NEAR DEATH - Heres my tale, whats yours?

[Iplayragstoo]

The year was 1987. I was a 20 year old college student off for the summer. I needed a summer job to stock up on party money for my next year at the great Western Illinois University. I was no longer playing football, so I didn’t have to go back early to make the start of practice, so I wanted to make as much cash as possible. I saw an ad for a place a few blocks away from my house that I could bike too. It was a Monday through Thursday gig working 10hrs a day, and having Fridays as voluntary (not really) 8 hr OT days. The pay was 12$ hr which was good for a college kid back then. The job itself was a very crappy gig working in a non air conditioned factory for a company called Lovejoy

http://www.lovejoy-inc.com/

They make coupling parts for engines. The factory itself was a hugh hotbox where 10 hrs was like 6 hrs in a sauna. The lunch room was air conditioned, and had a pool table, so that was kinda cool. I worked in the wash tank area. My job was to take the parts that they created, and clean off the metal shavings and rust proof them. I had to take each part, put it onto a large rack, and the hydraulic lift would then take the rack and run it through a series of large (1500 gallon) wash tanks. The first one was hot soapy water, the second hot water to rinse, the third to rust proof the part, and the last one to darken/stain the parts. Why they needed to be stained, I have no idea. The whole process took about an hour after I loaded them onto the rack, and was automated.

Ever once and awhile a part would fall off the rack, and sit at the bottom of one of the wash tanks. When this happened we had a 10lb magnet attached to a long pole, and would need to “fish out” the part from the bottom of the tank. The tanks themselves were surrounded by a retaining wall that was about a foot tall, and about 6 inches wide. They needed theses because the tanks can over flow.

One day I was working at my station, and everything seemed to be going wrong at once. First the hydraulic lift wasn’t working correctly, the wash tanks had over flowed, and a couple of parts had fallen into the bottom of the first tank. So the maintence guy was working on the lift, and I went to fish out the parts. As I was standing in the overflow water from one of the tanks fishing out the part, the cable (50K volts) was sitting on a 55 gallon drum next to the wash tanks. Of course the line is turned off, so it’s no big deal, but looking at the exposed wiring made me a little nervous. Some one had come by and set down a metal pan on the drum with the cable resting on it, and the cable jostled loose, and fell towards me and the water I was standing it. It hit the 6 inch wide retaining wall, made a loud crackle, and sparks flew. It then shot out ward towards the way it fell from, and hit the side of the 55 gallon drum creating a bigger crackle, and more sparks. It then fell to the ground. It all happened so fast that I didn’t have anytime to react, and was just dumbfounded. The [censored] moron maintence guy had never shut the power off.

I ended up going into the management offices, and screaming up a storm. They acted concerned at first, but never did anything to the guy, and I never even got a “sorry” from the guy. I did make some good cash that summer, but I also almost didn’t live long enough to enjoy it.
So, post your near death experiences, and I don’t mean, “ I almost got caught bluffing at the river”, or any other crap…..

[FortFun]

When I was around four years old I was swimming in my uncle's pond with a bunch of my much older cousins. I was in an inner tube, even though I could swim a little. We were out in the middle of the pond where there was a floating dock that they were rocking up and down. Somehow I got sucked underneath it. Since I was in my inner tube I was stuck up against the bottom of the dock under water and I could not get out. After what seemed like an eternity one of them saw me and pulled me out. I feel very lucky to be here today.

[Howard Beale]

My ex mother-in-law pointed a .22 auto at my head but decided to shoot the bathroom door instead. No police. I just told her off pretty good.

There was another time I had a guy waving a .45 auto around a bit but I never really felt threatened. The power company guy that was with me, though, he peed his pants.

[KittyKat]

I had asthma when I was a kid, but stopped having problems when I was about 12. Then, when I was 18 I spent an evening in a smokey bar. The next day I was having problems breathing all day, and it kept getting worse and worse.

