What was the time you almost died/had a close call?

Getting a crouton stuck in my windpipe. Your body can and will try to take over when life is on the line. Fortunately, I could still breathe a little and I had to wait for saliva to dissolve it. A scary 15 mins or so of small breathes.

• Almost got abducted by pedo but a cop rolled by
• Mom and I got rear ended by a dump truck that left us hospitalized for weeks
• Renal failure due to something wrong with my kidney (I was too young to understand what) but surgeons were able to fix it without removing kidney
• Almost drowned surfing...at least three times
• Hit and run when on my bicycle. That got me a nice new bike, which was nice.
• Near miss with a car while bombing a hill on my Powell Peralta skateboard. It should count as multiple because, in hindsight, bombing a hill that steep, that fast, on that board, with no gear or helmet, was in itself a near death experience every time.
• Near miss with a territorial tiger shark while surfing.
• Near miss with a territorial moray eel while scuba diving
• Wrecked my motorcycle
• Rode off a cliff while back country snowboarding...alone. Please don't be this stupid. That was very dumb and 100% on me. Always bring a buddy. I should know better.
• Hit a hidden rock while snowboarding that caused me to whip the back of my head into the ground so hard that I almost passed out. When I checked my helmet I saw that my head must have landed on another hidden rock because there was a quarter sized hole where the rock had pierced. It was very likely a fatal hit had I not been wearing a helmet.
• Suffered from chronic and acute insomnia that almost drove me to suicide. Reality gets tilted when you don't sleep at all.
• Felt not good. Went to the ER and was rushed to surgery. Turns out most of the arteries on my heart were blocked 93+%. One was 99% blocked. Ended up getting four stents but at least I dodged a bypass and a heart attack. Close though. Had I waited, maybe even a day, I would have had a massive heart attack. *Got cancer. Beat cancer. Fuck cancer.

EDIT: Reading someone else's comment reminded me of a time when I was very young (5?) where we had an aquarium on top of a tall dresser. I opened the bottom drawer and climbed on the lip so that I can could see the fishies. The whole thing toppled over on me. The dresser landed on my lower body and the aquarium landed on me, shattering. I clearly remember my mom screaming in panic, my neighbors lifting the dresser off me, the terrazzo floor cover in bloody water and me yelling at the top of my lungs for someone to save the fish that was dying next to me. It didn't make it. Oooh boy, there's trauma there. That memory hit a nerve for some reason.

I just finished working out and noticed I had a flat after like 30 seconds of driving. It was dark and I pulled over on an uneven/unfinished area of road. A passerby helped me out by holding a flashlight, we were chatting as I was working, then all of a sudden my car fell off the jack (the flat had been removed). I was so lucky I didn't crush my hand. After that I just called AAA to take care of it for me and I'll never try changing a flat again.

• Took a muscle relaxant I'm allergic against and nearly died on my bathroom floor while unable to call for help, face planted into the ground, sweating and tasting blood, at 3am about 5m away from my deep sleeping girlfriend.
• aqua planing with my motorcycle in a turn
• skidding on ice with my motorcycle
• wrapping my motorcycle around a tree
• getting under a semi truck with my motorcycle
• accidentally taking drugs which cause serotonin syndrome
• drowning in a wave pool because I slipped (clinically dead for about a minute)
• having a cramp at sea 500m from the shore
• hitting a tree on skis at night alone
• taking the wrong drugs, dissociating and waking up from the feeling of cold train tracks vibrating against my cheeks
• falling out of my bed 10cm from metal feet of my desk

Come to think of it, I really need to get a motorcycle again. That was fun.

Posted this recently on a similar but different question, may as well include it here because it fits:

Exploring an easy cave with a friend. Nothing tricky at all, just one way through, standing room all the way, about 1m wide, ankle deep water flowing through the whole way (walking against the flow).

As we went, the water very slowly became harder to press forwards against. The change was so gradual we were second-guessing it the entire time until it got really strong. We figured it was better to walk against it than with it - at this point it was rushing against our legs, and the thought of slipping and being swept through, bouncing off of the walls, was not great. It felt much easier to keep our footing facing the flow, and also it seemed like we were much closer to the end than the beginning (the cave had an exit at both ends, it was basically a small fork of a river that cut through a hill).

