a brush with death

funnymouth

Active member
no pun intended.

almost bought the farm this morning. i wasnt paying attention and i added some waste with bleach to the wrong waste container at my lab bench. it made cyanogen chloride (cyanide gas) right in my face. by the time i had realized what i had done (seconds later) it was already too late. i evacuated the area but was exhibiting exposure symptoms. a lethal dose will put you in cardiac arrest in ~8 mins. i had five left, and i watched the seconds tick away....
but im still here!

lets chat close calls....
 

Hinton

New member
Damn, that is close! Glad to hear you're okay.

My latest close call (yes, I've had more than one) was about 3 months ago. Just sitting at home when all of sudden I couldn't breathe. After about a minute, realizing that I was getting worse by the second, I called 911.

I managed to croak out my name and address and then blacked out. Woke up in the ambulance with two EMTs working on me like crazy. Get to the hospital and I'm completely surrounded by all kinds of medical staff doing all manner of things to me; needles, tubes, lights, more needles.

Turns out that it was pretty close. If I had waited one more minute to call, I wouldn't have made it.

Worse part is, they have no idea what happened to me. They tested me for just about everything: poisons, drugs, allergic reactions, asthma, pulmonary embolism; anything and everything that could have caused my lungs to seize.
 

DrEvilmonki

Active member
Motorcycle accident was my closest. Wrote off the car that hit me as well as my bike. First I knew of it was waking up on the ground with someone putting a blanket over me. When the tow truck came the guy asked where the body was - meaning me. I got a scratched knee and a sore neck.
 

devoncodain

New member
I have tons of close calls. I have been shot at numerous times in my military career. I was in a Semi Truck accident I was the truck driver. Those are just the most recent. Had AK-47 rounds fly in between me and a buddies head when we were in a HUMVEE we were about a foot apart that was a really close one.
 

delta 408

Member
Glad you're alright now, funnymouth. I has a brush with death once. I was standing on the sidewalk and stepped down because a coin I was holding fell down, when a van/lorry sped past. It was so close, I could feel the mass of it near my face. I felt like I could see the whole thing as if I was a bystander. Scary.
 

TreManor

New member
Damn, that is close! Glad to hear you're okay.

My latest close call (yes, I've had more than one) was about 3 months ago. Just sitting at home when all of sudden I couldn't breathe. After about a minute, realizing that I was getting worse by the second, I called 911.

I managed to croak out my name and address and then blacked out. Woke up in the ambulance with two EMTs working on me like crazy. Get to the hospital and I'm completely surrounded by all kinds of medical staff doing all manner of things to me; needles, tubes, lights, more needles.

Turns out that it was pretty close. If I had waited one more minute to call, I wouldn't have made it.

Worse part is, they have no idea what happened to me. They tested me for just about everything: poisons, drugs, allergic reactions, asthma, pulmonary embolism; anything and everything that could have caused my lungs to seize.



Have your water heater and AC furnace checked out. You may have CM leaking out into the air of your house. If that is th ecase it will happen again, children are especially suseptible.

One of my personal brushes with death ( yes more than once ) I was driving in Houston TX 8 AM traffic on I-10 with my best friend in an 83 Volkswagen Scirrocco- GOD I miss that car! circa febuary 1992. WE had left Jackson, Mississippi the nigth before around 11 pm and i hda been drivign all night with no sleep. I was doing about 80 or 85 mph int he far left hand lane of a six lane, and had only JUST cleared a large cluster of traffic in the southwestern section of I-10's pass through Houston when I hear a loud POP!

I looked at me bud Joe and asked him if he heard it, he's like " yeah, must' a been a backfire somewhere. " then WHAMMO!! The back end of the car lifts up and all I know are squealing tires, th eworl da pin like no one's buisness, and Joe screamin his head off!

It was like time was standing still! We were spinning around and around across the highway and then we were facing oncoming traffic sliding sideways on the driver's side tires toward the barrier wall over the feeder road, I was looking UP at Joe- who was still screamign bloody murder! When the car finally came to a complete halt perfectly centered in the shoulder breakdown lane facing the wrong direction.

Joe and I were like Steve Martin and John Candy ( him being more like Mr Candy ) in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, just in that " Thank you GOD fro not killing us " moment for a few seconds lookign at each other in stunned silence, then Joe says " I'm gonna fucking kill you John. " all calm and collected and we fall out of the car laughing hysterically, literally not able to quit laughing. It was REALLY wierd. All the whielk a cop is starign at us from his car not 25 feet in front of us, and what deos he do??? Fuckign drives off.

We look out across the highway at 3 looping sets of tire marks and then at how close we were to crashign through the barrier wall. Miraculously no other cars had been close enough to hit us, no one else wrecked, or even stopped!

Turns out there was a bolt that held the rear axle onto the frame of the car that had broken allowign the right rear tire to drop back and catch in the tire well which locked it up....basically it was like throwing on the emergency break at 85mph.

