I have not, but I have seen people that are. And that makes your cherish life a little bit more everytime.

Hand gun shot aimed at the head from 2–3 feet (ie one side of a shop counter to other).

Oh hell, yes. I was married to death for six years. You can’t get much closer then that.

I ODed, but I really don’t know how close to death I was, they never told me. When my mom asked why my heart rate was still so high after so many hours the doctor did say “That’s a young heart trying to stay alive.” I don’t really know.

When I was about 9 or 10 I was at a birthday party at the beach. I got caught in a huge wave. It sucked me under water and tumbled me around. I remember I could only hear weird gurgling noises. I kept thinking to myself I’m going to die, I’m going to die. This is it. I made it out, obviously, but I was shaking like crazy and didn’t go back in the water for the rest of the day. I never told anyone, either.

I’m from Northern California, so we aren’t really supposed to swim in our ocean

Right when I was born (well, ripped from my mother via a caesarian section), I came down with a disease. I was given a 1 in 3 chance to survive the next 24 hours. The doctor did some tests, but they weren’t going to come back from the lab in time for treatment to be effective. The doctor decided to take it into his own hands and started me on the treatment for the disease he believed it was. Sure enough, he was correct, and I was saved. If the doctor had waited for the lab results, or had misdiagnosed me, I would have been dead.

My mother only told this to me when I was much much older, so it never really had a concious effect in my life. However, I do look back on it as proof that sometimes even the most minuscule odds happen. Actually, that point is more appropriate when I note that my mother was on the pill when she conceived me (she had taken antibiotics without the knowledge that they cancel out the pill). I do not see both events as being some sort of “sign” that this was my time to exist, but I do get a chuckle out of how I managed to exist despite all these events :)

At least twice (not even mentioning near misses with motorbikes and cars).

I once fell off a balcony when I was a kid. Broke a finger. I was sure I was going to die, and when I found myself in the garden downstairs my first thought was “what a cliche! Heaven is actually full of plants?” I was pretty disappointed. Though it was quite good to find out that I was not really dead after all.

The second was quite recently when we hit a wall at 180km/h. Luckily we all walked out unscathed. I was very calm about it throughout, and it was just one event in a series of many around that time. It helped me put everything (that followed) into perspective, and realise how things could have been much worse. I don’t even want to think of the possibilities…

I had a heart attack last year. As I was being run down the hallway, the surgeon yelled over his shoulder to call my kids because I was dying. As I laid there being prepped, I became very emotional. I wasn’t done living yet! My kids were 21 and 23, and I wasn’t ready to give up and leave them.

My outlook on life has changed. I don’t allow stress to weigh me down. I laugh more, love more, and try to encourage and appreciate everyone I come in contact with. Life is so precious, and it can be taken away in an instant.

I also do just as my doctor advises. When friends try to get me to eat junk foods that I don’t allow myself “just this once”, I have no trouble holding my ground. They weren’t there, facing the possibility of their last moments on earth. I guess I grew cojones!

@Divalicious Wow, that’s a great story! How you live your life now sounds similar to mine regarding the stress.

During a surgery, I crashed. No heartbeat, nothing. Obviously, they were able to bring me back, but finding out that during the surgery, my heart stopped. That’s scary. My husband said he still can recall their exact words to him and it’s something he’ll never forget.

I’ve had many complications with leukemia. More than once, I’ve been told to that I was on borrowed time. It’s not an easy thing to hear. I just keep proving them wrong. :)

A few years ago I was diagnosed with Celiac disease. However, before they made that diagnosis they tested me for hemophilia (which it wasn’t) and when that test was negative they tested me for lymphoma. I will never forget sitting in a cold doctor’s office at a college, alone, my parents in a different state waiting to hear if I had cancer or not. I didn’t, but that moment is never going to go away for me.

Also…2 years ago my step-dad died of an incredibly rare strain of strep-throat. After he died suddenly and they figured out what killed him they also realized the last people to be near him were me and my little sister. We had to be tested. My girlfriend has a disease that put her on immuno-supressors, if she had come in contact with it, she was screwed. We waited for those lab results together, both of us wondering if we had just contracted the disease that had taken a parent from me. It was terrifying.

