Near-death experiences

[Amethyst Hunter]

Anyone ever had one, or know someone who has?

Long story short, I'm trying to prepare myself for what might be coming in the next couple of years. My health is...not good. That's all for now.

[Seraph]

Oh jeez, that's not good to hear. <big hugs> I'll keep you in my prayers.

[chrislb]

I have had two of them. The first one happened when I was a kid. I was very badly injured when I was playing with some friends. I came within one to two minutes of bleeding to death.
It hurt at first but then I went numb and sleepy.
The second time I was pretty sick about six years ago. I went into toxic shock and if the ambulance wasn't as fast as it was I would have died before I made it to the hospital.
I remember everything getting cold and fading. Then I came to in the emergency room.
I felt at peace and I dearly wanted to rest but it wasn't my time yet.

[Slayer]

I did, but I was only 5. My adenoids were so enlarged that I very nearly stopped breathing in my sleep. If my Mom hadn't gotten in the habit of checking in on me since she knew I was struggling, I wouldn't be here now. I remember being admitted, the needle in my hand, the stupid annoying plastic bed encasing and water that kept dripping on my forehead. Oh, and getting what felt like ice shoved up my butt when I was discharged (lol). I don't remember much before being admitted; just that my mom held me a lot.

My mom collapsed at the wheel about 8 years ago with my sister and I in the car. She seizured. It was really scary (my dad died the year before). That's how she found out she was diabetic and needed a quadruple bypass. She remembers her stomach cramping and it being hard to breathe. She mostly remembers being panicked more for us than for her. She was awake one second and unconscious the next.

I'm sorry I can't help more with a more detailed typical experience, but forgetting is probably also a good thing. For us, it was so sudden and then, boom, unconcious that it might has been too quick to experience much.

I'm sorry that you're going through some health problems right now. I'll keep you in my thoughts.

[BeenThereDoneThat]

I had severe preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome when I was 24 weeks pregnant with my daughter back in 2004 and I came extremely close to death. An emergency c-section at the last possible moment saved my life, and hers...at least for a week. (sigh) The weird thing is that I had some pain but really didn't feel all that sick...amazing how silent some killers are. (My husband, on the other hand, says he saw death hanging over my head just before the surgery.) It's really all quite surreal now...

[Greenday]

Closest to death I've ever come probably was when I was in the hospital for both appendicitis and colitis...in Afghanistan. The solution was to give me morphine for the pain and IV's for lost fluids thanks to the colitis. They also didn't take my appendix out and just waited to see if the appendicitis would go away on its own. That was also the most painful experience of my life.

[Etna]

Oh dear, that sounds ominous, hope things look better for you! Since you asked I do have a story though.

It happened my senior year of college, fall semester. I had been having TERRIBLE abdominal pain for the last six years and the doctors "just couldn't figure it out." My family has a history of gallbladder problems, important right? Not to these doctors. I had all the crazy tests you could think of. All the scopes, that one in the front hurts like hell, and even the fun camera you swallow and walk around with the box on your hip all day with. Anyways enough back story.

So I am sitting down playing games on my PC, since that is pretty much all I could do as moving was just plain painful, and I pretty much start drooling in pain. Yeah I wish it was as funny as it sounds. So I got down to the dorm front desk and tell them to call me an ambulance, to which they reply "Are you serious?" No of course not, I am just lurching around the front desk asking you to call the ambulance for funsies. So I get taken to the ER and the doctor assigned to me, or whatever you want to call it, gives me some joke remedies that don't do shit. I pretty much had to demand the nurse do something as I was tired of sitting there in agony. It got things done so that was a plus. I got an ultrasound and there is this huge white blob on the screen and the tech is like "You see that? You aren't supposed to see that." Long story short my gallbladder is a brick. Sweet right? I should be angry but I am just relieved that I know what the problem is after SIX FREAKING YEARS. Story has a happy ending now right? Nope, guess again silly!

The doctor tells me that it is definitely my gallbladder giving me problems and that I should look at "having it out in the next couple months." I get like six pain pills and am on my way. Well you can imagine how I was feeling when I was out of pain meds. Mewling in the shower at 2am was fucking fantastic let me tell you. After not being able to stand this anymore I drive myself back to the ER at about 5 in the morning. Guess what? My gallbladder bursts in the ER. There are no words for that pain. NONE. Luckily I was pretty much minutes away for surgery so they could handle it and save my life. I'll skip all the drama afterwards but I made it and my mother drove over to take care of me while I recovered. When I went back to class one of my instructors was like, "You were always in class. I thought you died!" Haha... yeah... so funny...

