JCC What's the Closest You've Ever Come to Death?

This summer we had a very heavy storm here, first of its kind and severity in July - gotta love climate change.
I was returning from some ill-fated journey and was drenched, carrying a broken umbrella, but I was nearly home. Ten feet from my house, an iron garbage can fell out of the sky. Two or three feet from my head.
It had tumbled from a balcony three floors up. "Killed by garbage can". It would have been fitting, right?

 

The ending to the Miami-Duke game last night.

 

just saw that... wow

 

Nearly drowning 2x in my early teens. One, caught in the beach undertow. Two, being jumped on in a swimming pool by another kid and we were tangled up in each other and I remained underwater for a little bit. Suffice to say, I've given up swimming unless I absolutely have to.

 

The Doc really should have told you that he needed to recalibrate that amp.

 

I was helping my friend construct a vacuum-former (big plastic-forming machine) in a home-built pole barn. He tried plugging the thing in and I felt this painful buzzing sensation in my arm, and all my muscles seemed to freeze. I managed to pull away, and I told him the frame had shocked me. He wouldn't believe me, until he put an electric sensor on the frame and discovered that the full household electrical charge was running through it. He was like, "Huh, imagine that." Later we found out he'd wired up the pole barn incorrectly. >.< I credit my survival to rubber-soled shoes.

 

ABOUT THIS CLOSE. IT WAS PLEASANT.

 

I almost hit a telephone pole last year and hit the guide wire instead.

Someone cut in front of me on icy roads, it was either rear end them or try and go around them, there was no one in the other lane so I attempted to go around her, my rear bumper hit hers and it was enough to slide the car to the right. Next thing I know the car is sliding towards a telephone pole. I managed to get some control after the car climbed the side walk. I turned the wheel to the right and wedged the car between the guide wire and the telephone pole.

Didn't realize I was on the side walk until I saw people walking around the car. It could've been worse but thank God it wasn't I managed to cause a minimum amount of damage to the car.

if I slammed on the breaks, I would've went spinning into oncoming traffic and I'm thankful no one was on the side walk at the time of the accident.

 

Had my drink spiked when 19. Needed an adrenaline shot to the heart; woke up 5 hours later in A&E. Told the alcohol and drug used to spike my drink was a near lethal combination.

 

Plane almost sink into the ocean when we were flying above of the Atlantic Ocean.
I was 16 just graduate from high school.
one motor failed and the other was failing. We almost touched water.
I never going to forget. Some people were crying and others were praying.
I can't handle long flights after that.

 

My first asthma attack when I was 15. Ended up in the hospital for nearly a week.

 

I had pneumonia fall of 2005, and I had a scary allergic reaction to one of the medications I was on. Woke up covered in hives. I was very close to going to the hospital, but mom monitored me ever hour.

 

Only been in a bumpy plane flight , apart from that no. My cousin in South Africa was 2 years old when he was in a cafe in then rhodesia where some one started shooting around..Him and his older siblings didnt get hurt though.

 

When I was a baby I was born with a hole in the heart and a damaged heart valve - I was given three months to live and my parents were told nothing could be done for me...

Eventually I was sent to Harefield Hospital and was operated on by the pioneering heart surgeon Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub - This is 1978 though so we're talking very risky, cutting edge, pioneering open heart surgery, not the relatively routine heart surgery they do these days with babies who have holes in the heart.

Anyway, at one point while I was in Oxford's John Radcliffe hospital (before I was moved to Harefield) I went into cardiac arrest, stopped breathing, etc... I had to be revived but for about minute I was technically dead.

So I guess that counts (even though I have no memory of course)

 

I fell off a cliff.

 

I was a passenger on an airplane. A few minutes after takeoff, there was a fire in the cockpit. As they brought us down for an emergency landing, the plane was rocking back and forth.

 

^ Wish I had a nickel for every flight that ended like that when I was in the flying business. I really hated smoke in the cockpit; first step in the emergency procedure is to don oxygen masks, and I hate wearing those things. They never fit right and always leave your face sore for hours.

 

The fear and confusion was compounded by the fact that they announced the situation in German and then in French. So the entire cabin was in a panic and I didn't know what was happening until the English announcement.

 

The fear and confusion was compounded by the fact that they announced the situation in German and then in French. So the entire cabin was in a panic and I didn't know what was happening until the English announcement.

 

Yeah, cuz nothing calms people down like hearing strange voices speaking in German.

What airline was that?

 

I'm pretty sure I told this story here before but one time I went diving and my BC blew out and I was strapped to a steel tank and I plummeted 60 ft and got mask squeeze. Don't panic. Breathe slow. Husband is a master diver and he'll rescue me. But the blood red eyes hung out for a month.

 

^ Oh man that's scary. Yikes, I am not a water person at all.

When I was three, I was visiting relatives in Arizona and came down with a pretty nasty cold. Naturally, my mom decided to take my temperature. Normally this wouldn't be a problem but for whatever reason my mom still used a glass thermometer and I was a dumb kid so obviously I chewed on the thing. Then it broke, and I got glass shards and mercury all in my mouth, and even ingested some. I was rushed to the hospital and then my memory gets a little fuzzy. The last thing I remember from the event is sitting up in a hospital bed drinking some weird pink fluid.

The other distinct time happened in highschool. My friends and I were on a road trip and it was my turn to drive. We were on some narrow two-lane highways out in Eastern Washington, going about 80-85 mph. There was a truck in front of me that was just going slow enough to be annoying so I waited until it was legal to pass and tried to get around him. Either he sped up or was originally going faster than I thought because I suddenly had to put the pedal to the metal to get past him. Ahead of me in the oncoming traffic was a huge semi-truck that was a whole lot closer than when I first looked, and it was coming fast. The driver had the horn blaring. The smart thing to do would have been to slow down and get back behind the truck I was passing, but I wasn't smart so I still tried to get around him, even with death a few hundred feet ahead of me. Luckily, I passed him safely with just a few seconds to spare and the semi-truck went whooshing past without incident.

If I had swerved or hesitated even a little bit, if that semi-truck had tried to avoid my car, people would be dead. The worst part was that all my passengers were asleep, they would have never known what happened. Be careful when you drive, folks. Don't take stupid risks. Make sure you get your eyes checked for any depth-perception problems.

 

I let Charlie Sheen **** me up the ***.

Je suis Charlie indeed.