So we pressed on, until we got to a point that should have been a small scramble up a few bits of rock - except now there was a massive flow of water hitting us at chest level as we tried to climb it. We were both completely unable to push against it and get up. We were also now convinced that the cave was filling up with water so we had to get out - which now meant turning around and doing the whole length again but with the water hitting the back of our legs the whole way.

Oh and the water was freezing, coming off of some snowy mountains. So for about an hour, we held onto the sides of the cave and slowly tried to move steadily through, while by this point I had almost no feeling in my frozen feet to help with keeping my footing. It was like guesswork every step.

By the time we got out, the water had risen by almost a metre I'd say. Not much but the extra force was insane, and the feeling of a cave filling up with water behind you was not easily ignored. Anyway, turns out there was heavy rainfall way up river from us, always check the forecast and think beyond where you are when dealing with rivers and caves!

First one was right at my birth, as I came out feet first and was apparently almost strangled by the umbilical cord which was around my neck.

When I was about 5, a large wardrobe fell over and missed me by just a couple cm.

Most recent one was a few weeks ago when I was riding my bike. An oncoming BMW cut a corner and, as the road was inside a ravine, couldn't see me and almost crashed into me.

I nearly drowned when I was 8 years old.

I was at camp and didn’t quite know how to tread water. There was a large pond that they let us play in during our free time and I went under the water for a bit, but when I came up for air, the water was too deep and I couldn’t stand up over the water.

I immediately panicked and just kept jumping to try and stay above the water. It was burning my eyes and right into my lungs. Every time I jumped up over the water, I couldn’t get enough breath to focus and I went back down with more water than air.

I have some very clear memories of those moments. I was very close to the dock and I could see the older lifeguards kind of playing around on the dock as it was getting harder and harder to jump. The clearest memory of all was me literally thinking “Oh my God. I’m 8 years old and I’m going to die.”

I started to get tired and I remember this tall blonde girl reaching out to me and saying “Are you okay?” and just pulling me to the shore.

From that point, things got a little fuzzy. I remember a lot of people standing around me and I remember vomiting up pond water. My mother, after finding out what happened, threatened to sue the camp, and I couldn’t hardly look at the water without three of counselors around me after that.

I think about that moment before the girl saved me a lot. That “Oh my God. I’m going to die” moment. It’s very sobering, and even though it’s been more than 30 years, it’s still been difficult to shake off.

I forget how old I was, but at some point as a kid I had this really big marble, and as dumb kids sometimes do, I kept sticking it in my mouth for no reason. Eventually I accidentally half-swallowed it and it was big enough to completely block my throat. I couldn't breathe or make a sound, and I don't think anyone else was even home at the time anyway. I legit thought I was gonna die, as much as I could process that as a kid, but I somehow managed to cough the marble up after a few seconds. I distinctly remember thinking to myself "okay don't do that again," and then absently sticking the marble back in mouth a minute later anyway.

Hiking mountain, misty/rainy midday. Summit didn't look like a summit to me, and I'm not an experienced hiker. Had forgotten my hiking boots so was hiking in flat-bottom running shoes.

Arrive at summit, of course, want to walk to edge to enjoy my hard-earned view. Begin walking down incline to my "perceived summit" (mistakes intensify). Realize it sure is a steep path. Total path from arrival to "perceived summit" was ~10 meters. 5 meters from edge I slip, ow, that hurt. Oh, I'm sliding. Time ceases to exist, this all feels like forever. Quickly flatten body such that backpack grabs surface.

Where am I? How far did I slide? 2-3m, panic, I am more than halfway towards the edge in an ever increasing steepness summit. Everything is wet. I launch myself to my feet and rush away from the ledge, processing what just happened. Oh. I see.

Strangers freaked out, friends freaked out, everyone has adrenaline. Sit and consider what occurred, try to calm myself but the panic of existential dread was persistent for the next six hours or so.

Good hike.

Don't even have a limp or anything. But I did pull glass out of my face for like 3 years

I drive for my job, so like... daily. Lol. People do genuinely dangerously stupid things on the road and a lot just ignore it because of how dangerous driving already is. I think some of it can definitely be chalked up to honest mistakes but there have been many times I've seen a driver danger my own life, their own, or other people (or a combination of the three) out of what appeared to just be total and complete ignorance. I feel so incredibly lucky to have yet to be involved in a crash or to even witness one, but usually at least once a shift I do witness a close call that sometimes does involve me.

