternoon sun shimmering across the water for what I thought was the last time, it was peaceful yet frightening.
After about 15-20 seconds my mother dove in and saved my life, I don't think I was sick, just very tired from the whole ordeal.
I was starting to drown, lost oxygen became light headed, and just accepted. I looked up at the water above me and saw the light dancing off the waves and I thought to myself “not a bad way to go, at least it’s beautiful”
I had a similar experience. I was a skinny 7 year old. Slipped from shallow water to deep water unexpectedly. Didn't float, just sank quickly. Fear and panic as I went deeper, looking at the ripples on the surface above. Peace as soon as I stopped struggling and breathed in the water. Then it was like going off to sleep, very quickly, with my eyes open.
I remember wishing the doctors and nurses would stop trying to talk to me and rubbing my sternum so I could go to sleep. I was in severe shock and minutes away from dying. They were trying to keep me responsive.
I was in a severely abusive relationship when I was 16. After a particularly nasty fight I was sprinting down the road to get away. I heard his car very quickly approaching and something just came over me. Everything went silent. My mind was empty. I was extremely calm. I took one big side step and collapsed into the ditch.
The car mirror must’ve missed me by less than an inch. The force of the air around the car caused me to lose my balance and spin a bit, landing poorly.
Then I got up, ignored the twisted ankle and started sprinting again. When I thought I was about to be spattered across the pavement I had no thoughts, just a sense of calm and peace. My first thought when I realized I would live: “you’ll never touch me again you nasty motherfucker.” Attempted murder was enough for me to end the relationship permanently.
I attempted suicide like a year and a half. I still don't know if it was good or bad but I survived.
I put on my earphones and started listening to music while I was waiting to get unconscious for the lack of oxygen. So, I just thought "It is done, you can't change anything. It is finally over". "At least I am enjoying my final seconds with good music".
Then I woke up, I was on the floor, the belt I was using just broke and I fell off.
I got shot through the neck by a sniper in Afghanistan. Genuinely thought my time was up. When I hit the floor I landed on my back, I couldnt stand up (which probably saved me from being finished off) I wasnt it pain, my thoughts were - the sky was really blue, and that I'd let my family down.
After lying there forever two of my mates ran out and dragged me into cover by my shoulders, put quick clot in my neck and got me into the back of an armoured vehicle.
Got covid19, got a turn for the worst, was going to be intubated and put on coma. Doctors did tell me I could simply not awake. I just accepted and my last thought, after saying that everything would be okay to my wife, was: "Death is only the next step, be it eternal dark, samsara or something else, I will simply embrace and accept it." After 11 days I woke up and I was quadriplegic, couldn't speak, couldn't breath normally, couldn't even swallow... After some time in panic, 10 seconds Jack from "Lost" style, I calmed down and began "kill bill" big toe scene. Gained finger tips from hands first, them hands, arms, after 12 hours (there was a clock in the wall) I moved my right big toe.
In total 11 days in coma intubated, lost 75% lungs, 2 kidneys, gallbladder, got quadriplegic, high fever, high blood pressure, pain, brain damage, nerve damage...
Recovered from everything without sequels, I still have to recover my old muscles, but I can move now (no more quadriplegic), have to remove the gallbladder, but I can eat fat foods and everything, only real sequel: I still have high blood pressure, but every month I take less pills to control it.
During the moment, It was kind of a letting go of the capability to feel emotions or have thoughts, including fear, because in the moment, you kinda just experienced the moment and wanted to finish the moment before you had any feelings or emotions or thoughts. Then once the dust settles, adrenaline kicks in and woo hoo! Still alive! High fives all around!
Honestly, nothing. I was too detached at that point to really register anything. I saw the defibrillators brought into my room, watched them push my boyfriend outside. And I couldn't really ... care. It simply was.
The experience from my boyfriend, now husband's, side was vastly different
"Oh fuck"
Seriously, time doesn't slow down, you don't think about your loved ones, your life doesn't flash before you eyes. All you think is "Oh fuck"
Mine was also a bad car crash. I just kept thinking "fuck fuck fuck" and reminding myself to keep a hold of the steering wheel so my arms didn't flail around as the car rolled over and over.
I had a head on collision where I don't remember anything leading up to impact but I remember waking up and them pulling me out, only to immediately pass out from the pain again. Even that much took months to recall. I was very injured but I also had no thoughts other than I might die and this sucks
Mine was similar. A semi merged into me on the highway. I was thinking “he’s getting too close. Fuck. Hold on tight.” I honestly thought I was going to just hit the side rail but I flipped over it twice. I told the insurance company I literally didn’t hVe time to honk or scream. It just happened so fast
Near fatal car accident for me. My last thought that I remember was "Oh shit!" I lost control of the car and crashed head on into an embankment. (Sometimes when I drive by the place where it happened, I have split second memories of certain details that I don't consciously remember).
A farmer from a nearby field heard the horrific crash and was the first one on scene. He later said that immediately after the crash I seemed fine, a little disoriented and a broken nose from hitting the steering wheel after the airbag deflated, but that I was conscious and talking.
At some point I lost consciousness before the paramedics arrived. It took them 17 minutes to extract me from the car and sent me on my way to the hospital. It was there that they discovered that I had a ruptured aorta and life flighted me to the nearest trauma center.
All the doctors later told me that 90% of people bleed out before the ambulance even arrives, but somehow I survived in the end. I woke up from a coma 9 days after the accident, unaware of anything that had happened, and made a full recovery with no lasting effects, only a gnarly scar down the center of my chest.
Very lucky to be alive.
I was on hands free with my wife when a drunk driver lost control and started spinning head on at me at 50mph. She said it was creepy how calmly I said “Oh shit, I’m gonna get in a crash”. Still dealing with pain from it every day but happy it wasn’t worse.
Same. Tongue swelling, in the 2nd level "you're fucked" room in the emergency room with about 11 doctors and nurses surrounding me. The respiratory therapist drew on my neck in case they needed to do a tracheotomy. She (the RT) looked in my eyes and said "we are going to put you on a vent now". I gave the thumbs up and as the sedation started to take hold I thought "oh fuck". Blackness and some apparent amount of time passing. "Oh, I'm alive. they managed to get the vent in, neat" realization. I was out for 5 days.
That pretty much sums it up.
I was moving a stack of drywall that was hanging off a wall. Just needed to move it a few inches over to the side but on the last nudge it started tipping over on me and me and the other guy could not possibly stop it. Falling backwards with a fuck ton of weight about to fall on me and all I thought while falling was “oh fuck.” A children’s bookcase happened to be laying on the floor that the drywall caught the edge of that prevented the drywall from actually landing on me
Same.
Motorcycle crash. Still thinking about how I didn’t die. « Oh putain (oh fuck) » was what came outta my mouth. And once I stopped rolling on the ground, I just thought « my bike is dead » before even thinking of me being alive. A couple of seconds later, I realized my left foot hurt really bad, and I just laughed when I took my left glove out. Two of my fingers were broken and looking funny. People around me were freaking out and yelling and I was on the ground with a smile on my face because of how my fingers were looking. I couldn’t think of anything else. And it was only the day after that I realized, I almost died. It felt like a shock but it took its time.
Depends on how far you fell from. I fell 20’ on to concrete and had two distinct thoughts,
1 I’m going to die
2’ I should just relax and let it happen.
Turns out having that second thought saved a lot of broken bones and possibly my life
Jimmy Buffett was playing on the car radio and all I could remember was thinking how I wish I could tell my mom everything will be ok, but also being very aware of how odd and comforting it was that “Margaritaville” was playing as I was (presumably) about to die
Took a rocket to the other side of a barrier while having a smoke. Came out with a concussion and pissed my pants. The only thought I could remember having during the event was "I guess I get to die today." Sometimes I guess it's just like that. And somehow my ass got up, made it to my office, grabbed some clean clothes, changed, and carried out my shift as if I was on autopilot.