I am really glad I had to suffer for six years because the doctors wouldn't listen to me though. Also was super swell that the first ER doctor sent me back to my room where I lived alone to die. Just amazing! At least I didn't get a hospital bill I guess.

[Kristev]

One of the things my mother used to tell me was that you don't talk to the doctors when you want something done. Most of the time, you'll be lucky if you ever see one. If you want something resolved, you talk to the nurses. Constantly.

The nurses, she said, are the ones who're around the patients and actually know what's going on. The doctors are off doing other things.

The reason she knows this is that she was a nurse for over twenty years.

[Mishi]

If you want something resolved, you talk to the nurses. Constantly.

QFT. Also, they like gifts and they really do deserve them.

Dad has had a few near-death experiences, normally when he's found someone's faulty wiring. He usually hears someone say in an exasperated tone "You again? I've told you before, you're not finished yet!"
When he was last in the hospital, he told me that he saw Death very gently and kindly taking some of his wardmates for a walk. He said that if he'd seen Death coming towards him, he'd have tried to leap up and give Death a hug because it looked like a friendly, loving, comforting personage.

[Crossbow]

Just once, as far as I know. I had a mild allergy to bee stings as a child. Far worse swelling than would be usual, but nothing more than that. I had benadryl in case I needed it, but the doctor's never went any further than that.
I was home alone from school one day and managed to step on a yellowjacket with my bare feet. I didn't think much of it other than to take a couple benadryl and go take a shower. After getting dressed, I noticed I had hives on my arms. That's when I called my mom at work. By the time she got home and got me into the car, I was in full anaphylactic shock. Luckily the emergency room was less than two minutes away from the house. Apparently the nurse took one look at me as I got there and rushed me into the back for a shot of adrenalin. I was still conscious, but barely. I was blind and my throat had completely seized.
It took about 30 second for the shot to open my throat enough so I could breathe, but about 5 minutes before I could see.
Now, I carry an Epipen...

[Jay 2K Winger]

Not really had any real medical near-death experiences (i.e., some condition or illness) myself...

That said, I did have a pretty dangerous bike accident once when I was a kid. I was living in Columbia, MD at the time, and my Mom took me, my sister, my friend Michael and one of my sister's friends to Lake Elkhorn so we could ride our bikes around it. Over the course of the day, three out of the four of us had an accident. (Ironically, Michael, the only one without a helmet, was the only one who didn't.) My sister fell off a ramp and got some bumps and scrapes. My sister's friend went up too steep a hill and rolled backwards, and also only got bumps and scrapes.

Later on, I was chasing Michael around a bend in the path, just after which was a small bridge over a creek leading into the lake. I took the bend too fast and went straight off the bridge (which didn't have railings). My bike caught in a small tree, and I went head-first over the handlebars and head-first into the creek.

My bike helmet saved my life, since I hit a rock. I got up, struggling to breathe (as the strap on my helmet had tightened), unable to move my left arm. My mom took me home, washed the lake water off me, put me in clean clothes, and took me to the hospital. I'd gotten a cut on my shoulder, so I got a tetanus shot and an X-ray.

Turned out I hadn't broken or separated anything, but only just. They had me keep my arm in a sling for a week, and by the end of the week, while I was sore, I had full mobility.

All I had to do, however, was look at that helmet, with the noticeable dent in the top, and know how close I came...

[Flood]

Twice I've nearly drowned.

Once when I was around 7 or 8 I was at a water park with my best friend's family. I was basically taking a nap on an inner-tube in one of those endless river pools. My best friend's sister thought it would be funny to flip my tube. Have you ever been startled awake and the first thing you do is take a quick deep breath? Well I did that and got a lungful of water. I remember everything getting quiet like the sound was turned off and I was just watching myself struggle. Next thing I know I'm on my back beside the pool coughing up water and the lifeguard is breathing in my mouth.