One of my brothers (they both have had asthma problems thier entire lives) gave me some of his medication that evening, and instead of helping me, it seemed to make me worse.

By then I was gasping for breath. I was taken to the emergency room, and as soon as I walked in the door they had me on a stretcher. According to what I was told later, one of the doctors told my mom he didn't think I was going to make it. I don't really remember the next few hours, just eventually laying down with an IV, and feeling perfectly fine. I haven't had an attack since then, but the sensation of not being able to breathe sends me into pure panic mode.

[KlumsySmurf]

I think this counts...

I ignored obvious signs that something was seriously wrong with me while I was going to college. Blurry vision, terrible headaches, throwing up randomly, having the urge to pee all the time but not really peeing much, tired all the time, etc etc. One night I woke up and could barely breathe. Had to go to the ER and was diagnosed with acute renal disease, doctor said my electrolytes were so out of whack and my blood pressure was so high from all the extra fluids that I was lucky my heart didn't give out (I was 22).

4 years later after being on dyalisis for a year and getting a kidney transplant, I'm doing fine now. Thankfully the fact that I was so young when this happened meant my body could take a lot of abuse without it killing me.

[Lazy Meatball]

I was directly exposed to a rabid dog's saliva at work (animal hospital). I was never in danger healthwise but I still had to undergo a series of shots to get vaccinated. (1 day, 3 days, 7 days, 14 days, and 28 days) I fell it was very irresponsible of my employer not to provide proper warning of this risk.

[Macdaddy Warsaw]

I was on vacation with my family when I was young and we were at a beach. My dad had me on his shoulders and decided it would be funny if he let a wave take me off his shoulders (this would have had to be at least a 7' wave or so to reach that high). I didn't catch my breath and when I found myself disoriented on the beach on all fours, I ran crying to my mom. I don't know how old I was but I was probably like...7 or 8, possibly a bit younger or older.

[joel2006]

I was lying in my bed when I heard the roof of my house give way. I dove out of the bed just as a pallet full of bricks crashd down thru the ceiling. A contractor working on the house next store had piled the bricks on our roof to store them. Had there not've been an attic between the roof and my room I wouldn't be here right now.

[nuggetz87]

one afternoon when i was 7 or 8 years old i was swimming in the ocean at a fairly crowded beach and swam out further than i should have. i was pretty good at swimming, on the little kids' swim team, etc, but i had no chance at getting back to shore on my own.

so my mother, a former lifeguard, but now out-of-shape 35-year old mother of two swam out to help me, and got sucked out by the undercurrent herself. luckily a lifeguard spotted us and two of them came out and pulled us in to shore.

it's probably not as serious as any of these gun-waving athsma attack stories, but it was pretty scary when it happened! [img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img]

[BrunoThePug]

When I was about eight I was boogie-boarding with a friend off the coast of Manhattan Beach, CA. I grew up there and was at the beach every single day and was a very good swimmer. I had taken the "junior guards" program and was used to the ocean and aware of all of the potential hazards.

I started swimming a bit further out than usual, and a little more, and a little more and then I realized that I was really far away from shore and was caught in a riptide. Now I knew I was supposed to swim up or down the beach and then swim back in but I paniced and started having trouble treading water. My head started going under and I was gasping for air, then out of no where some guy who was body boarding grabbed me and pulled me in.

When I was 15 I was driving with some friends to go see Against All Authority. We were very excited and my friend who had only been driving for a few months was trying to find a CD to put in and managed to run a red light. I was in the front passenger seat and remember seeing the red light, looking to my right and seeing a dodge stratus or some similar domestic sedan about 5 feet from me. I remember the look on that lady's face right before she hit us.

The pathfinder launched into the air, rolled over and ended up right-side-up but facing the opposite direction. It was the slowest 3 or 4 seconds of my life. Everything was so loud that it was just silent. It was like some of my senses just shut off, I couldn't hear anything, smell anything or feel anything (I felt like I was floating).

I walked away from that with a couple of scratches and some glass in my hair.