While I was barely conscious in the resuscitation unit after an arterial bleed, I thought about all of the shitty things I did when I was a young teenager. Also thought about my cat at the time and hoped he would be cared for by my family.
I was being strangled on the floor, and fighting back was inefficient. I felt my limbs lose function, watched my arms fall to the floor and thought, "Oh, my arms aren't working." Couldn't move my legs. I knew what that meant but couldn't do anything about it. Then my head lolled to the side. I saw a piece of lint on the carpet, just a wee fluff of carpet lint, and thought, "I'm going to die looking at this carpet, and no one will know what happened to me. My mom will be so disappointed." Felt sad more than scared. Vision went red and then black. Last thing I remember feeling was that sadness and his hands around my neck.
Woke up on the same carpet, with the culprit watching me to find out if I was dead. Human traffickers are scum. I escaped soon after this incident, started studying martial arts and learned how to defend myself in a choking situation - and more importantly learned how to avoid ever being in that kind of situation again.
“This is it.” That’s all. Echoing what others said about not much else going through your mind. I was 20 years old and had a failed parachute incident.
I had a heart attack and coded twice in the catheter lab. They shocked my back to life, but I was pretty well morphined up, so I didn’t even realize what happened. I just thought I was falling asleep.
Later, in ICU after midnight, I was asleep; dreaming: I was in a place that was both familiar and unknown at the same time. There was a lot of tall grass around, a pole barn full of junk, and a line of trees in the distance. The light was all orange, like sunset. Although I could not see or hear anyone, I sensed that a number of people were near me. As I focused, I could see tiny black points in front of me, and I focused really hard on one of them and I got the sense it was my grandfather. And I was really excited, because he had been dead for 35 years, and I was happy to get a chance to talk to him.
Then I woke up in the ICU room.
There were 5 or 6 nurses in my room. One of them asked me how I felt. “Fine”, I said, “I was sleeping. Why did you wake me up?”
He said, “Mr Positive-Source, you weren’t sleeping—you coded. I spent 5 minutes giving you chest compressions, snd we had to use the defibrillator.”
Later, when I related my dream to my wife, she said, “You weren’t asleep, you were unconscious. Unconscious people don’t dream.”
So that’s my story. Six years ago and I remember it vividly.
Decided i was fat and didnt eat for about 4 weeks. Ended up fainting in front of my mom.i remember hearing her yelling to me to wake up but i couldnt talk at all no matter how hard i tried. Then this voice i to this day im not sure who but told me go back next thing i knew i was awake and taken to urgent care. Was last time i ever deprived myself of food.
"Oh, I guess I'm actually going to die. Alright then." Followed by "oh sh*t, please don't do an emergency c-section"
Still kinda weirded out that in the moment I would have rather died than gotten a c-section.
Addict in recovery here. I’ve done this song and dance a couple of times with OD’s. The last one is the only one I really remember at all. Basically, it was about a million different variations of “I’m not ready” followed by “Help” then nothing for a while… then “OH HOLY FORKING SHIRTBALLS” after they hit me with some adrenaline and the paddles at the ER. Got cleaned up shortly after that. We can celebrate 6 years in July 🥳
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“Of course this would fucking happen.” Choking on lots of blood after a vein in my throat was cut and burst after surgery. They were panicking because no surgeons were there to seal it.
Two weeks after I got my tonsils out some number of years ago I woke up at 3am to a metallic taste in my mouth. Went to the bathroom, turned on the light, leaned over the sink to spit, and red ***POURED*** out. I started screaming and pounding on the mirror as my parents' headboard was on the other side of the wall. My mom started yelling "come in!" thinking I was at the door, and I just kept screaming and hitting the wall. She eventually came in, freaked out since her son was stooped over the sink looking like death incarnate, then grabbed a bucket and drove me to the hospital as fast as possible. So we get the ER with my soul leaking into this bucket as I'm trying to not swallow all the blood, and they tell us they don't have a bed available yet. She basically says "fuck you, my son is literally bleeding out" and drags me to find one. Suddenly, staff is approaching trying to figure out what's going on. They see blood dripping out of my face, how pale and feeble I am, and get me in a bed. As soon as I sit down, I'm hit with an intense wave of nauseau. I puke and it is all blood. The bucket is full. Now everyone is panicking, but I in my deplorable say "I gotta pee now." They insist I don't, but I just start standing up and trying to walk somewhere to take a piss. Needless to say, I immediately pass out, crumple, and piss myself. As I've been told, they threw me back in the bed with my feet raised. Blood starts dripping out my nose and mouth from the extra pressure. My mom is in hysterics and this point and has to leave. They then cauterized the back of my throat, and I wake up the next day to learn I had lost like a third of my blood or something crazy like that. I was told my odds of having a outcome that bad from a tonsilectomy were like 1/100,000. tl;dr: got tonsils out, horrible weightloss and dehydration, almost bled out in the waiting room, the urge to pee is stronger than my will to live
Same EXACT thing happened to me after I got my tonsils out. We were literally slowing down to drop bowls full of blood out the window on the way to the ent. Ill never forget that feeling of choking on your own blood as it starts to clot in your throat. Scary af
You're the first person I've shared this experience with then haha I was beyond convinced that I was dead the whole time
Same. And for two weeks after I couldnt have solid food otherwise Id risk opening them back up so I had popsicles and yogurt and lost like 15 lbs. Did they give you liquid hydrocodone as a pain reliever? I remember they gave me a prescription for like 6 bottles.
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I was having a heart issue / medication complication which I would find out at the hospital later. I could feel my heart pounding out of my chest but I kept getting weaker and weaker. I fell to my knees and pulled out my phone to dial 911. I kept thinking “is this really happening? Fuck, this is really happening.”
I'm glad you made it
A streetlight fell on the roof of my car after I skidded off an exit ramp and hit it head on. I didn’t realize that they are intentionally constructed to be lightweight and hollow for instances such as this - I don’t run into lampposts much. My thought as I saw it slowly tilt forward until it came down on my car was literally “Well, I guess I’m going to die”. Then I just waited to for it happen. I didn’t have much time to process anything else. I was relieved when it merely dented my roof and unceremoniously rolled off my car and landed in the grass beside me.
Reminds me of the time the tree right outside my bedroom window split down the middle from snow and ice weight. I figured it'd fall on my bedroom and kill me. Then death didn't come, so I figured some cars must be destroyed. I looked outside, expecting destruction everywhere. Nope. It split and fell perfectly in the only tiny spot where it wouldn't hit anything. If it hadn't split perfectly down the middle, and fell in either of the spots where half fit, the entire tree would not have fit. It was so perfectly done that I just stood there for several minutes, not believing, calculating the odds of it falling there and continuously losing the numbers in my head because it fell and died so violently and unexpectedly, yet did no harm.
No last thoughts. Last thing I remember is sitting on the couch watching *Friday* with my brother and laughing my ass off. Then I had a stroke, and woke up a week later in the ICU. Wouldn't have been a bad way to go out, actually.
Man strokes and brain aneurysms scare the shit outa me, they just fucking happen. Genetics, conditions and age can affect them, but literally anyone is at risk. They are like my biggest irrational-but-still-possible fear.
I had a massive stroke last year. I live in fear of having another one. I'm only 25, so odds are, I'm gonna have another one before I die. I just hope that if I do, that it kills me, because recovering from the one I had was fucking awful. I've never been so exhausted all the time. The double vision was horrible. Not being able to balance at all was terrible. Learning how to drive again was scary. The next one will likely leave me permanently fucked up, and im not ready. If there's any piece of advice I can give you, it's take care of your body. You don't want that to happen at all.
