What's the closest you have been to death?

69FACUPfinal said:
I nearly drowned on my honeymoon, mid 80s. The sea had been calm, we were swimming suddenly a storm blew up, tremendous waves. Neither of us strong swimmers, I told hub to leave me. I lay on my back as waves engulfed, remember thinking how sad to go on honeymoon, I'm only 26. The gods were smiling on me, sea and beach quiet, but a German guy swam over to me dragged me onto his back and with me clinging to him swam the quarter mile back to shore. I never did find out his name. I won't hear a word said against Germans, even though they did bomb our chippy during the war ( see Stan Boardman Fokker Wolf joke). I have never been in the sea since.

My son was born 9 months to the day after the incident.
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You slept with him and didn't even get his name?
 
driving back after a long weekend in Jockland in the middle of february, 4 of us in the car, pitch black and everyone is asleep. Coming over Shap it was like hyperspace in star trek, just white lines of snowflakes. Must have gone into some sort of trance and only came out of it when I saw a van skidding in front of me, looked down and was doing over 100mph
 
So many occasions when I was a kid. Climbing rockfaces and trees. Walking on cracking lake ice. Climbing on top of a 2 storey building and running along the parapet wall.
Climbing up disused power station structures at seriously high levels.
Climbing up inside a ventilation tower at a reservoir.
Entering seriously decaying old buildings

Then we hit my teens.... fuck me!!... it's a miracle I'm here to type this.
 
Bit of a long story, sorry, but for those who are interested…

When I was 14 I had a life altering major surgery. Very complicated so won’t go into the detail. The surgery was long, took about 12 hours and eventually they were done and rolled me back out to the ward.

They said being stable in the first few days would be crucial, so no news is good news. Unfortunately it wasn’t ‘no news’. After a couple of days of soreness, I started inflating like a balloon, I was retching and throwing up bile. I wasn’t able to eat at all during this time. They put me on emergency intravenous nutrition. The surgeon came and checked me over and said basically something had gone wrong and I needed to go back in for another bout of surgery.

So I went back in. Another gruelling 8 hours of surgery later, I’m out again. Thinking maybe now I’m out of the woods. But no… within a couple of days I was starting to have problems again, more retching, more pain. Unbearable pain at this point. The doctors are hoping it will settle down. It doesn’t. They send me off for more testing. By this time, we’re about 10 days in and my weight is plummeting. I was skinny before but now I look skeletal.

I will never forget the look on the surgeon’s face when he came back into the room after getting my test results - it wasn’t good. He basically said to me “this is our last shot, you’ve had so much surgery, lost so much weight, there’s huge risk here and if it doesn’t work this time it’s not clear that there’s anything we can do”. I can see he’s holding back tears. My mum is in bits. I’m just in a place where if I have to die I might be fine with it if it stops the pain because I’m delirious. No food, no proper sleep, constant vomiting, incredible pain for well over a week.

They wheeled me back in and I’m thinking “this might be the last time I see my mum and dad” but I couldn’t even cry, I was just so broken.

They did the surgery. Through the grace of whatever power there may be in the universe, it went well. I woke up. First thought “I’m alive.” Immediate second thought “Ouch.” I’ve had 28 hours of surgery, three huge scars in my abdomen, I can feel my bones against the bed. I couldn’t eat for another 19 days after that. For a whole month I went nil by mouth. I’m gradually coming back to reality, the pain subsides but very slowly and at this point I’ve had so much morphine it’s giving me muscle cramps. Eventually I can eat again and all I can manage is two spoons of cornflakes and a cup of water.

It took me two years to physically recover and get back to a stable weight but I’m always underweight still to this day. Mentally I never really have recovered, those kinds of experiences change you fundamentally as a person. And at 14 I was still resilient enough to deal with it, but as I got older I realised how much trauma I was carrying through life. I’m incredibly lucky I have such a brilliant family who were there for me every step, especially my mum who suffered everything with me by my bedside.