I remember thinking clearly enough to take the car out of gear and let go of the wheel to keep my arms from breaking while it was spinnign and then catch the wheel and steer into the skid when the spinnign slowed down.

I am not religious, btu I do not believe in " luck " either. Maybe beign an aggressive driver saved my life or the fact that Joe was in the passenger seat and outwieghed me by a good 50 pounds. maybe it was teh other drivers reactions to what happened. Or maybe it was havign enough room to absorb the speed on a flat hot surface..... I don't know, but I DO look back at that experience and ask myself if I REALLY think it had more to do with a series of perfect circumstances that all just happened to work together to make sure I did nto die that day as all likelihood would have had otherwise, or maybe somethign else??

I know this sounds like BS, but I swear on my hands and fingers every word is true.
 

gohkm

Active member
That's a lot of close calls, you guys.

Mine was when the missus and I got into an accident at an intersection. We got T-boned. Later on, the tech for the insurance firm called us up and said:

1. An inch more to the right and it would've ruptured the gas tank.
2. An inch more to the left and it would've hit right behind the front crumple zone and completely shattered the car's A-frame (which means no hope for the driver!).
3. If the other party had been going just 2km faster, the entire A-frame would've shattered like glass - no hope for either driver or passenger.

Talk about lucky!
 

Einion

New member
funnymouth said:
almost bought the farm this morning. i wasnt paying attention and i added some waste with bleach to the wrong waste container at my lab bench. it made cyanogen chloride (cyanide gas) right in my face. by the time i had realized what i had done (seconds later) it was already too late.
That's the kinda thing that'd drain the blood from the face all right! Glad you're unhurt. No long-term effects from incidental exposure are there?

I had lots of close calls as a kid, went into emergency so often at one point that I'm told they said, "Oh no, not him again." I've been pretty risk-averse since then so things have quietened down somewhat :cute:

Maybe the closest I had as an adult was crossing a road in Vegas the first time I was there; if I hadn't slipped and fallen ass-over-teakettle in the middle of the crosswalk (eternal thanks to the weather gods for the rain!) I would have been beaned by the Cadillac that sped through in the next lane. He was going 50 at least, which is pretty much guaranteed to kill the pedestrian.

Einion
 
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pate

New member
I've broken limps, punctured lounges etc but never really had a close call. Well, when I punctured my lounge it was an exrtremely dangerous situation, but I wasn't exactly a close call. If I hadn't gone to the hospital and just tried to wait out the pain, it would have been lethal. My right lounge was completely collapsed, filling with fluids, I spent one night like that before I went to the hospital. If I had slept on the wrong side my good lounge would have filled with fluids aswell, which basically meant I would have suffocated. But I've never considered it a close call really, not like "F*ck! that truck almost hit me!" So, no close calls! Knock on wood
 

Avelorn

Sven Jonsson
I don't know if it was a brush with death really, but the topic made me think of some years ago I was going by car to a town close by. Normally I just slip on my shoes but this time I had to re-tie one of the laces. When I had been driving for a couple of minutes a large moose (400-500kg perhaps) crossed the road 40-50m in front of me running from one dense patch of forest to another. I would have had no chance of stopping or seeing it had I been earlier, I was travelling in 70km/h ~20m/s In that speed what happens is that you break the legs of the moose and the entire mass of the body goes onto the windshield. My brother hit a moose in around 40km/h and the car became a wreck.

Maybe not very spectacular but it made me think. If I hadn't tied that shoelace...
 

Naukhel

Active member
Stabbed once. Lower left chest. Luckily, the blade hit a rib and didn't get inside.
Shot at once. It wasn't remotely close, by physical evidence, but at the time, I would have sworn it parted my hair (I had hair back then).
One black ice incident in a car. Spun around a few times and hit a lamp post at the end.
More large heavy objects have hit me in the head than I can count.
Hit by a bus. Flew 30 feet or so, got up, and walked away with only a slight limp to show for it.

That's about it, I think.
 

funnymouth

Active member
oi, cars are dangerous, arent they? and hintons story, scary! getting shot at, yikes! its enough to make a guy want to live in a bubble. im glad we're all here to relate lifes trials.

That's the kinda thing that'd drain the blood from the face all right! Glad you're unhurt. No long-term effects from incidental exposure are there?

ironically i tuned pink in the face - cyanide poisoning suffocates you at the cellular level, so the oxygen in your blood cant be delivered to your cells and you turn flushed. i should be OK in the long term; the body can metabolize low doses, and at that point its symptoms are similar to oxygen dep. but one breath more, and i may not have been so fortunate. it probably wasnt my closest call, but it sure did remind me how casually shit can go seriously wrong.
 

IdofEntity

New member
Glad to hear I'm not the only one who seems to be staying out of the crypt by the skin of my teeth. My worst scenario involved a hutch. Yes, it is that stupid of a story.