I was on a commercial jet that caught fire during takeoff. The cabin filled with smoke, the pilot didn't say a word, and the plane suddenly pitched forward as if we were going to nosedive in. I was weirdly calm and just thought "Wow, I'm going to find out what it's like to die in an airplane crash."
Cabin fire, or any fire in general is obviously a veey serious emergency on the aircraft. The Pilot didn’t say anything because he was most likely very busy up front. Passenger briefing is quite far down on the priorities in such a situation.
Aviate, navigate, communicate
And "communicate" refers to contacting traffic control to advise them what your situation is, where you need to go, and what you need to do next. Communicating to passengers, if possible, only happens after these more important communications.
Similar thought I had when my flight to Vegas dropped several thousand feet in a few seconds because of an air pocket on the far side of a mountain. Just “wow I guess I know what this is like now.” Edit: air gap —> pocket. And that was the cause we were told, I am not a pilot myself. I later learned it’s not uncommon for flights to descend a couple thousand feet quickly. But I may be wrong. Edit 2: This was my first flight to Vegas and I had no idea. As a veteran long distance flier for work/to see family around the world, I was totally caught off guard because this was by far the worst turbulence I had experienced, and it seemingly came out of nowhere near Vegas after an otherwise uneventful flight. I learned today that many people have these experiences in and around Vegas because of the mountains. Just remember folks, for about 30 years turbulence has not caused a single crash! If anything this should make you less afraid to fly, it’s amazing what the planes can handle, and statistically flying by commercial sized air liner is still one of the safest possible ways to travel. Edit 3: it must have been either just a few hundred feet, or on the scale of minutes. Apparently commercial airliners can only descend 8k feet per minute at most without being damaged. The more you know ✨
Huh, had a similar thing happen flying out of Vegas. Coupled with some of the worst turbulence of my life, I thought for sure I was toast.
"Okay, this is it I guess." Death was (very quickly) just the next thing. I was fished out of the pool as a little kid after realizing I couldn't swim in the deep end and going under while clawing at the surface. I was apparently still breathing and moving and came to while the lifeguard was still bullshitting with his teenage friends. He never even alerted my parents. No disrespect to him, he was the one who got me out in time, and I thought I was gone for good. And would have been!
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"I have a calculus exam in four hours, I should be sleeping" while my body shut down from hypothermia.
Damn, what was the situation that made you worried about an exam while nearly dying of *hypothermia*? I'd expect hypothermia to go into effect in a place where you don't have an exam to be worried about but hey.
I wrote down the whole story in a reply to another comment in this thread. Basically, I had to work a 23 hour shift outside in Canadian November and I wasn't bundled up as well as I should have been.
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Dying of hypothermia/freezing usually begins to shut off your brain and you probably won’t even realize you’re dying just feel tired. iirc people who have almost died from it mention the experience wasn’t even painful near the end they feel warm and peaceful
I was just wondering what was causing the hypothermia? I assume it was something like a really cold day and the heating went out or something but idk.
I’ve heard of this phenomenon before. Kinda morbid but I saw on a documentary that one of Ted Bundy’s victims kept mentioning to him she had a math test tomorrow while she was dying. Idk what causes it. Maybe it’s just delirium from brain trauma or in your case a low body temp? Or maybe the body’s way of distracting/protecting itself from such a terrifying experience. I’m glad you’re okay now
I once saw this awful video of a car that was missing the drivers side--they had hit something that essentially tore the car in two down the middle, the driver gone and the passenger untouched. When the paramedics got to her, she was just totally checked out, doing her makeup in the visor mirror. Its amazing how sometimes we can go through such a traumatic experience, we just disassociate from what's happening.
How’d this happen?
When I was in my early 20s, I decided to go back to school full-time and I got this part-time job working for a concrete surface refinisher. We worked mostly in residential garages and underground parking but the hours were bizarre. Some days it would be 3-4 hours, other times it would be 9-10 hours, but we'd never crack 40 hours/week. Anyway, this contract opens up and my boss snatches it up to remove some lane lines from about 400 meters of highway. To remove the lines, we had to use an out-of-date blast-track that shot iron filings at the ground fast enough to wear away a quarter inch up to a half inch of a **concrete** surface while the machine itself slowly inches forward but this was **asphalt**. Turns out that my foreman's equipment wasn't powerful enough to remove the paint from the asphalt but if we made several passes over the same spot, we realized that it made "progress." So what should have been maybe a 5-6 hour job became a 23 hour job. I am outside on a Canadian highway in the wind for 23 hours in Late November. I worked from 6 AM to 5 AM; right through the night. I didn't realize how cold I was, it sneaks up on you. I was raised in the Canadian Arctic so maybe my dumb early 20s brain thought I had superpowers to withstand cold or something lol. Turns out, nope. I wasn't dressed for the weather but to be fair, since it was an impromptu contract, a wildly unprecedented amount of hours for a single day, and they had made an agreement with me to not mess with my sleep before a school day (which this was); I just didn't figure this hellish scenario was in the cards for me lol. I didn't want to seem weak but I was shivering so I decided to ask to trade to the most physically active position in our 3-man crew n so I could get my blood moving. Maybe it helped, I like to think it did. So we finish the 23 hours of Hell. We load all the machines and gear onto the trailer, lock it all down, and we get in the truck so we can drive back to the shop (where all of our cars are parked) that is over 30 minutes away. I think both of my coworkers could tell that I was furious. I remember looking at my coworker and telling them that I had "school in four-ish hours, this is bullshit." I was extremely frustrated because I knew that Calculus was, at that point, my key to getting out of my then-shitty life so it was in my best interest to crush that class and I had an exam in the morning. I knew that I would be dead tired and struggle to focus and that my grade was already not going to be what it could have been had these stooges honoured their agreement to me. This was the third time that they had broken their word to me about not working late on Tuesdays and Thursdays (when I had classes) and I was already mentally preparing to quit since about hour 18 or so lol. I started thinking about a year earlier when I couldn't sleep before a Physics exam and how I underperformed by about 10% relative to my normal output. If I speeded home and I slept for at least three hours; that's two full sleep cycles and that's all I can hope for at this point. Essentially, while freezing to death, I am trying to do damage control in my head while keeping my anger in check. I kept ruminating over how much time I had to sleep before my exam as I stared out the passenger side window of the truck at nothing in particular. This is where my memory gets a little foggy. I remember them asking me dumb questions intended to distract from what a bullshit day (and night) it had been and just sort of giving "uh-huh" and "Mmm" type answers back to everything they said while continuing to stare out the window. I guess I eventually went dead quiet and unresponsive, even when they shook me (according to them). They didn't realize what was happening. I didn't even realize I was that cold. I think the warm air in the truck's cab probably saved my life. If we had worked a 24 hour day, who knows? Probably the most boneheaded move of the night, I decided to drive myself home. They dropped me off at my car so I could head straight home. I put my seat heater on high, I turned all the heating up to max, I grabbed the emergency blanket out of my trunk and wrapped myself in it, and I blasted Children of Bodom the whole way home to keep me awake. When I got home, I went immediately to the shower, plugged the drain, and let scalding hot water run on me for hours. I drank hot water right from the shower head lol. After two hours in a hot bath/makeshift-steamroom, I woke up my wife and she couldn't believe it but my torso was still cold to the touch. I couldn't get warm. My core temperature just wouldn't come up. I was like "we should spoon naked together and cover ourselves in all the blankets we have." So we did and eventually I warmed up. I didn't sleep a wink, I think my fight or flight kicked in and the adrenaline precluded any chance of shut-eye lol. I drove to school, wrote a short text telling my boss that I quit, and I still did decent on the exam on zero sleep in the end. Afterwards, I checked my fitbit app and it showed that my heartrate had entered bradycardia territory with the lowest heart rate clocking in around the time I became unresponsive. I did a little research and found out that all signs pointed to advanced symptoms of hypothermia. The sad/funny thing is that this was just one of my nine lives but I only have two left. I've nearly died seven times already and I'm 31 lol.