Cherish every day, blues.
 
BlueHammer85 said:
Got lost on top of the Brecon Beacons - team of us got lost. the weather changed in a instant, couldn't see a thing, rain, freezing cold, clouds made it so dark to see - i slipped and nearly went down a sheer drop which would have killed me - we somehow made it back down and back to the cars - everyone was totally numb and in shock, no one spoke for hours.
Click to expand...

Southern shandy drinking nancies :)
 
SkyBlueFlux said:
Bit of a long story, sorry, but for those who are interested…

When I was 14 I had a life altering major surgery. Very complicated so won’t go into the detail. The surgery was long, took about 12 hours and eventually they were done and rolled me back out to the ward.

They said being stable in the first few days would be crucial, so no news is good news. Unfortunately it wasn’t ‘no news’. After a couple of days of soreness, I started inflating like a balloon, I was retching and throwing up bile. I wasn’t able to eat at all during this time. They put me on emergency intravenous nutrition. The surgeon came and checked me over and said basically something had gone wrong and I needed to go back in for another bout of surgery.

So I went back in. Another gruelling 8 hours of surgery later, I’m out again. Thinking maybe now I’m out of the woods. But no… within a couple of days I was starting to have problems again, more retching, more pain. Unbearable pain at this point. The doctors are hoping it will settle down. It doesn’t. They send me off for more testing. By this time, we’re about 10 days in and my weight is plummeting. I was skinny before but now I look skeletal.

I will never forget the look on the surgeon’s face when he came back into the room after getting my test results - it wasn’t good. He basically said to me “this is our last shot, you’ve had so much surgery, lost so much weight, there’s huge risk here and if it doesn’t work this time it’s not clear that there’s anything we can do”. I can see he’s holding back tears. My mum is in bits. I’m just in a place where if I have to die I might be fine with it if it stops the pain because I’m delirious. No food, no proper sleep, constant vomiting, incredible pain for well over a week.

They wheeled me back in and I’m thinking “this might be the last time I see my mum and dad” but I couldn’t even cry, I was just so broken.

They did the surgery. Through the grace of whatever power there may be in the universe, it went well. I woke up. First thought “I’m alive.” Immediate second thought “Ouch.” I’ve had 28 hours of surgery, three huge scars in my abdomen, I can feel my bones against the bed. I couldn’t eat for another 19 days after that. For a whole month I went nil by mouth. I’m gradually coming back to reality, the pain subsides but very slowly and at this point I’ve had so much morphine it’s giving me muscle cramps. Eventually I can eat again and all I can manage is two spoons of cornflakes and a cup of water.

It took me two years to physically recover and get back to a stable weight but I’m always underweight still to this day. Mentally I never really have recovered, those kinds of experiences change you fundamentally as a person. And at 14 I was still resilient enough to deal with it, but as I got older I realised how much trauma I was carrying through life. I’m incredibly lucky I have such a brilliant family who were there for me every step, especially my mum who suffered everything with me by my bedside.

Cherish every day, blues.
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Jesus fucking Christ, sound like a horror story mate. Hopefully you will be telling that story in decades time and well done you for surviving that shit storm.
 
A few years ago we were taking a scaffold down, my mate had just climbed to the top ,when he shouted to warn me a five foot pole was on its way down it just missed my head ,I was lucky that day someone had removed part of the handrail and left it loose on the top board's
 
25/05/1982. 18 year old radar operator in the operations room aboard HMS Coventry. Attacked by Argentine A4 Skyhawks. 3 500 pound bombs entered the ship. 2 very close to my position. 1 exploded beneath the Ops room destroying it causing fire to engulf it. The second bomb failed to explode. If it had, good night me. 19 of the ships company killed in the attack. Ship sank within 40 mins.
Photos of the attack taken from the ship with us.
IMG_0986.jpegIMG_0990.jpegIMG_0982.jpeg
 
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