Close calls that nearly killed you

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So, how many have had really close scrapes with death, or close calls that could have ended lethally?

I had one when I was about 8 years old.

I just loved my mother’s spaghetti sauce. She always put mushrooms in it, and they were delicious.

One day, I was playing in our lower yard, when I saw these whitish mushrooms growing at the base of our barn. I remember saying aloud, “Oh boy! Mushrooms!”, and I rushed over to pick one. Right at that moment, our dad appeared from out of nowhere, just as I was reaching down for one. He told me to leave them alone, that they were toadstools, and were poisonous. He asked me if I had eaten any, and I hadn’t even touched one, yet. I think he still made me wash my hands, just in case. If he hadn’t appeared right then and there, I wouldn’t be sitting here today, posting this.

Another close call came back in 1968, when I contracted the Hong Kong Flu. I was sick for eight solid days, and during that time, I had a splitting headache that wouldn’t go away, fever and chills, and delirium. I recall one night I had to get out of bed to use the restroom, turned on the light, and the whole room started spinning violently. My sister had to guide me to the bathroom, because I couldn’t stand up. The doctor diagnosed me with Hong Kong, and said I just had to wait it out. He couldn’t (wouldn’t) give me anything to ease the headache. I survived that one, but it was close. It must have really bolstered my immune system, because I’ve never caught any form of the flu since, and I’ve never had a flu shot.

So, what were some of your close calls?
 
When I was 7 years old, I came down with a very severe case of the measles. My mother told me that I almost died and how frightened my family was. It was awful and even now, after all these years, I still remember how sick I felt. One thing I recall was sitting in my little rocking chair, rocking and crying as I held onto a stuffed toy. The measles covered every inch of my body and the itching was so bad I couldn’t wear clothes. This was back in the 1950s before there was a measles vaccine and I don’t recall what, if any, medicines I took. There wasn’t much that could be done.

Other than that, there were 2 close calls when driving, both times involving brakes not working.
 
JanR said:
Oh boy! Mushrooms
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When I see this, it makes me very glad I never liked mushrooms as a child (I oddly like them now), but the positive side about that is, I had no desire to eat the ones that might kill me.
 
Feb. 18 th 1969. I was 16 and there was a school bus strike so a friend offered to give me a ride home. She was speeding on a country road, she lost control and the car hit three trees before coming to a rest. This was before cars had seatbelts so we had none…which in this case was a good thing. The dashboard collapsed into the front seats and would have crushed our chests. Instead, we were both thrown out the passenger door…my side…and I landed in the ditch with a second knee. I broke my femur and had contusions, bruises and dirt and leaves all over me…but I lived. The fracture was a spiral complex fracture…yes, I’ve seen my leg bone! I limp still as it rotated during healing.

The driver was in a coma for 47 days and mostly recovered. She had some memory loss and major scarring on her face but she, too, lived. Needless to say, I remember the day very well!
 
I used to be an electrical engineer. Every electrical engineer has a “shock story” to share with other electrical engineers. My “shock story” is that I managed to shock myself twice in one swell day on both 240 v 3-phase aircraft power and 120 V wall power. I shocked myself on the 3 phase, shook my head and said what a stupid idiot I was and I must be more careful, and then within the hour forgot to unplug a switch box before I stuck a screwdriver in again and zapped myself on the 120 V. I’ve also fallen down the stairs twice (once as a child and landed on my face, once as an adult and landed fortunately on my posterior which was permanently dented but no other damage), fell off a ladder (managed to sustain no damage somehow, I just landed softly), almost accidentally hung myself in college, and spun my car out on ice at least once. It’s only through the grace of God that I persist on the planet, I reckon.
 
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I had spinal meningitis when I was two years old. I’m told I was in a coma and hospitalized for three weeks.
A few years later I was eating some not so crisp bacon and it got caught in my throat. My parents weren’t around, but somehow I managed to grab it with my fingers and pull it out.
In the Air Force there were a few close calls, but I survived.
 
I just mentioned in another thread being bitten by a recluse spider and not noticing–likely would have been fatal if not on my finger (not as much. circulation)

I drove my 64 bug extensively one Christmas vacation (maybe mine was broken?), and it didn’t have a seatbelt, as he’d had to remove it to remove the seat to work on it.

