Times when you almost got killed or injured

[Catfish Alley]

Only really had one. Car crash in 2014 when a car flew off the other side of a raised highway. Smashed into me head-on, airborne and inverted. Snapped steering wheel with my chest and broke sternum and 15-16 ribs. Pedals flew up and broke my ankle and seatbelt broke my collar-bone. Car was a cube. Was just happy I was driving my old solid SUV. If it was my sedan I would have been decapitated. Was lucky to walk away with broken bones. Passenger of other car died and driver was paralyzed with some brain damage.

Nowhere near as close but I recently realized to take it easy in the surf. I grew up at the beach but am clearly out of practice. Visited Australia in November and was very close to calling out for help. Scary feeling. Had to push myself to get back to shore.

 

[troybe]

Had meningitis when I was maybe 2 years old, had to have a blood transfusion. Can still see the scars on the inside of my ankles.

 

[conrad_437]

Dad let me go paragliding in India when I was 9. Two failed take offs ensured, the final try finally got me airborne.

Nothing life-threating about the actual experience, all went relatively smoothly. But the next day, in the paper was a headline loosely reading 'Instructor killed, German tourist severely injured in paragliding accident'. The incident had occurred in the same state of India and the operational resemblences were practically identical - that being 18-year-old Indian kids with a chute and little regulations and safety checks.

Dad's family street cred took a hit with that one. Not with me though. I loved it!

But yeah, doesn't take a genius to figure out how many ways that could've gone wrong.

 

[Caesar]

When I was 15 I rolled and got stuck underwater while white-water kayaking - in reality I probably wasn't underwater for more than a handful of seconds but when you're trapped and unable to breathe it feels like an eternity, and sticks with you

Similarly in my early 20s I was racing a small 3-man keelboat on Sydney Harbour that was in a collision with a 60-footer. Our boat was split in half and sunk, we were all dragged down with it for a few seconds - not nice. One guy got keelhauled - came up covered in red and we all thought he was bleeding to death until we realised it was the red antifouling off the big boat's hull.

Late 20s I was in a head-on collision with another car. Guy just drifted across into my lane and smashed into me. Was late at night on a section of road that was being redone, where they had painted and repainted the lines many times. It was raining really heavily and because of the reflection off the blacking paint it was really hard to see where the current lines were. Lucky we were both doing under 50 because of the rain - otherwise I probably wouldn't be here.

Last one is probably the one that messed me around the most, wouldn't say I was traumatised per se but these days I deeply dislike driving and will avoid it wherever practical.

 

[Billy ray]

a mate and i, not best swimmers, got caught in a rip at perth's city beach when we were about 19-20. oin a weekday, beach was fairly quiet.
we drifted way out and were tiring badly and basically said to eachother, we're ****ed, we're gonna die here
and then out of nowhere this guy was just there and kept us floating while we caught our breath and swam us in.

 

[mr bagcroft]

I went to a party in the nether regions of Fiji with a hooker from the hotel (no...I didn't do her)...
Where there was burnt out cars being used as bonfires and no other white people, drunk off my nut.
Probably should have been killed, I am sure there was some sort of mistake.

 

[Plugger35]

a mate and i, not best swimmers, got caught in a rip at perth's city beach when we were about 19-20. oin a weekday, beach was fairly quiet.
we drifted way out and were tiring badly and basically said to eachother, we're ****ed, we're gonna die here
and then out of nowhere this guy was just there and kept us floating while we caught our breath and swam us in.

I got caught in a rip there once but luckily I was close enough to the shore to get my feet on to the ground and drag myself out of it but a few other people near me got swept out to sea by it and had to be rescued by lifesavers. It's scary how quickly that rips can get hold of you without any warning.

 

[Saint]

Drunk in Nairobi after curfew, carrying alcohol, pushing through 6 corrupt cops armed with AK47s

Almost lost it on a sharp corner on Death Road in Bolivia

Close call in a rip in Anglesea as a kid. I remember fighting the waves for ages while I was underwater, then I stopped fighting it and everything became absolutely peaceful and still, even with the crazy wave action. It was surreal. Next thing I knew I was spluttering on the beach.

A guy on our death road trip hit the inside cliff and severed an arm artery. Went pale really quick and they were pretty chilled about getting him to a hospital. He had chosen not to wear the elbow pads. when he asked the guide if he had to wear them, the guide said "I'm not your mother".

I woke up in a hospital in Argentina after a night out. Had a good broken spanglish convo with the doctor, me asking him if I'd been drugged, him asking me if I'd taken drugs (I hadn't knowingly taken any), on and on for about half an hour. I was good while on the drip, but an hour after I left the hospital, i was pretty cactus again.

Also had the corrupt cops with AK-47's experiences across Africa, but I was always more worried about how much it was gonna cost, rather than guns being fired, so never feared for my safety.

I went to a party in the nether regions of Fiji with a hooker from the hotel (no...I didn't do her)...
Where there was burnt out cars being used as bonfires and no other white people, drunk off my nut.
Probably should have been killed, I am sure there was some sort of mistake.

Me and some friends were at a wild bar in Fiji and a Fijian who lived in NSW came and told us that he was leaving soon because it was about to get wild and that if we knew what was good for us, we should leave too because we'd become targets.

I spent weeks in a hospital in my childhood with a lung infection, I just remember how painful it was to breathe. RCH turned me away, never forgiven them. Hearing people wheeze still triggers that memory