And I'm not much of an urban planner so I genuinely don't know what I can contribute to fix this, but so much of it seems to be an insane impatience and a treatment of driving as some kind of race. I see people hourly roll through stop signs, speed through red lights, ignore right-of-way in roundabouts, shove themselves into lanes, cut people off, etc. When I'm driving in my city's downtown I usually see drivers come within INCHES of pedestrians who are crossing the street just to get to the next red light 2 seconds faster. And people have this inherent obsession with speeding. It's like some kind of cult. If you don't speed they treat you like utter garbage. I've definitely driven on roads that felt 10 mph or 20 mph faster than the speed limit, but most of the time I feel like the speed limit like makes sense, you know? I speed due to the nature of my job (pizza delivery) but I usually only go 5 over at most. 9 times out of 10 though I get tailgated by some speed junkie who needs to go dangerously above the limit just to get to the red light 10 seconds faster.

And you know I've made mistakes too. I'm not perfect. I've rolled through stops, failed to signal, ran a few reds when I spaced out, etc. It's just shocking on the daily to see sheer ignorance to the rules of the road. At this point I'm almost numb to it. Just the other day I was driving to a store on my off time and witnessed somebody come within inches of a head-on collision because they creeped into the intersection to make a left turn (this happens every time I drive). The near-victim of this insane stupidity had some really quick reactions otherwise with that speed they might have hit me too. All I was thinking was that I wish I had my dashcam plugged in.

TL:DR: I drive a lot for my job. I deliver pizza. I am constantly shocked by the sheer stupidity on the road and it's probably from impatience and ignorance of speed limits. I witness people almost dying on a daily if not weekly basis. Just yesterday I almost got involved in a head-on collision by somebody who couldn't be bothered to wait behind the painted white line at a left turn.

Do you mean times in which I made a lucky mistake that avoided me running into a fatal issue, or times in which I was in a fatal issue that didn't finish me off?

I have this hazy, memory from when I was about 8. I was exploring a peat bog, which was fun because everything was soft and squishy and I could just run around. I saw some weird looking bushes, and decided to go check them out. But, as I ran up, it turned out there were growing over this sort of wet hole, where maybe there was a spring or something. I suddenly fell about 8 feet, and was in this mud pit slowly sinking. Luckily, I managed to grab some of those bushes I'd seen, and pull myself out. But it was very hard, because the mud was pulling me down like quicksand. Eventually, I crawled back out on the bog, covered in mud.

Nobody I was with remembers this, and honestly it might not be real. Childhood experiences are super weird.

A few years back I woke up with some minor pain in my pp, assuming it was just a UTI that'd pass on its own I let it go for around a week until it was unbearable, and I ended up leaking blood every time I went to pee. Finally went to the hospital and it turns out I had E. Coli in my weenie. The infection had spread to my bladder, and up into my ureter. Doc said if I'd let it go another day it would have hit my kidneys where it could have become a full blown systemic infection, which likely would have killed me.

If your bits hurt, go to the doctor.

waited until it was almost too late to get checked for appendicitis

to be fair the symptoms weren't very clear cut

Fiancee and I were hiking into and camping at a state park. We got a little turned around and low on water, so I was a bit out of it and tired. I saw an interesting looking log across the trail and stepped over the smaller end of it. It was around 9:30am, so things were a little cold. I stopped and turned to wait for my fiancee and right as she was about to step on the log I realized it was an enormous 6-ish foot long rattlesnake. I grabbed her arm right before she put her foot down on the bastard and yanked her as hard as I could and backed up a step or two. Somehow the snake hadn't noticed me yet, but it noticed me wrenching my fiancee away from it and it went into full coil-up-and-rattle mode. Had that thing bitten me I would have been in a bad place because I was already dehydrated. If it had bitten my wife, both of us would have been in a bad place because we were closer to our destination with fresh water than to our car.

Bunch of failed suicides, an accident in a school swimming pool, and the time my neighbour accidentally diverted a fuck tonne of carbon monoxide fumes into my house. All the times I've been close to death don't make for particularly interesting reading.

How about a brush with serious injury instead?