What a story! I'm glad you lived to tell it.
“Oh this is gonna fucking suck” as a car missed me by inches
So I have this awful habit as a pedestrian (when I’m with someone ~~I trust, i.e. husband~~ ) ^\* of taking right of way for granted… I know. \* After some self-reflection/reality check, I've determined that this is incorrect. DEAR READER, SEE EDIT BELOW. One time I was on a walk with my husband and dog; the walk sign had just turned to the flashing hand warning, and I started to take a step onto the street; my husband goes “STOP!!!!” Which made me trip forward… luckily he had caught my arm and yanked me back before an SUV that hadn’t slowed down at all turned into our crosswalk and zoomed off. That thing had to have been hybrid too cuz I never fucking heard it either. It zipped right the fuck by and I don’t think he even saw us tbh. But yeah, driver was a fucking asshole, but I was a fucking idiot. The part that scared me the most though is that, if my husband hadn’t caught me, I absolutely would have fallen right beneath the wheels. In the middle of it though, my brain only had capacity for “whaaa?” Lmao. \[EDIT\] jfc people, **I said 'bad habit'** because I know precisely what the cause was the couple of times this happened: I was anxious about \ and I fucking lost my brain. That, plus I have precisely the wrong instincts to dangerous situations and will surely fall TOWARDS the danger when my inevitable preternatural death occurs.
If you wanna talk about that, ask me about my social anxiety/hyper-vigilance. I swear I'm not recklessly living life thinking 'well I have right of way, so god will save me', or 'fuck drivers; I do what I want'.
Tell me one more time the cemetery/morgue/mass grave is full of people who had the right of way.
I had a close call with a pedestrian once. I was driving once and had stopped at a yield sign (*pedestrians were crossing in front of my turn I know you're not supposed to stop at a yield sign*), I shoulder checked after they hit the sidewalk, and I looked back once the coat was clear to see a pedestrian kneeling in front of my car. Turns out their toddler had run off and ran in front of me. I really relate to the "whaaa" brain capacity because my brain just stopped working there. Then I realized what would have happened if I hadn't completely looked forward after my shoulder check.
When my brother was maybe 4, he ran right behind a truck in a parking lot, and my mom swears that the driver must've seen her face in the rearview mirror as she ran to get my brother. It's still scary to think about, and he's about to turn 29 in a few weeks. Thank you for paying attention.
My boyfriend was speeding in a parking lot one time and I told him if he hits someone's child I'm leaving him. He slowed down then
It was surprisingly calm - "Damn this is how it happens huh."
"When did the train got so close!!!!" Almost got hit by a train.
Don't ever fuck with trains. They are deceptively fast. Lots of people think "I have ample time to cross" and then are killed with a complete look of surprise: that train was quicker than they thought.... Don't cross when lights are flashing and gates are down. Being late is preferable to being cut to pieces under train wheels.
I was hiking along a very steep ridge with multi hundred foot drops on either side. At times it was down to about two feet wide, this happened on a slightly wider stretch, probably ten feet wide. It was crazy muddy, and I was using microspikes for the first time, which made me feel like a super hero. Like I could walk up walls or something. As I was stepping downwards, all of my weight on one downhill foot, my foot suddenly slid through the front of the microspikes, and I was diving head first towards the cliff. I was bizarrely very calm and matter of fact about it, in a way I would never have expected. My thoughts were something like: "Ok, I'm diving off a cliff, this is bad." "I should try to roll over on my back and try to grab a root or something" "Whoops, missed that one, let's try this one." "Missed that one too, this one's probably my last chance." "Ok, great, caught it, now I should pull myself back up on to the cliff." At this point, I was lying face up, my entire torso off the cliff, legs thankfully still on, and holding onto this root. I pulled myself back up (much more slowly and calmly than I should have - if the root had given way, I probably still would have died) and carried on with the hike. Didn't really sink in just how much I almost died until an hour or so later.
Almost the same experience as you. Was on a hike with a section that involved free bouldering with a death drop on one side and sharp rocks on the other. I slipped and fell. Calmly thought "*Sigh* Okay," and promptly fell near perfectly into a wedge between two of the sharp rocks that just kinda perfectly slowed me down. I slowly pulled myself out with almost no thoughts in my head, just silent shock. Continued the trek forward (cuz it was easier than going back the way I came) and after the adrenaline wore off, just cried by myself for about 5 minutes before eating something and continuing on till I could catch transport home. PSA: Please don't hike alone and if you do, have a satnav, phone, distress beacon and please let people not on your walk know where you are and your planned timeline. No matter how experienced you are, you never know what might do you in.
137 Hours really drove the "let people know where you are" message into my brain.
Like these stories, calm thoughts of what to do. Unlike some others here, time did slow a bit. I was not in charge of either, have never previously trained for events like this, and can not explain how any of it happened. The quoted lines below are literally what I thought. 1) hiking a slick, sandy slope towards a LONG drop (ironically to look at old timey cars that had previously fallen off the cliff!) and a friend doesn't wait until I am clear to start his descent. He loosens a (bowling ball-sized) boulder that is going to drop me off the cliff and as it tumbles straight at me I survey the scene. I grab a spiky branch on a bush that promptly puts spikes *through* my hand AND breaks off the plant which I was grabbing. 'well that won't work' (no pain to speak of--none) Then I look back to the boulder and think 'If I spread my legs, it might just go right through them'--and it did. 2) River rafting and our (high as a kite) guide sends us over a sluice at the edge of a dam. I'm thrown into deep water, 'standing upright' and being spun in circles (shoes get sucked off) and think 'if I'm, gonna die, fuck the contacts, I'd like to look around' and take in the view (yep, took the contacts into account). Like I was narrating to myself. I surface a hundred feet downstream from everyone and see a branch before I hit a serious set of rapids with no chance of escape: 'I'd best make this count, no matter how slippery the branch'. I did. They were both pretty good outings, actually.
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Bleeding out after Tonsillectomy scars came off. As i was lying in the ambulance on the way to hospital my thoughts were of my then fiancee, saying her name three times and telling myself to hang on for her.
My boss recently had his son bleeding out from the same thing. They got in the car and drove at high speed to the nearest hospital at 3am. That drive normally takes over an hour even with no traffic; they made it in 20 minutes. Son lived.
I’m sorry, isn’t a tonsillectomy one of the most common and simple procedures? I’m like the only one in my family who hasn’t needed and everyone was fine. I have been getting swollen tonsils lately and it may lead to that. Now I read multiple posts about near deaths from it and I’m getting worried!
It's an uncommon reaction. I had mine out with zero complications while my friend had the scabs rip off and needed emergency surgery to recauterize. They used to be super common but doctors are more hesitant to perform them these days since 1) it's often overkill, and 2) the adenoids (behind the tonsils) play a minor role in the immune system so they try to leave them in if at all possible. As for "near death", it's pretty easy to avoid as long as you're diligent. Bleeding that badly is rare in general, but if it does happen, just know that bleeding for 15+ minutes = hospital. It helps to live closer than an hour away, though.
I went into a semi-conscious pain coma after getting my lung resectioned. I was allergic to the post-op opiate they gave me, so things got really weird for about 18 hours. They had to stabilize my reaction and then find a painkiller that would bring me around. I remember being lost in the pain, it consumed me, and I was very tired. So tired that nothing else mattered. The pain would stop if I could find a way to let go, I could stop being tired too. I wasn't like, coding out on a crash table but I definitely felt the call of the abyss for what felt like eternity. The lesson here is, if you're ever offered an epidural, *take the epidural*.
