People Are Sharing Their "I Should Have Died But Didn't" Stories, And Some Of Them Are Bone-Chilling
Your entire life can change in the blink of an eye. But it's hard to conceptualize until you've experienced one of these pivotal moments for yourself. Well, Redditor Jamestimes12 asked, "What’s your 'I should’ve died but didn’t' story?" Here's what people said, including stories from people on Quora who have had near-death experiences but lived to tell the tales.
1."I was certain I was going to die. I was swimming with my six-year-old daughter in a community pool a month after having a cardiac ablation. I wanted to surprise her, so I ducked under the surface and swam the length of the pool, but when I popped up, something went horribly wrong. I couldn’t catch my breath, and panic started to set in..."
"... I quickly jumped out of the pool, called my little one over, and told her, 'Daddy needs help. You have to run and find someone to call 911, okay?' I was trying to say it in a calming voice, but inside I was freaking out. I watched her run off, and I closed my eyes. She found a mother and daughter leaving the area and flagged them down.
My wife showed up minutes later, and when the fire department arrived, I just remember the oxygen mask coming down and telling my wife, 'Take care of her.' I woke up five days later in a hospital bed with my entire family around me. Apparently, I suffered two cardiac arrests shortly after arriving at the ER. The first one lasted over 35 minutes, and the second happened when they were doing a CAT scan to determine if the ablation was the source of the problem.
That one lasted another 25 minutes. My poor wife held my hand during the first one and told me, 'Not today.' I did suffer some neurological damage to my brain, but the neurologist assured me that it would heal (which it did). The head ER doc came to see me a few days later, and his eyes were welling up, 'We've brought people back who were out as long as you, but we never see them walking and talking.' It's been over five years, and I'm fully recovered (no medications).
The doctors discussed the case; their best guess was a perfect storm. I was taking beta-blockers, strong antibiotics (pneumonia from the ablation procedure), and Donatol, which was prescribed for some stomach issues I have having. Holding my breath set off respiratory arrest and eventually cardiac arrest. I visit the hospital yearly on the anniversary to thank you."
—Dan
2."I was driving home late at night when a drunk driver ran a red light and T-boned my car. My vehicle flipped multiple times. When it stopped, I was hanging upside down, covered in glass. The paramedics said the seatbelt saved my life."
3."My friends and I were on an aluminum paddle boat in the middle of a lake, a random and fast thunderstorm came on, and suddenly our friend's hair was standing up straight from static electricity. It was a huge lightning storm, and we were essentially in a tin can in the middle of the lake. We all bailed and started to swim back as it started pouring, and someone in a boat saw us rushing and came out to scoop us to safety. It was truly scary shit."
4."When I was about 16 weeks old, I stopped breathing in the middle of the night. My mom had some high-tech baby monitoring devices in my crib. The only reason I’m alive is because one of these things alerted my parents that I wasn’t breathing so they could react quickly enough to save me. Turns out, I have a heart murmur, which is why I stopped breathing as a baby."
5."Years ago, I was in my neighborhood knocking on doors and introducing myself to the neighbors. I was a new realtor trying to get my business going. Toward the end of a four-hour day of door-knocking, I approached a door and rang the bell. Almost immediately, I felt nauseous and knew I was about to pass out. I woke up to the sound of a lady speaking to 911. She was spelling my name to the operator..."
"...I always wear my name badge when out. As I came to, she asked if I wanted an ambulance. I said, 'No, I am just dehydrated.' The lovely lady was a retired RN in her late 60s or early 70s. She had her husband drive me the three blocks back home. I began drinking water but passed out a few more times. I called my girlfriend and asked her to come over after she got off work. Not wanting to fall down again, I went to my bedroom and lay down.
She arrived with Gatorade, and I drank part of it before throwing it back up. I passed out a few more times. I live with my older sister, who was returning from a business trip that evening. When she got home, I spoke with her about passing out multiple times that afternoon. My sister insisted that we go to the ER. We all piled into my truck, and my sister drove. I passed out again during the 2.5-mile drive to the hospital.