1st year of uni. I'm in the labs for the first time and I am hyped to do some microbiological analysis. We were given a bunch of techniques to try and I'd decided to start by doing gram staining and then observing a slide. Most of my class mates had less experience on the microscopes than me and I was feeling great about how quickly I'd calibrated everything. Cocky enough that I hadn't noticed just how coated in immersion oil my gloves were, until my hand accidentally passed through a Bunsen burner and went up in flames.

Thankfully I'd picked a bench close to the sinks and was able to wrap some damp towels around the hand quickly to try to smother the flame before I got seriously burnt. But the scars on my hand are a reminder to me to be aware of my surroundings in the lab at all times.

Permanently Deleted

The closest was probably a mountainbiking accident.

We were going along side a hill and to the right of us was a wall going down holding the earth up. Well there came an obstacle up which was a big roller to the right up the hill a bit and then down again to the ledge. The roller took a slight curve and you needed to curve back on the trail to not go over the ledge. I broke the first rule of mountainbiking and looked down the ledge which was like 3-4m high instead of ahead. Drove straight of it but somehow managed to grab a branch of a tree that was just above the ledge. My bike fell down and i just hung in the tree allowing me to safely drop down and carry the bike back up.

Nothing happened to me but i don't want to imagine what would have happened if i didn't grab that branch.

I once slipped on a bar of soap in the shower. I got up and slipped again a couple of minutes later.

I also almost drowned at a water park when I was like 3 or 4. I was on an inner tube on a water slide and fell off into a pool that was in the middle of the slide. The lifeguard didn't see me and kept sending my family down the slide. Luckily someone else saw me and rescued me.

Felt close to dying last year from covid + pneumonia (possibly comorbid RSV as well). Still not 100% over my long-covid symptoms.

I was shot at in the woods as a kid by an old man with a shotgun and a big greyhound. My niece and nephew were with me, and I literally drug them behind me as we ran back to our family's camp site. Have no idea why he fired at us, but he most certainly did.. I was so afraid he was going to release his dog... No way we would've gotten away from it. Our family didn't believe us about this event until the 3 of us reminisced about it as young adults at Thanksgiving years later.

I also was chased by a farmer known for shooting trespassers with rock salt, when we snuck on his farm for shrooming. Some other highlights from that shrooming trip were almost stepping on a pygmie rattlesnake, and my brother getting stuck in quicksand and loosing his boot while we fled from the pursuing farmer thru the woods.

A buddy of mine and I were chased by a strange car for miles late at night. Should've called the police, but we were dumb teenagers. No idea what they wanted, but they pursued us for miles. We drove into a large neighborhood that was being developed, sped around the grid of empty streets with our lights off being chased by that car going crazy speeds on those residential streets, and we managed to slip out of the developing neighborhood and hid in a driveway on a side street until we saw the car go flying past looking for us. Still have no clue who that was or what their motivation/end goal was..

Had a close call with my wife and human traffickers... At least I'm 99% sure. I have had multiple training seminars from my former employer (mental health organization) due to the extremely elevated rate of human trafficking in this region and along Route 66 which pases thru. As a caseworker for the adult population, I worked with individuals who had been trafficked...

My wife is very petite and adorable, and was clearly being stalked and targeted by a man in Walmart while we were shopping one night. We were split up shopping, and apparently this man had been following my wife down every aisle, staring at her, and was coordinating with someone on the phone. This was unknown to me when I was heading to meet back up with my wife.

I finally spotted her down an aisle, but saw this guy peaking around the end of the aisle at my wife, who was the only person in that aisle... He was speaking quietly and I couldn't make out exactly what he was saying, but it was clear he was staring at my wife and relaying information to someone on the phone.

I'm muscular and I don't fuck around. I'm from Jersey and will admit I can be a bit of a hothead. I wanted to do more, but I walked right in front of this guy while he was staring at my wife down the aisle, postured up feet in front of him while giving him a deathstare until that bastard broke my stare, looking like he'd seen a ghost. I walked down the aisle towards my wife, turning back and maintaining eye-contact with the creep the whole time, especially as I put my arm around her.