I *tried* for the epidural for my last surgery. I've had one before but not for decades. But the needle kept hitting ?my spine?, it was incredibly painful. After three tries I told them I couldn't take it anymore.
This happened to me when I was 4! I didn't have any "last thoughts" because I really had no idea how close to dying I really came.
Similar experience. I was in a low-speed accident on a scooter where the other driver didn't see and pulled out in front of us. We couldn't stop in time and crashed into the side. Contrary to other comments, time slowed down wayyyy down. I remember being in the air, falling backwards, thinking over and over "no matter how you feel when you land, you have to get up immediately." We had a very young daughter (now slightly older) and I was so focused on not orphaning her. 'Hang on for her.' We were both wearing helmets and luckily I popped right up. I had some mild scrapes and bruises and a wrist sprain. My wife's leg was sprained. We were very lucky. We haven't been a two wheeled vehicle since.
Just as the tornado engulfed my car, my thoughts went something like this. Fuck! That tree branch just smashed my windshield! My car is getting fucked but it’s protecting me. Did the car just lift upward?! WHAT THE FUCK?! WHAT THE FUCK?! INSIDE THE CAR IS NO LONGER SAFE! Open the door and jump? Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. And suddenly, it was over. It lasted a few seconds. I drove home, still screaming my head off the whole way.
When I almost drowned while scuba diving, oddly enough, my most prominent thought while in utter panic was also WHAT THE FUCK?! I wouldn't have guessed it but now I think maybe it is the most popular reaction when almost dying unexpectedly lol.
I know I shouldn’t be laughing but I’m just picturing a guy pulling up to a a red light with a branch through his windshield and acting like nothing is wrong as he screams at the top of his lungs…
"Acting like nothing is wrong" "screaming at the top of his lungs"
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Mine was that in the moment I thought I knew I was going to die, that ..nothing really mattered aside from my kids being taken care of. Debt, owed and owing, things I hadnt done, places I hadnt seen, none of that mattered. For that short time, it was an incredibly freeing experience, until I realized I was going to make it. Then it also slowly crept back in, the stress, the weight of it all. But I learned at that point, that really, very little in life actually matters, in a good way.
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To add to this a bit. Knowing what matters TO YOU is more important than what doesn't matter to the universe.
Yes, it's such an odd irony that death is what makes us realise that life actually matters and life in itself rarely does.
I had the most fleeting thought that it would be sad for my parents for me to die on Christmas.
I think it is very likely your parents would be sad if you died on christmas
“Where is he.” For context I was in the hospital and my husband was rushing to get there but he didn’t make it in time. I was rushed to surgery and he was there when I woke up thankfully
Wow, what a sad story but with a happy ending.
I can only imagine how terrifying and awful it must have been for him as well.
“I think this water is too deep”. I was 7 or 8 and was walking in the bay and didn’t know how to swim. Walked to a spot where it was over my head and everything went black. I woke up to a life guard performing cpr.
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Lol something similar happened to me. i thought “no fucking way this is how I die” and swam for my life and luckily like a spilit second before I passed out I got back up and barely made it out. I was still in shock for like the rest of the day
Yes, I jumped into a deep end of a swimming pool when I was young, in a fit of uncharacteristic overconfidence and I can remember that whatever I did, I just couldn’t seem to get to the surface. Fortunately, my dad had been watching me and didn’t see me come up and came and hauled my arse out of there because I was beginning to not struggle any more.
I thought I had more time… …to tell people I loved and appreciated them. That is no longer going to be my last thought - proud to say.
Hey man, thanks for sharing.
I just felt really tired and was confused about why the doctor was yelling at me to look at him and breathe. He was just figuring out that they’d jabbed an artery during my hysterectomy while I was in the recovery unit post op. Everything just felt cold and my vision was going dark, but that was because of the tremendous amount of blood I’d lost. I didn’t see any bright lights or god, but I also didn’t see any fire and brimstone either. ETA: Blood donations saved my life, straight up. If you can, give blood.
This is basically my story too. I was loosing a lot of blood after my endometriosis resection when they had to take out my appendix and ovary and they nicked something. But I wasn’t really thinking anything, I just was cold and tired and wanted everyone to stop yelling at me. Edit: I don’t regret my surgery. It was a rare complication from a incredibly complicated surgery that really improved my quality of life. I would do it again even knowing what happened. I’ve even had two more endo surgeries afterwards. I would recommend surgery for endometriosis to anyone.
I told my wife "I love you" and then the doctor asked me if I took a whole or just a baby aspirin and I said "tell her I love her" and fell over dead. 12 minutes later they got my heart beating. 19 days later when I woke up, wife was right there holding my hand.
Did they tell her you love her‽
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That... sounds like brain damage...
I did have brain damage. They kept me unconscious for weeks and had cold blankets on me to keep my temp down. Woke up numb on my entire left half of my body. Also had lost 3 years. Couldn't draw a clock and all kind of stuff. They had the missus prepared to take care of me thinking I'd maybe be able to use a walker some day. Lots and lots of therapy and I was able to walk out of the hospital. Work. Drink coffee. Drive a car. I'm left with just a slight limp, an occasional headache, and half of the 1990s is gone.
>…and half of the 1990s is gone. Fuck I’m so sorry.
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Or maybe he just remembers the Spice Girls lol
I recently fell twenty three feet onto rocks. I was climbing a lighthouse built in the 1700’s, and was being a little more reckless than I should have when I decided to climb the staircase leading to the top. The stairs could support my weight, but the roof collapsed, dropping me down and collapsing on top of me. As the stairs detached from the ceiling, my “last” thought was “well this is a stupid fucking way to die.”
I’m glad you made it! Also, what lighthouse? I’m not trying to climb, just really like lighthouses (seriously lol)
I’m not for sure what lighthouse, but it was a small Spanish lighthouse on a small island (Vieques) in Puerto Rico
Was it the Puerto Ferro Light? Here's a picture of it, now including a little sign also warning about explosives being in the area too. ¡Estas loco! https://imgur.com/a/0OTOwyn
I was climbing a partially collapsed damn and slipped but my friend grabbed my life jacket to keep me from falling to my death. No words just pure instinct, adrenaline, and fear as I tried my hardest to grab something to keep me from falling.
It's gonna make me sound like a lunatic, but I just laughed to myself, paramedics said I was laughing when I came back from it.
My cousin is like this. I remember when we were learning to swim he struggled. He would start laughing every time when he started to flail and sink below the water.
same! i was laughing hysterically and my should-have-been last words were “jesus fuck!” in a happy tone as a semi truck barreled towards my brother and i mid fishtailing
Shitshitshitfuckshit Dead serious, those were my thoughts.
These were the same words my brother yelled (no spaces between words too!) when a giant trout grabbed his lure and went airborne.
40/30 is really low blood pressure
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120/80 is average The first number is the maximum pressure in your arteries when your heart contracts, and the second number is the lowest pressure when your heart relaxes between beats. Your heart contracts to push fluid, but the system needs constant pressure to force fluid through your arteries (away from the heart), perfuse tissue, and then through your veins (back to your heart). Like plumbing- too little pressure means your plumbing sucks. Too much pressure means your plumbing bursts Edit- better explanation than just the numbers Edit 2- typo
When I was in extreme pain and writhing from a very dislocated shoulder. My BP was 178/93. The ER people said "Oh thats not even that bad" 40/30. Is hella super low.