A fellow Airman and I were ordered to move an extremely heavy hutch for some <expletive> of a GS-15. This fat <expletive> <expletive> didn't like the <expletive> feng shui in her office or some <expletive> nonsense. Our captain still ordered us to move the piece of <expletive> after we had informed him that it was CLEARLY too heavy.

So the predictable happens and it comes crashing to the ground. The crown molding at the top clips me next to my eye (and hits the bone of the socket) and drags neatly down my face. The laceration extended down to my trachea, but didn't injure the trachea. Small streams of blood are squirting from me neck. Carotid was nicked. After the initial twenty seconds of blinding pain my senses come back to me. Then I vomit in a trash can and feel myself going lightheaded.

Doctor informed me that I had a concussion, nicked Carotid Artery, and would be visibly scarred for the rest of my life. I don't remember surgery. Also, I was very lucky not to lose my eye. I received 12 stitches. (some sections of the laceration were deeper than others) and looked like Frankenstein for two months of my first term. I still can feel corded tissue over my neck to this day.

A large piece of wooden furniture...That was my close call.

At least yours had a cool chemistry angle to it, man.
 

TreManor

New member
So what happened to the stupid arse Capt. over that bit?

I have teh utmost respect fro our Military and those who serve in it, but in my, albeit VERY limited experience, SOME Officers seem to forget that their rank does NOT influence certain aspects of reality.
 

IdofEntity

New member
Nothing happened to the Captain that I know of. I know the Colonel had a few discussions with that Captain, but the disciplining of officers is almost never disclosed to the enlisted.

It didn't negatively impact his career, or at least not much. He's a Major now and the way I hear it he's moving to Elmendorf for a fairly posh assignment. He's not a bad guy, and he learned from that incident. There's no ill will towards him.

That GS-15 though... Let's just say I look forward to the day when Virgil guides me through the Inferno and I am entreated to the sight of her corpulent corpse being eviscerated by the maws of Cerberus.
 

Einion

New member
funnymouth said:
ironically i tuned pink in the face - cyanide poisoning suffocates you at the cellular level, so the oxygen in your blood cant be delivered to your cells and you turn flushed.
Yep, I meant euphemistically of course :smile:

funnymouth said:
i should be OK in the long term; the body can metabolize low doses, and at that point its symptoms are similar to oxygen dep.
:good:


IdofEntity said:
A large piece of wooden furniture...That was my close call.
Could have been worse: blue ice!

Einion
 

freakinacage

Well-known member
blooming eck some good stories here. i have had a multiple, bilateral pneumothoraces (collapsed lung), but they weren't too bad, although they did hurt
 

CreganTur

Member
I was climbing the tower at scout camp while the other counselors were training a new kid how to bellay. I was 40 - 50 ft up. I jumped for a hold, missed, and fell the whole way. The new kid never caught me. Luckly, the ground was 6ft deep of compacted wood chips, so it absorbed all of the momentum- that and line drag slowed me a bit too. As soon as I got to my feet, I ran at the kid. One of the guys quickly grabbed the rope I was still attached to and pulled me in so I couldn't reach him.
 

evil tendencies

Cake or Death?
There was the time my partner and I pulled a drunk driver out of her car as it was moving, before she drove out a driveway into four lanes of 45 MPH traffic. He reached in, opened the lock, opened the door and then pulled her out, and then I, being the smart one, jumped into the driver's seat after her and applied the brakes so the oncoming traffic wouldn't be in danger.

The responding sworn officer (did I mention were still civilian officers at the time?) told us that had we been sworn, we would have gotten a commendation, but since we weren't sworn we had better not talk about it in front of a supervisor. The guys on shift did buy us lunch, however, so that was nice.

I have a million of these stories as a cadet, and mostly because this one partner of mine had this "thing" about running towards things other people ran from. Unsurprisingly, he got the medal of honor from our department about a month after being sworn in.
 

CreganTur

Member
I've been inside a body bag before.

Mind you, this doesn't count as a brush with death, but it is slightly related.

I was a big part of my school's drama program, and we were asked to put on a Safe & Sober Prom Night event with the city's EMS. They had someone come in and give us special effects makeup for different injuries and teach us what symptoms to pretend. I was lucky- DOA with a broken neck, so I just had to play dead the whole time.

They brought in some wrecked cars (that had been cleaned of biological matter, thankfully) and we all got it them. Once we had our places, the school was brought down to watch. They did a whole big production, from a bystander calling in the wreck to 911 (funny story I'll tell in a bit), to having EMS arrive and begin actual response. I was pulled out of the window of the car I was 'driving' and placed into the boby bag. They zipped it up and loaded the gurney into the ambulance, and which point I was allowed to get out of it.

Our local 911 was expecting our call, and the bystander called and gave all the correct information, but the operator at the other end said that the road he gave her didn't exist. For a couple of minutes she argued with him as he repeated the information. Finally he discovered that our 911 call had been hijacked and picked up by 911 in another city 30 minutes away! They transfered us to the correct 911 branch a few seconds later and the production was allowed to begin.
 
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