I could tell I shook the guy, because he went out of his way to circle by my wife and I a few times with totally different body language, speaking in an entirely different cadence, volume, and tone. It was clear he was speaking loudly and in a manner aimed at us overhearing his now seemingly innocuous conversation. But it was clearly a rouse. He was stammering over his words all nervously and clearly wasn't really asking the person on the phone about shopping items.

After I got back to my wife, she told me how this creep was following her down aisles for the last 15 minutes or more, staring at her while on the phone. Some people reading this may believe I jumped to conclusions, but this tripped human trafficking warning signs and sent alarm bells ringing in my gut. Better safe than sorry. Dude was a creek regardless.

I can't think of any other close calls right now, but I know there's other stories somewhere in my memory bank...

Driving along a 70mph section of highway in the early AM hours and thinking 'those headlights look way too close to the median...' only to realize some drunk had turn onto am exit ramp thinking it was an entrance, so they where going the wrong way down the highway.

This was before the time of cell phones being common so ended up tracking down a local officer at a gas station I knew them to frequent at night, hoping they somehow caught them before anyone got killed.

I was hiking in late winter/early spring when I stepped onto a deep pile of wet leaves that gave out. Ended up sliding a good 25 ft downhill, and the only thing that stopped me from falling 100 feet onto the rocks below was a small tree that went dead center between my legs. I sat there for a bit with my feet dangling over the ledge until the pain diminished and continued on.

Still enjoy hiking to this day, just a little more careful on where I step.

As a kid (maybe 6-8) at the beach. My dad was on the shore and I waded out and kept going further and further, until the sand bank fell off and I dropped what felt like 5m underwater and couldn’t find my way back. I wasn’t a bad swimmer but panic set in and I got disoriented. Felt like I was treading water for 15 minutes but it was more like 3 until a family friend saw what was happening and made it out to me to pull me back to the shore.

When 5 people tried to steal my cellphone at night, luckily i was with 2 friends so they couldn't steal anything, they still managed to leave some bruises in my face tho

Oh god which time.

I was coming down the highway, cruising the speed limit. No sign of slowed traffic in front of me. Left lane, construction wall to my left, no shoulder. I see a cop on the side, lights on, glance over for maybe 1 or 2 seconds to see what's going on, look back in front and I'm 10 feet from the back of an 18 wheeler dead stopped, all lanes dead stopped traffic. My lizard brain took over and I managed to skid diagonally across the entire highway to the right shoulder without even thinking about it.

That's the one that stands out where I wasn't injured. It's shit like that that makes me wonder if we die in moments like that and wake up in an alternate timeline or something.

• Two separate close calls with paedophiles as a kid. Yes, out alone, I'm genX.
• Fell asleep at the beach once with the waves splashing back and forth over my legs, woke up to find out the tide had come in and I'd been carried out in a rip. Well, fuck.
• Crossed the road while talking on the phone, and a bus zoomed past doing 50, three inches past my nose - real final-destination stuff. If I'd stepped out even half a second earlier, I'd have been a long greasy stain on the asphalt.
• Lying on the grass reading my book; my then-7yo son sprinted up to me with a chunk of concrete as big as my head, and bounced it off the grass right next to my ear. I'm sure it was just a coordination failure, but damn.
• Trying to extract an electrical cord plugged in really awkwardly behind a desk, stretched out on the floor with my arm snaked into the gap, only fingertips able to reach. Got it halfway out, caught myself really trying to wrap my fingers around the pins to get some leverage. Very calmly and carefully extracted my hand, sat up, and went to pieces for a bit.
• Visting my uncle on a tiny flyspeck of an island in the English Channel. Went to check out the pine forest there, spent a while tromping through the blanket of pine needles, lots of fun. Hit a really steep hill, the others took the stairs cut into the hillside, I decided to run down the slope. The hill got a lot steeper than I expected, my feet were barely even keeping up as I hurtled downwards... and through a gap in the trees, I saw I was heading to a cliff edge, with jagged rocks and crawling sea far below. Absolutely no chance of stopping in time, my turning circle was bigger than the remaining distance... only one thing for it. Stuck my arms out wide, veered as hard as I could, and just barely managed to catch a pine tree. Those things are not cuddly; I ended up with full-body carpet elbow, and hurt like hell for the rest of the trip. Beats being seagull food, though.

But if you want stupid ways I've hurt myself that weren't actually life-threatening...