The ER nurse got me on a table after checking me in. By this point, I was feeling very hungry, having missed lunch, and it was now well after 10 pm. I explained to the staff that I had passed out at least 10–12 times by then. The medical staff went into the hall to discuss my case and possible treatment. I felt the nausea again and told my sister it was starting again.
She had not witnessed me passing out yet. She ran to the door and called the medical staff. When she turned around, I had flatlined. The ER staff immediately performed CPR, including shocking me with the defibrillator. When I came to, I looked at the nurse and said, 'It happened again, right?' She asked if this was what I had been experiencing all afternoon. I confirmed it before passing out yet again. The episodes continued for the next several hours. When they finally got me awake again, the cardiologist explained that my heart was stopping because of my Vagus nerve.
They decided that the best course of action would be a pacemaker. I crashed one more time as they moved me from the ER to the ICU. I remember waking up in the hall. They explained that when a patient crashes like that, they have to stop transport and get me stable again. I can only imagine the pain and fear that my family went through that evening. My part was pretty easy. The heart stops, pass out, CPR, and you wake back up. Later on, I explained to my friends that I no longer fear death, having experienced it more than 30 times in a day. I am now living with my pacemaker and learning to enjoy life again."
6."I was in eighth grade. My middle school had a silly rule about restroom breaks, where we couldn’t use the bathroom fifteen minutes after the late bell and fifteen minutes before the next bell. The classes were 50 minutes, though, giving the kids about 20 minutes to be able to go. I never wanted to ask to go in the middle of a lesson, so I usually waited and held it for a really long time. For anyone that doesn’t know, apparently holding in your urine for too long can cause UTIs..."
"...I've never had one before then and didn't know the symptoms. So I went on with my life. By day six, I had no appetite. My grandma gave me a popsicle to take with some UTI antibiotics that she kept around since she figured out that morning that I had a bad UTI. I felt like I was going to throw up, and ten minutes later, I threw up everything. I never throw up unless something is wrong.
My grandma threw me in the car and drove me to the ER. The nurses checked everything at the ER, and my temperature was at a high 104. I was put in a sectioned-off area after giving them some urine and dressing in the weird robe. They took a blood test and asked a bunch of questions, including if I was pregnant. The tests came back, and it was evident that my kidneys were probably severely infected. My parents later told me that when the nurses told them my white blood cell counts, they almost fainted. In my urine, it was uncountable, off the chart. They told my parents that if I waited any longer, I probably would've died."
7."My boyfriend is allergic to peanuts. I always tease him about it and tell him he’s missing out. I have to wait about an hour just to kiss him after eating anything containing peanuts. On a school field trip when he was a kid, his teacher brought peanut butter cookies for treats..."
"...He ate one, and soon after, he started feeling sick, so his teacher put him on the bus alone. Until then, his parents had no idea just how allergic he was, let alone that he was allergic at all. When she came back to check on him, he was unconscious. She screamed, picked him up, put him in her car, and drove him to the hospital. At that point, he had been unconscious for quite a while. Thankfully, she got him there in time, and they were able to revive him."
8."This past summer, I was eating lying down and ended up choking. I couldn't scream for help. Ran to the bathroom to get some water to wash it down. The water would hit the blockage and come right back out of my mouth; seeing that in the mirror was terrifying. That horrible feeling of water will not go down. Thought this was the end of me. Turns out that little bits of water did make it past the blockage enough for it to go down. Panicked. I was certain I was going to die, but here I am."
9."Walking home late at night in -30°C weather, I slipped on ice. My legs went forward and fell, hitting the back of my head on the ice-covered sidewalk. I cracked my skull and got a concussion, but didn't know it yet..."
"...I got back up and tried to keep walking home, but I passed out, this time falling forward into the ground, smashing my face, breaking my nose and a few teeth. I woke up about 30 minutes later and had to peel my face off my frozen pool of blood, stumbled home, and instinctively started running a bath to clean myself up. That's when my roommates saw me and had the good sense to call me an ambulance. I was rushed into surgery to fix my bleeding brain."
10."When I gave birth to my third daughter, the nurse forgot to ask me if I peed after delivering my baby. I was so out of it that I forgot, too. My husband went home to get some sleep, and I sat up in bed hemorrhaging..."