I’ve been shot at multiple times, had a knife to my throat more than once, had people threaten to kill me (then try), been in other life or death situations, etc…

As far as I can tell none of it ever really changed me in any way.

Drowned at 6,
Drowned at 20,
Struck by lightning at 25,
Shot at 32,
Stabbed at 44,
Ulcerative colitis at 45.

I’m done dying for a while. As far as how it affected me, I found God, and found the logic to believe.

wow @DrBill that’s intense! lurve for staying alive!

Oh yea, I still avoid the water…

When I was young I had my tonsils out in a doctor’s office. I almost hemorrhaged to death and had to be rushed to the hospital. I was too young to have the experience change my life.

There were more than a few times I have woken up an thought that I was dead and in hell and then just realized that my sleeping partner had not brushed.

@Mr_M I almost bled to death when I had my tonsils out, too! I was 4 years old. I never knew anyone else that had that experience.

At the age of 15 I went into Thyroid Storm, had a lymph node in my neck biopsied for suspicion of Hodgkin’s Disease (cancer… it was benign), and got hit by a car. Rough year, but I was young and felt invincible at that time, so I don’t think it much affected me.

Each of my 3 pregnancies was high risk, and all 3 labors were induced to prevent me from getting sick enough to die. The last time, the doctors finally got me to believe I might die if I had another baby. I have kidney disease, and my father died at 52 while on a transplant list.

I honestly don’t think it’s ever really changed me, exactly, but I’ve been much more conscious of my mortality since I’ve had children.

When I was 4 weeks old, I aspirated milk into my right lung while I was being fed by my mother and started choking to death. One of our neighbors was a nurse and she administered infant CPR to me and saved my life. That’s as close as I’ve ever been to dying in all 42 years of my life. Being that I was so young when this occurred, it probably didn’t change me much at all.

@augustlan I was 11. It was a horrible experience. And when I was put in the hospital, I was on an adult floor, a 4 bed room, with a man who would moan all the time. I have a phobia to general anesthesia because of the experience. I remember the nurse and my mother holding me down and the doctor putting drops of ether on a mask over my face. Then, when I came to, it was off to a hospital in an ambulance. Later that night I bled again, and I remember kicking over the doctor’s tools and he hit me!

I was in the 1st Grade. We went to a pool party and someone took the rope down that designated the deep side from the not-so-deep side. I was not aware of this. Walking along in the water (on my tippy toes of course) i saw that there was no longer a rope there. Not knowing how far i should go, i decided to take a couple more steps. Not a good idea. I stepped down, waaaay down. The water rushed above my head and breathing seemed impossible. It felt like I was in the eye of a hurricane. I was petrified. Some bigger kids came to my rescue and took me to the side of the pool and sat me in a beach chair. I remained there until it was time to go… thank you Lord for saving my life. Nowa days I feel close to death all the time. See, I’m a soldier in Iraq.

-Sellz

@Mr_M Nice doctor, huh?

Sellz just reminded me that a kid purposely tried to drown me in the deep end of the pool when I was about 13 or 14. That is probably the time that I felt closest to dying. I’m still pissed off at that guy!

I almost forgot. In the midst of my tonsillectomy, his nurse comes out to the waiting room, bloody, and tells my mother “There are complications. The doctor has to charge more money”.

I have almost drowned twice, once because of an undertoe current, once in a pool. It made me never learn how to swim.

No, i have not!!!

Well, after reading those, mine seems rather silly. I had a urinary infection 15 years that had gotten to the point where I was peeing blood. The doctor said I needed a certain medicine or it would be curtains for me . So he was put on a very expensive medicine for several weeks which meant I had to stay out of the sun (and it made my urine the most vibrant color orange).

Other than the time I rolled an eight ton truck in the snow and I thought I was going to die when it tipped over, and the time I contemplated suicide with a rifle, that’s about it.

It didn’t change me other than it made me realize how important it is to tell people that you love them. And it changed my opinion of family vs. friends. I was pretty poor when I had that infection, and no one in my family would loan me the $$$ for the prescription, but a friend actually did. The only thing anyone in my family did was tell me to watch some televangelist dipwad, put my hands on the TV screen and pray for God’s intervention. what a fucking crock of shit!

I paid that friend back every dime I borrowed. I saw him today, as I went to the visitation for his wife, who died last Wednesday.