Hey Pandas, What Is Your Brush With Death? (Closed)

Running through Mortars raining down on my position in Iraq. Obviously I made it to the other side. I was sure I was witnessing my last seconds alive however which was a little terrifying.

I’ve posted this somewhere else, but mine is when a bucket fell on my head.
First off, nobody noticed for 5 minutes. Second, nobody really did much for 4 hours. Lastly, there was just a lot of blood, and it was a very rusty bucket. Yay I survived.

Well, I’ve had a lotttt.

The first was when I was just a baby, a little over 1 month old I think. My intestines had an issue, and they had to completely rearrange them inside of me so I wouldn’t starve due to throwing everything up.

Next was when I was 3. I was at Disney on Ice and we were going to get popcorn. I jumped for some reason, not realizing there was a railing above me. I split my head open. It took almost thirty minutes for the ambulance to get there, if I remember correctly, because no one would call and my parents’ phones died. I had to get 3 stitches.

I don’t remember what age I was, but I got pneumonia. Luckily they caught it early, so I could be treated.

Next, I had to get my tonsils taken out because the doctors thought they were making me sick every month (SPOILER: it only made it worse. Turns out I have a disorder that makes me extremely immunocompromised). I don’t even remember most of what happened after, but apparently I couldn’t eat or drink anything at all for 4 days and my parents had to take me to the hospital. I guess they gave me fluids or something? But my mom says I was there for 6 days because of how sick I was. I just remember going home and being so grateful to be able to walk again.

Okay, last one. This took place a few months ago. We were driving home from a friend’s house, and two cars were racing down a straight road, and we were turning onto the highway (one of the intersections that you have to cross traffic before getting into the other road. There was no stop light anywhere). The cars I guess didn’t see us, and both came within 1 foot or less of our car. Luckily no collisions, but I was sitting on the side they were coming from, so if they had hit us I would’ve definitely died.

Sorry for the long post lol. Guess I’m just very accident-prone

I was on a paddle board in the ocean and got into shallow water without realising, got hit by a wave and fell in, hurt my knee and got trapped under my board, this is when I realised I can’t swim (because of the amount of time since I last practiced)

When I was little, I was *that kid* at the pool who swam with no regard to her surroundings. I would weave between groups of people and even between people’s legs like an obstacle course. One day when I was about eight or nine, I pissed off the wrong guy with my antics, and he held me underwater for what felt like a very long time. I ended up blacking out, and when I woke up I was on the side of the pool coughing my lungs out. Apparently the guy holding me left after I blacked out, and lifeguard trainee saw me floating facedown and jumped in to drag me out.

Not me, but my dad almost died after falling off of a ladder. Basically, he was on the very top step (the part where it literally says not to use) of a rickety ladder my mom got for free when she worked at Burger King, and no one was holding it. The ladder fell, and then he fell on top of it, onto our concrete driveway.

We were living over an hour and a half away from the army hospital, and instead of letting my brother call an ambulance, he made him call my mom…who was forty minutes away from our house shopping. Well, she booked it home, loaded my grievously injured dad into the family minivan, and sped to the hospital. Now knowing the extent of his injuries, she regrets this as he literally could have died on the way and she wouldn’t have been able to do anything (though she still asserts that no ambulance would have driven faster than she did that day).

Somehow, it even got worse! The army hospital was in no way equipped to handle trauma to the extent of my dad's injuries. They didn’t even know how to properly use a chest tube. As a result, he needed to be transferred to the "actual" hospital. The whole time my mom had to aggressively play the role of his advocate as the army hospital missed quite a bit of the problems, and even let him fall off of the bed. It was such a dire situation that our pastor was there consoling my mom and us kids were even brought in to say our goodbyes before he was transferred.

In total my dad suffered from: a collapsed lung, broken ribs, a ruptured spleen, and a completely shattered elbow (I’m sure there was more but this is what I was told about seeing as I was only about 5 years old at the time, and yes, I did witness the entire ladder event, as it happened right in front of me. Thankfully, I don’t remember too many details. It has left me with a lifelong fear of ladders though.)

And, as an added bonus, the replacement elbow implant eventually failed and he needed to have it removed, so he has no elbow in that arm to this day.

Spring, 2009 I had been feeling sick for over a week. Just really out of it, no energy, kind of flu like symptoms. I ended up going to the doctor eventually and collapsed as I was walking with a nurse down the hallway. I had gone into cardiac arrest...which means I wasn't breathing and had no pulse. I was clinically dead for almost 4 minutes before a combo of CPR and a portable defibrillator got my heart pumping blood again. I was on life support, in a coma for a week. If I had been anywhere else except at the doctor's office, there is a good chance I wouldn't have lived through that. I was barely 30 years old at the time with no health issues, no heart conditions and no family history of that either. Never could determine why it happened to me, even after every test possible.

Yes when I was a child I had very bad asthma with chest infections, many times I spent weeks lying in bed or on a couch fighting for breath, I had a heart murmur and at 8 weighed only half what a child my age should have, my chances of making it to adulthood were rated at less than 50% and one time I was in hospital for nine months - but I completely recovered and became very fit, my doctor considers this miraculous, to look at me you'd never guess, I warned to expect I might never be strong or fit but somehow I made it. The staff at the hospital were wonderful, I never had the chance to tell any of them how much I loved them afterward for it, it must have been good seeing some of us go home after improving but also heartbreaking because some of the children died. I can only say if there really were a heaven those nurses earned their place