The second time was a couple years later when I was taking swimming lessons. I had learned to back-float but was still prone to panicking whenever my face was underwater. The instructor had me doing laps back and forth in the shallow end. After banging my head against the side a couple times, I got into the habit of stopping periodically to stand and see how much farther I had to go. After a point, I apparently drifted into the deep end. The water was only a few inches over my head, so I was able to kick myself up and take a breath, but every time I did, I got pushed more into the deep end. After about 30 seconds of kicking up from the bottom and barely taking a breath before submerging again, I tried calling for help. Turns out I can't yell "help" and breathe in at the same time and I blacked out.

It turns out the instructor was distracted by conversation with another student and when I managed my weak little "help", she glanced over and thought I was a different kid that was prone to pretending he was drowning because he thought it was funny. Nobody actually went to rescue me until I stopped struggling.

I never went back to swimming lessons. My girlfriend only just recently taught me to tread water, but even that feels like I'm fighting for my life every second. She just has a way of keeping me from going into full panic mode.

[Food Lady]

One of the things my mother used to tell me was that you don't talk to the doctors when you want something done. Most of the time, you'll be lucky if you ever see one. If you want something resolved, you talk to the nurses. Constantly. The nurses, she said, are the ones who're around the patients and actually know what's going on. The doctors are off doing other things. The reason she knows this is that she was a nurse for over twenty years.

I've learned this recently. My doc's main nurse is awesome. If I have any issues with my meds, she helps me out. So do the nurses on the prescription line. My doc is great, but so busy.

I have 2 stories. 1) When I was 6 and my brother a squirrelly toddler, my mom sold Avon. We lived in a very hilly semi-desert town with empty riverbeds and big ditches and canyons. She had a customer in a neighborhood above one of those steep ditches. She put the car in park with the engine on, just for a second, to run an order in. My brother--who didn't have to be strapped in 'cause we were grandfathered out of the seatbelt law--climbed into the front seat. Yeah, he's been trying to drive since he was 2. He released the parking brake and down we rolled, headed for a crash. I freaked and jumped out the car, which saved us because the door caught on a huge boulder and stopped the car. I'm pretty sure Mom peed her pants!

Another time my friends and I were robbed at gunpoint in a parking lot. We had no $, save my $50, which ticked them off. I don't know why they didn't shoot. I had the gun pointed at my head, as I was the only one with anything more than coin change.

[Dilorenzo]

Hope things don't end up being that serious for you - fingers crossed.

Only near death experience was when I nearly skied off a mountain. That was fun!

(Just screwed up my knee for life instead, of course)

[morgana]

If you're (OP) talking about the stereotypical "walking into the light" near-death experience . . .

Well, yeah, I have, actually. Keep in mind, the only parts of this story I remember first hand are the ones in italics.

When I was three my parents took me with them on a week-long trip to stay with relatives on the other side of the state from where we lived. About a six-hour drive. The morning we were scheduled to start home, I woke up with a fever. Mom took me to a local doctor and was told, yeah, she's sick, but she's fine to travel, just take her to your pediatrician when you get home.

Yeah. No.

Halfway across the state, nowhere near home, the fever's so high Mom has me packed in ice. Literally, stick the kid in the cooler and watch the water roll off my skin. (I don't think Mom was exaggerating about it; she almost never told this story and she always cried when she did. Dad's only comment, ever, was "Don't ever scare us like that again, K?") Dad's considerably over the speed limit, trying to get someplace with a doctor.

Outside of the only major town in 300 miles, I started to talk to the Virgin Mary. Because I could see her; she had come to take me home.

As my dad tells it, he heard that and almost wrecked the car. He flagged down a motorcyclist, not a policeman, just some random dude riding around on his Harley, and the man led them through town to the hospital at speeds that had Mom wondering if I was going to die of the fever or the crash.

I'm told I was clinically dead when they got there. No pulse, nothing. But I could see my parents, and I was wondering why they were crying. And who was that little girl? And why wouldn't Mom pay attention to me?

I asked the pretty lady, and she asked me if I wanted to stay with them. And when I said yes, she kissed me on the forehead and told me to be good to them because they loved me.

I woke up in the hospital three days later. My kidneys had failed. I have a couple of sort-of memories of the rest of the hospital stay; a girl smaller than me who had pulled a pan of boiling water onto herself, a black nurse (I didn't know people had skins that color), but they're very dim.

ETA: I've told myself most of my life that it was just the fever talking, so why am I crying?