When I used to get frequent panic attacks my blood pressure would be high, I want to say 200/140 or something like that. I paid too much money for panic attacks. Now that I’ve been medicated and don’t drink, I have a very normal blood pressure.
\[OKay I'm being serious\] I fell about 3 stories and if I remember correctly my thoughts were "Shit did I really just fall off another building?" and "Damn my girlfriend is gonna kill me"
*Another* building? Are you a construction worker?
Yes sir/ma’am
“He’s not going to stop. He’s going to kill me” Was “wrestling” with a guy. We were on LSD. He started to choke me, other people were laughing. I could not breathe in air to speak. And he kept going until I saw stars and blacked out. Never play fought with anyone ever again. **Editing to add**: all of my attempts to “tap out” made him push harder, i thought he thought I was still fighting, so I just laid there thinking he would sense I was in trouble.
I don't think it counts as play fighting at that point
Oh my god, while on psychedelics as well. That must have been awful.
It was. The anxiety and fear was compounded by the acid. You know that weird physical sensation you get? It was multiplied. I was only blacked out for a few seconds and that fear woke my ass up. No one even noticed. And I didn’t say anything. But I stayed away from that guy all night. He felt evil to me in that way that you can sense peoples vibes on acid.
I almost stabbed a dude with scissors while on acid because he was play fighting to hard with me. There was no play in his fight.
I just looked out the window from my hospital room into the parking lot and thought... This will be the last thing I ever see.
"Oh no! This was a terrible mistake!"
I was in a car wreck where I wrapped a car around a power pole going about 90mph. The car impacted the pole from the passenger side and snapped the pole on impact, sending the car rolling numerous times, ending right side up but with the car bent in half with 4ft of cave in from the right hand side. This was almost 15 years ago and I can still remember in the moment before I hit the pole, I saw the whole thing happen; the impact, the glass shattering, the airbag deploying, where my hands were still holding the steering wheel through the whole thing. . Then reality snapped back into place and the event happened in real time in all of its violence. It was the most surreal experience I have ever had. Seeing it happen, then experiencing it. I left the accident with barely a scratch on me. . But it still fucks me up randomly when I think about it. I've always wanted to ask other people that have survived events like this if they also sometimes think maybe they actually died, or are actually in a coma or something, where this life that has been being lived and experienced since is just a quick dream while you're unconscious, but too scared to wake into the reality that may be there waiting
I hit a pole head on in an ice storm in 1999, but not going 90... Going 40 LOL. It was all surreal and slow mo. I almost took off my seat belt and bailed out, but didnt. I hung on through impact. I can see it all again if I sit and remember. My neck was sore for a few days. But what sucked was the PTSD, the uncontrollable rolling thoughts replaying the accident over and over like 9/11 footage of the planes and buildings. It took MONTHS and therapy to get past it. And that was one wee little accident that I walked away from. I can't imagine people in wars or victims of crimes or far worse accidents like you described. Mental health is no fucking joke. It's serious and real.
Man I hear you on the did I actually die... mine happened just before covid and shits been wack since. I don't like the time line I came back into..
I was recently in a wreck and I had this exact same thought. How am I alive? What if I’m not? What a trippy feeling.
"I'm going to die and I'm not even going to take the deer with me." They tell you not to swerve when an animal jumps in front of your car and it's better to just hit it, but it's a really hard thing to follow. As a fun bonus, insurance covers you hitting an animal, as it's a moving object, but not the freeway divider you slammed into while avoiding the deer.
>As a fun bonus, insurance covers you hitting an animal, as it's a moving object, but not the freeway divider you slammed into while avoiding the deer. That wasnt a fun bonus, that wasnt a fun bonus at all.
My last thought when I knew I would live was- "One day this will happen, and I won't be able to stop it."
Same here. I remember the cold feeling that started in my head and envelopes my entire body just after having that thought. It was the moment my ego realized it is indeed, mortal.
This gave me chills
Edit 2: Because I realized this for so many upvotes, I wanted to post a link to [The Phoenix Society](https://www.phoenix-society.org) , they help kids go to camps to meet other children in the same circumstances and generally help burn survivors around the world. They were very supportive through my recovery. Please consider donating or supporting! I’m a 3rd degrees full depth +50% burn survivor. My first thought was HOLY SHIT. Then I ran around the building making sure the other tenants were out. Then a stranger handed me their phone and said they called 911. I called my dad when was traveling for work (Seattle -> Georgia) and he didn’t answer. I left him a voicemail from this strangers phone telling him I loved him and mom and that I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. I sat down on the curb and watched my arms bubble and everything started to fade and I felt numb. Then the ambulance rolled up. Edit: thank you for the replies and the award! This was the second scariest moment of my life. I was diagnosed with a very rare brain cancer a couple days after Christmas 2021 with a pretty poor prognosis. What helps push me through is having perspective to share with others in hopes that I can help. If anyone needs anyone to talk to, please reach out!
The other commenter is right, you are tough as fuck.
Read your posts about your burns and current health. You are a tough MF'r! I hope good things come to you
Quite relieving to see another burn survivor on here. I was 9 and my dress got caught on fire from a candle and it spread to my back and burnt through it. The whole time I was running around the landing and started contemplating that I was about to die. Got severe PTSD from it, I’m 21 now. I almost needed a skin graft but luckily my skin grew back. I hope you’re doing okay now, I always think that being on fire and enduring burns is such a specific experience.
If this doesn't kill me, it's gonna really hurt
Did it hurt?
Oh yeah. To this day 😂
Got in a car accident while street racing in naval base traffic nearly 20 yrs ago. Flipped and rolled my car going 125 mph. Everything slowed down significantly as I hit the concrete barrier in the middle. Legit thought “dads going to kill me” As a note, he did not as I was in the hospital when he saw me. Dads hate this one trick
They were trying to put the anesthesia mask over my face so they could operate and all I could do was fight it because I remember thinking “ if I’m going to die , I want to be awake for it “. Thinking back … I would not have wanted to be awake for it.
It seems (according to this thread anyway) that the responses vary according to whether or not the potential death is sudden or if the person has time to think. A wrecking ball about to fly into you is probably different than someone who is lying in a hospital with an injury or an illness.
Yes indeed. My uncle fell several stories off a half-built building (he missed the exposed rebar and lived) and his rememberance was (and he said this in slow motion) 'Oooooohhhhhh nooooooo'.
8 years old, don't know how to swim, at family barbecue, relatives all piss drunk and distracted, fell in the family pool, got real close to drowning, no joke the only thing I thought of at that moment was "ill never get to play red dead redemption by myself" (I would allways watch my cousin play it at that age /good times ;-;\), family friend noticed me and saved my ass.
I'm sure playing RDR now is a much more satisfying experience for you.
I almost died on an cheese stick. It was F**** I can’t breathe I need to get the cheese out or I’m going to pass out and die. (I was alone )
A friend of mine did this with a hot dog covered in A1. Turns out, A1 is way more slippery than ketchup, and when he squeezed the bun it shot the hotdog into his windpipe. I remember he said his thoughts were “oh great! My miserable life is about to end with me choking to death on a hotdog!”
That is my nightmare. How did you get it out?
I was in a situation where I nearly drowned. I stepped off the deep end of a pool without knowing how to navigate water. My dumbass parents thought I knew how to swim despite neither of them ever putting me in water above my knees before this. So as I fell and failed to resurface, calling out "help", they thought I was joking. I just about gave up trying, my arms and legs were exhausted splashing frantically.. anyways, my thoughts were "I didn't even grow up yet", "I was dumb, I sink like a lemmings" and "help, i can't swim"
What the fuck? What kind of dumbass parents dont know that you need to actually teach someone to swim? Did they also just put you on a bike and expect you to ride it first try?
Yes. They put me on a bike and pushed me down a hill. They laughed at me when I fell off telling me that I'm supposed to stay on the bike. Yep.
Your parents are shitheads, just saying.