A couple of weeks later, it was fortunately back in, when he was forced off the road by a drunk driver. I believe he still has no feeling in his chin from shattering the windshield, and his ribs did as much damage to the steering heel as it did to them.

And about two weeks later, a friend, who was a very tiny thing, driving massive Mercury Monarch (about as big a vehicle as Ford ever made), was slammed into, totally the land yacht. She was thrown up towards the windshield (through which she easily would have fit)–and was pulled back down by the seatbelt which she had just started wearing after what could fairly be described as “bullying” from me . . .

And come to think of it, as a kid, my partner on Safety Patrol hollered for me to run–as a car ran through the intersection that would have run me down from behind (the car was on the wrong side of the street, I suppose after swerving around him . . ). [a few years later, the lady a few houses down would have a bad accident when t-boned at that exact spot, and they put in a stop sign)

I learned that brakes overheat the hard way barreling down a winding mountain road with four adults in my bug . . .

hmm, just what am I doing alive? I came home from being born on my mother’s lap (in my father’s bug from above), never had a car seat, drank tap water, rode the neighborhood and all the way to the library alone on my bicycle, caught my knee in a county faire display between fence pickets,

Hmm, then there’s jumping off a high platform into chlorinated water with full-on bronchitis during my naval misadventure (I started hacking underwater and got fished out), the transmission connecter on an overloaded monster uhaul with the biggest trailer as I crested the summit of the rockies, leading to. white-knuckle flight torn between not daring to use up more brake, and not daring to not reduce speed . . .

(all in all, barreling down at 75+MPH round curves in that rig is probably the scariest of the lot . . .)
 
Working on railroad tracks in a tunnel entering lower Manhattan, the track was supposed to be out of service but someone in the signal tower messed up and sent a locomotive down the tunnel right at us. We saw it and had 15 seconds or so to hide in a cubby hole in the wall before the train reached us. We made it. Thank God.

In the Army in 1969 in Fort Jackson SC there was an upper respiratory infection flying through the ranks. I almost passed out and had a fever of 105. They got me to the army hospital and it had row upon row of patients. Never found out what it was other than a URI, or if anyone died from it.

As I was about to be shipped to Vietnam as a grunt later in 1969, I was put on hold in SC because someone had stolen a package of mine in the army Post Office. That delay resulted in my doing some work in an office on base and they liked me so they made me a clerk and changed my official job title, or MOS from grunt to clerk. I’m sure I had an angel on my shoulder for that one too.
 
I used to work with a former lawyer shows office in one of the smaller towers was destroyed on 9/11 while he was out at a deposition.

(yes, it’s why he left the law)
 
As I understand it, the coffee pot incident at 20 months wasn’t life threatening, although I spent 9 days in the ICU. But appliances now have those annoying short cords these days . . . [The cord to a percolating part was hanging over the edge of the counter . . . my parents didn’t sue; they felt like idiots for leaving it where I could reach it!]
 
Yeah, my friends include one person whose subway was underground one stop from WTC when it all went down, one person who was supervising workers in WTC7 and got out just in the nick of time (they were trying to help a couple of their workers out of the building who were not in great physical shape and took a long time), and one person who got stuck on the upper floors in one of the two financial firms that were decimated and he died.

And one lawyer who was working in the building right across the street from the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City who was blown out of his chair across the room when the Murrah Building blew. It definitely affected him.

On 9/11, I myself had just arrived at work a couple blocks from the Capitol when the first plane hit. About a half hour later they closed my office and I and about a thousand other people had to walk back past the Capitol to the train station to try to get out of there. If those brave folks on Flight 93 hadn’t managed to crash their plane at Somerset PA, I could have ended up in a right mess.
 
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Those folks aboard Fight 93 are all heroes, every one of them, heroes and heroines.
 
They changed the world, and pretty much ended hijacking as a practical act.

Prior to that day, we were outright taught to cooperate with hijackers, as it just meant landing somewhere inconvenient, and generally no-one even got hurt (but I recall a case or two where they accidentally shot a hostage).

Learning of the first three flights changed the nature of the game; things would no longer come out well from cooperating.

And in its aftermath, the next round of hijackers could generally expect the same response.

In an odd twist, this prevents similar events: the 9/11 hijackings are only possible because of a an extremely organized planner, who could accurately project the entire scenario. Knowledge of the events of that day prevents such planning, and any entity that could plan an event like that one, would not (but would try something else instead).
 
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