• Walking along the top of a maze (made of treated pine poles) as a teenager; fell off and just clipped an eyebrow on the corner of a pole; another inch and I'd have lost an eye at the very least. I still have a lump on the bone on the corner of my eye socket.
• As a 10yo, moving house and packing stuff into storage; I was carrying a metal pole-on-feet (part of a dressmaker's dummy), so naturally I hefted it like a trident and chased my dad with it. Down a long corridor lined with doorways, at the storage facility. One of the feet caught a doorway, the pole stopped dead, I kept going and smashed my teeth into the end of the pole, breaking three of them.
• Pulling a big saucepan out of the cupboard under the stove, while cooking. The kitchen construction was terrible; the galvanized-iron base of the stove was jammed into a splintery hole in the chipboard counter, making a nasty, jagged narrowing gap. I got my hand caught and obviously badly cut so I carefully pushed up and backwards as I slid my hand out, to avoid ripping hell out of it by jerking it free. Except that no, I'd just brushed my hand against the hot part of the stove, and proceeded to burn it much, much worse by squeezing up against it and dragging slowly backwards.
• Doing the dusting when I was 12, stupidely squirted glass cleaner right onto an (incandescent) light bulb, which promptly shattered. I was very responsible, unplugged the lamp, picked up the glass, vacuumed the floor to get any splinters, then proceeded to attempt to removed the jagged stump of the lightbulb, barehanded. Still got a doozy of a scar.
• When I was a toddler, swinging on the garden gate. Held on too close to the hinge end, mashed the end of my pinky to absolute hamburger. They just kind of tacked it together and wrapped it up, best they could do - amazingly, I only have two hairline scars from it, and the fingerprint even lines up.
• Went jogging on slightly damp concrete, tripped and dislocated my ankle (mildly distressing injury pic)
• In my early 30s, playing 'boo' with a friend's toddler, leaping out of hiding places and snarling hideously. Best game, toddlers love it. Leapt through a doorway that was about a foot lower than I expected, in a concrete wall. Skull made a noise skulls shouldn't ever make, I made a very impressive scream indeed. Toddler was highly entertained, I was out of commission for the rest of the day.
• Taking my then-4yo son to the aquarium, he was almost-but-not-quite too big to carry on my shoulders. Two-stage lift, hoik up to chest height, then hnnngh up to shoulders. Easy. Except that when he was at chest height, his heels were exactly at ball-height, and after swinging him up for the first-stage lift... yeah. The thing about it, though, was that I did the same damn thing TWICE that day, and if you think getting kicked in the balls hurts, wait until you get kicked in already sore and swollen balls. Mother of god.
• Speaking of which, be 14, playing impromptu game of pingpong on a picnic table, with a tennis ball and the flat of our hands as paddles. I have a lazy eye, and no 3d vision, and so missed about 20 return in a row. Being 14 and in the throes of puberty, I proceeded to absolutely fucking lose my shit. At the tennis ball. Decide on the spot to teach the fucking thing a fucking lesson it would never fucking forget. Leap into the air anime style, fucking SLAM the ball down in a serve directly to the god damn moon. As mentioned, I have a lazy eye and no 3d vision, so instead of hitting the tabletop, the ball hit the leading edge of the table. It got me right in the nuts, with all the force a truly enraged 14yo could muster, and my sister stood over me laughing her head off as I lay there curled up in agony.
• And then of course there was my wedding night. We checked into the hotel, went for a walk around the city, then went for a swim in the hotel pool. I was showing off a little bit, swooshing around underwater around my wife like a seal, y'know how it is. Swum down a bit too deep, and stubbed my nose on the bottom of the pool. Fucking meow. Yanked the tip down so hard the skin tore right across the bridge. Blood absolutely fucking everywhere. Got back up to the room, rang room service for bandaids. Same bellhop arrived as checked us into the honeymoon suite, sees us both in towels, me looking like a slasher movie, and my wife on the floor heaving with laughter. He pretty much threw the bandaids at me and fled. I think we traumatised him for life, it was awesome :D

Back when I smoked and was an unexperienced driver, I was having a cig in my car. I stuck it out of the window to tap off the ash and I drifted off of the road with my right side tires. Instead of slowly moving back I jamked the wheel and almost had a head to head collision with traffic in the oncomming lane. Escaped death by half a meter.