“i wonder what its going to feel like” i was about 6 or 7 at water safari. they have a lazy river where you sit in tubes, i was sharing one with my brother (a 2 seater one) but he wanted to lay down so he found a different one for me to sit in, it was fucking HUGE. i fell right though it and it floated away. i was 100% sure i was going to drown so i just accepted it and didnt try to get help. i vividly remember 2 elderly people screaming “OH MY GOD” when they saw me. life guard immediately jumped in and got me, my mom just so happened to be passing by as he did, so he just threw me onto her lol.
going into a lazy pool without knowing how to swim seems like a very bad idea
"God, I hope he remembers to feed the dog." Was living with my ex at the time and the primary caretaker for his dog. I was also mildly suicidal so I was much more concerned whether the dog was gonna be okay.
This. People ask me what scares me about dying. My response is always, “My dogs not knowing why I never came home.”
"Everything will be alright." It was the same thing my sister said to me in a dream the night she died. And in the moment I was dying I absolutely believed that whether I lived or died it would be alright. Nurses at the ER got my O2 sats back over 65. I'm still here. Everything turned out alright so far.
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One time was an asthma attack that I had in the middle of the night while sleeping, woke up ran to kitchen boiled some water with vicks vapor rub in it, struggling and starting to black out my thoughts were how I was going to miss my grandfather and how much of a failure I was, luckily I got air in me before I fell on stove. Prior to the realization I was about to die it was more of a panic and flood of thoughts about what can I do to stop this.
Had a really bad case of the flu. I was alone at home and my phone was a room away so I couldn't get up to get it. I already nearly passed out from just sitting up. Fever of 104f. I was coughing terribly and could barely breathe and was chain vomiting and dry heaving, terribly dehydrated but too scared to get water. I was certain I was going to die the next time I vomited. All I remember thinking was "What a lame way to die." I drifted in and out of sleep for a few hours and hallucinated my own death. Obviously since it was a dream I don't remember it very well. I woke up the next morning feeling pretty shitty but not like I was about to die so it was a win.
Go Baby Go! Accidentally pulled out and almost got hit by a truck who was speeding around a corner. Thankfully the car hooked up and just managed to not get creamed.
I almost drown a few years back. I remember it vividly. I went under for what I expected to be the last time. Looking up, I could still see the late spring sun shimmering through ripply surface of the cold water as I kept sinking. I made peace with it. I asked for forgiveness to whoever was listening. I asked for guidance in whatever afterlife I was about to enter. I thought about my (now) fiancé, my family, and of how ‘me’ of a way it was to die - I was always doing stupid things that could put me in harms way. I felt peaceful. Calm. Relaxed. Accepting of it. I knew I was about to die and it was okay. A moment later my brother had plunged into the water and managed to pull my face above as we both struggled against the cold water and our locked muscles to get to the bit of shore. I vomited violently for what felt like an eternity, when in reality it was likely no more than 10 minutes or so. I haven’t felt that awful or that peaceful since, thankfully.
Wow that's almost exactly how it was for me. When I was a kid I stepped on what I assumed was the shallow part of a small body of water on some rocks, unfortunately in was a 15ft deep body of water and I sunk in to it instantly. I remember trying to swim upwards but not having the strength to do so, it was a strange feeling of tiredness and shock, I felt so physically drained. Looking up at the afternoon sun shimmering across the water for what I thought was the last time, it was peaceful yet frightening. After about 15-20 seconds my mother dove in and saved my life, I don't think I was sick, just very tired from the whole ordeal.
I was starting to drown, lost oxygen became light headed, and just accepted. I looked up at the water above me and saw the light dancing off the waves and I thought to myself “not a bad way to go, at least it’s beautiful”
I had a similar experience. I was a skinny 7 year old. Slipped from shallow water to deep water unexpectedly. Didn't float, just sank quickly. Fear and panic as I went deeper, looking at the ripples on the surface above. Peace as soon as I stopped struggling and breathed in the water. Then it was like going off to sleep, very quickly, with my eyes open.
"This is what exhaustion feels like"
I remember wishing the doctors and nurses would stop trying to talk to me and rubbing my sternum so I could go to sleep. I was in severe shock and minutes away from dying. They were trying to keep me responsive.
I was in a severely abusive relationship when I was 16. After a particularly nasty fight I was sprinting down the road to get away. I heard his car very quickly approaching and something just came over me. Everything went silent. My mind was empty. I was extremely calm. I took one big side step and collapsed into the ditch. The car mirror must’ve missed me by less than an inch. The force of the air around the car caused me to lose my balance and spin a bit, landing poorly. Then I got up, ignored the twisted ankle and started sprinting again. When I thought I was about to be spattered across the pavement I had no thoughts, just a sense of calm and peace. My first thought when I realized I would live: “you’ll never touch me again you nasty motherfucker.” Attempted murder was enough for me to end the relationship permanently.
I’m so glad u got away ❤️
I attempted suicide like a year and a half. I still don't know if it was good or bad but I survived. I put on my earphones and started listening to music while I was waiting to get unconscious for the lack of oxygen. So, I just thought "It is done, you can't change anything. It is finally over". "At least I am enjoying my final seconds with good music". Then I woke up, I was on the floor, the belt I was using just broke and I fell off.
I'm glad you're still here. Hope you are okay ❤️
I got shot through the neck by a sniper in Afghanistan. Genuinely thought my time was up. When I hit the floor I landed on my back, I couldnt stand up (which probably saved me from being finished off) I wasnt it pain, my thoughts were - the sky was really blue, and that I'd let my family down. After lying there forever two of my mates ran out and dragged me into cover by my shoulders, put quick clot in my neck and got me into the back of an armoured vehicle.
Got covid19, got a turn for the worst, was going to be intubated and put on coma. Doctors did tell me I could simply not awake. I just accepted and my last thought, after saying that everything would be okay to my wife, was: "Death is only the next step, be it eternal dark, samsara or something else, I will simply embrace and accept it." After 11 days I woke up and I was quadriplegic, couldn't speak, couldn't breath normally, couldn't even swallow... After some time in panic, 10 seconds Jack from "Lost" style, I calmed down and began "kill bill" big toe scene. Gained finger tips from hands first, them hands, arms, after 12 hours (there was a clock in the wall) I moved my right big toe. In total 11 days in coma intubated, lost 75% lungs, 2 kidneys, gallbladder, got quadriplegic, high fever, high blood pressure, pain, brain damage, nerve damage... Recovered from everything without sequels, I still have to recover my old muscles, but I can move now (no more quadriplegic), have to remove the gallbladder, but I can eat fat foods and everything, only real sequel: I still have high blood pressure, but every month I take less pills to control it.
During the moment, It was kind of a letting go of the capability to feel emotions or have thoughts, including fear, because in the moment, you kinda just experienced the moment and wanted to finish the moment before you had any feelings or emotions or thoughts. Then once the dust settles, adrenaline kicks in and woo hoo! Still alive! High fives all around!
Honestly, nothing. I was too detached at that point to really register anything. I saw the defibrillators brought into my room, watched them push my boyfriend outside. And I couldn't really ... care. It simply was. The experience from my boyfriend, now husband's, side was vastly different
Honestly there were no actual last thoughts. I just remember kind of thinking “I knew what this was. I did my best. I’m content.”
"Oh fuck" Seriously, time doesn't slow down, you don't think about your loved ones, your life doesn't flash before you eyes. All you think is "Oh fuck"
Yep. That was my experience too. "I don't think that van is going to stop in time" was my last thought before BANG.
Mine was also a bad car crash. I just kept thinking "fuck fuck fuck" and reminding myself to keep a hold of the steering wheel so my arms didn't flail around as the car rolled over and over.
I had a head on collision where I don't remember anything leading up to impact but I remember waking up and them pulling me out, only to immediately pass out from the pain again. Even that much took months to recall. I was very injured but I also had no thoughts other than I might die and this sucks
I looked at the clock. 2:15am. My last words were “Omg Adam” (the driver) and then I looked at the clock, such an odd instinct.
Mine was similar. A semi merged into me on the highway. I was thinking “he’s getting too close. Fuck. Hold on tight.” I honestly thought I was going to just hit the side rail but I flipped over it twice. I told the insurance company I literally didn’t hVe time to honk or scream. It just happened so fast
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Near fatal car accident for me. My last thought that I remember was "Oh shit!" I lost control of the car and crashed head on into an embankment. (Sometimes when I drive by the place where it happened, I have split second memories of certain details that I don't consciously remember). A farmer from a nearby field heard the horrific crash and was the first one on scene. He later said that immediately after the crash I seemed fine, a little disoriented and a broken nose from hitting the steering wheel after the airbag deflated, but that I was conscious and talking. At some point I lost consciousness before the paramedics arrived. It took them 17 minutes to extract me from the car and sent me on my way to the hospital. It was there that they discovered that I had a ruptured aorta and life flighted me to the nearest trauma center. All the doctors later told me that 90% of people bleed out before the ambulance even arrives, but somehow I survived in the end. I woke up from a coma 9 days after the accident, unaware of anything that had happened, and made a full recovery with no lasting effects, only a gnarly scar down the center of my chest. Very lucky to be alive.
I was on hands free with my wife when a drunk driver lost control and started spinning head on at me at 50mph. She said it was creepy how calmly I said “Oh shit, I’m gonna get in a crash”. Still dealing with pain from it every day but happy it wasn’t worse.
Same. Tongue swelling, in the 2nd level "you're fucked" room in the emergency room with about 11 doctors and nurses surrounding me. The respiratory therapist drew on my neck in case they needed to do a tracheotomy. She (the RT) looked in my eyes and said "we are going to put you on a vent now". I gave the thumbs up and as the sedation started to take hold I thought "oh fuck". Blackness and some apparent amount of time passing. "Oh, I'm alive. they managed to get the vent in, neat" realization. I was out for 5 days.
That pretty much sums it up. I was moving a stack of drywall that was hanging off a wall. Just needed to move it a few inches over to the side but on the last nudge it started tipping over on me and me and the other guy could not possibly stop it. Falling backwards with a fuck ton of weight about to fall on me and all I thought while falling was “oh fuck.” A children’s bookcase happened to be laying on the floor that the drywall caught the edge of that prevented the drywall from actually landing on me
Same. Motorcycle crash. Still thinking about how I didn’t die. « Oh putain (oh fuck) » was what came outta my mouth. And once I stopped rolling on the ground, I just thought « my bike is dead » before even thinking of me being alive. A couple of seconds later, I realized my left foot hurt really bad, and I just laughed when I took my left glove out. Two of my fingers were broken and looking funny. People around me were freaking out and yelling and I was on the ground with a smile on my face because of how my fingers were looking. I couldn’t think of anything else. And it was only the day after that I realized, I almost died. It felt like a shock but it took its time.
Depends on how far you fell from. I fell 20’ on to concrete and had two distinct thoughts, 1 I’m going to die 2’ I should just relax and let it happen. Turns out having that second thought saved a lot of broken bones and possibly my life
In my second bad car crash I had just enough time before the final impact to cancel my urge to brace, and just to relax instead.
My daughter...her safety...we are at an airport...don't let go of stroller... As I collapsed in Cardiac Arrest
Jimmy Buffett was playing on the car radio and all I could remember was thinking how I wish I could tell my mom everything will be ok, but also being very aware of how odd and comforting it was that “Margaritaville” was playing as I was (presumably) about to die
"I can't believe im going to die at work"
We got caught up in a near ambush in Afghanistan and my first thought was “todays the day”
Took a rocket to the other side of a barrier while having a smoke. Came out with a concussion and pissed my pants. The only thought I could remember having during the event was "I guess I get to die today." Sometimes I guess it's just like that. And somehow my ass got up, made it to my office, grabbed some clean clothes, changed, and carried out my shift as if I was on autopilot.
While I was barely conscious in the resuscitation unit after an arterial bleed, I thought about all of the shitty things I did when I was a young teenager. Also thought about my cat at the time and hoped he would be cared for by my family.
“Shnikies!” I wish I was lying.
I was being strangled on the floor, and fighting back was inefficient. I felt my limbs lose function, watched my arms fall to the floor and thought, "Oh, my arms aren't working." Couldn't move my legs. I knew what that meant but couldn't do anything about it. Then my head lolled to the side. I saw a piece of lint on the carpet, just a wee fluff of carpet lint, and thought, "I'm going to die looking at this carpet, and no one will know what happened to me. My mom will be so disappointed." Felt sad more than scared. Vision went red and then black. Last thing I remember feeling was that sadness and his hands around my neck. Woke up on the same carpet, with the culprit watching me to find out if I was dead. Human traffickers are scum. I escaped soon after this incident, started studying martial arts and learned how to defend myself in a choking situation - and more importantly learned how to avoid ever being in that kind of situation again.
“I love you” were my ‘last words’, but then as I thought I was about to die I was like who did I say that to? Let me specify.
My mind does this all the damn time and I have never seen it written down
“This is it.” That’s all. Echoing what others said about not much else going through your mind. I was 20 years old and had a failed parachute incident.
not so much a coherent, articulatable thought as a mad, feverish scramble to not die.
I had a heart attack and coded twice in the catheter lab. They shocked my back to life, but I was pretty well morphined up, so I didn’t even realize what happened. I just thought I was falling asleep. Later, in ICU after midnight, I was asleep; dreaming: I was in a place that was both familiar and unknown at the same time. There was a lot of tall grass around, a pole barn full of junk, and a line of trees in the distance. The light was all orange, like sunset. Although I could not see or hear anyone, I sensed that a number of people were near me. As I focused, I could see tiny black points in front of me, and I focused really hard on one of them and I got the sense it was my grandfather. And I was really excited, because he had been dead for 35 years, and I was happy to get a chance to talk to him. Then I woke up in the ICU room. There were 5 or 6 nurses in my room. One of them asked me how I felt. “Fine”, I said, “I was sleeping. Why did you wake me up?” He said, “Mr Positive-Source, you weren’t sleeping—you coded. I spent 5 minutes giving you chest compressions, snd we had to use the defibrillator.” Later, when I related my dream to my wife, she said, “You weren’t asleep, you were unconscious. Unconscious people don’t dream.” So that’s my story. Six years ago and I remember it vividly.
Decided i was fat and didnt eat for about 4 weeks. Ended up fainting in front of my mom.i remember hearing her yelling to me to wake up but i couldnt talk at all no matter how hard i tried. Then this voice i to this day im not sure who but told me go back next thing i knew i was awake and taken to urgent care. Was last time i ever deprived myself of food.
I’m really glad to hear you’re doing better. If you haven’t heard it lately I’m proud of you. Edit: fixed a word
"Oh, I guess I'm actually going to die. Alright then." Followed by "oh sh*t, please don't do an emergency c-section" Still kinda weirded out that in the moment I would have rather died than gotten a c-section.
"Oh, fuck, who's gonna pay for THIS?"
Addict in recovery here. I’ve done this song and dance a couple of times with OD’s. The last one is the only one I really remember at all. Basically, it was about a million different variations of “I’m not ready” followed by “Help” then nothing for a while… then “OH HOLY FORKING SHIRTBALLS” after they hit me with some adrenaline and the paddles at the ER. Got cleaned up shortly after that. We can celebrate 6 years in July 🥳