"...I actually called the nurse at one point to say my blood loss was very heavy, and she said, 'You can expect that.' When he returned, I handed him the pad from my bed and asked for a new one. He called the nurse and said, 'My wife is dying, do something.' I was immediately surrounded by staff starting a blood transfusion and pressing on my womb which really hurt. I was taken down a corridor, and I passed out. I remember rising above my body and hearing a voice saying 'You have to come back.' When my daughter learned to talk, I remembered the sound of her voice from my memory on this day."
11."I flatlined during childbirth. Well, during labor. I had just gotten my epidural, and I was sitting up with my husband supporting me. I looked at him and said I didn't feel well and was going to pass out. And then I did. He said I took two big gasping breaths, then my face turned grey, and I stopped moving..."
"...I was wearing a heart monitor because I have a heart condition, and I had no pulse for 26 seconds. I came to and immediately told my husband it felt different than other times I've passed out. I had a bizarre dream sequence that I don't quite remember. But it was vivid at the time and oddly...calming?
This whole thing led to my unborn son having an 8-minute episode of a low heart rate, which led to an emergency C-section. Then, two days later, his oxygen dropped to the 50s in the NICU, which led to my baby being airlifted by helicopter to a NICU two hours away when he was two days old. He spent a week in the NICU, and we drove down and visited him twice a day. With my stomach freshly stapled back together. I should have died. I don't know how I survived that. My baby is now 11 weeks old and thriving. But I still have so much trauma from that week."
12."I slipped on some rocks along the cliff above the Mississippi River. The only thing that kept me from plummeting down the cliff was the bush that I landed on. The bush was growing sideways out of the cliff and broke my fall. When I opened my eyes after slipping, I looked down through the bush's branches at the rocks below. Still freaks me out how close I came to at least severe injury and, quite possibly, death. The moral of the story: stay away from cliff edges."
13."I woke up with a small bump on my head. My scalp was sensitive to the touch. Weird. So I went to a local urgent care at about 9 a.m. The RN took one look at my scalp and said, you have some kind of edema, and you need to go to the ER — can you drive, or should I get you an ambulance?..."
"...What the hell? It's just a tiny bump. The ten-minute drive to the ER was a bit surreal as my mind started to swirl. Why the hell is this happening? I'm healthy! I go to the gym 4-5 times a week; I'm not overweight, my immune system is fine, my blood pressure is good, and I eat good food most of the time… what the hell?
I get to the ER, and they'll be waiting for me. They brought me into a room where four nurses and a doctor started prodding me with needles and questions. I heard the word 'sepsis.' I knew exactly what sepsis and septic shock were, which freaked me out. It's a potentially life-threatening condition that occurs when one's body responds violently to infection.
While in the hospital, I learned that patients with sepsis and no ongoing sign of organ failure at the time of diagnosis have about a 15–30% chance of death. Patients with severe sepsis or septic shock have a mortality (death) rate of about 40%-60%, while the elderly have the highest death rates.
They took what looked like more than a pint of blood for testing and started me on what would be multiple rounds of intravenous antibiotics along with constant saline IVs. My otherwise normally calm, collected head was swirling. I'm 50, with a wife and two young boys who need me. Why me? Why now? The first 36 hours were very scary.
My blood pressure was very high, and I felt very weak and dizzy. I was sent home and feeling better after two and a half days in the hospital. The official diagnosis: Erysipelas. Erysipelas, aka 'holy fire' and 'St. Anthony's fire' is caused by Group A Streptococcus bacteria on a sore or a scratch. Turns out I had a small scratch on the front of my scalp. That's it. I scratched my head and got an infection that would have killed me had I ignored it for too long or had I lived 75 years ago."
14."I went into hypovolemic shock when I lost about 2 liters of blood during a postpartum hemorrhage. I didn’t realize how serious it was until way after. I was just chilling on the operating table, suddenly feeling very serene and out of it, thinking about how grateful my grandparents and ancestors would be for the staff who delivered my baby via C-section after a difficult labor. Really, all I felt was peace and gratitude in that moment. There was no fear at all. I didn’t learn until much later how dire the situation was."
15.One cold winter night, I went to sleep with my apartment gas heater turned to low. That night I had an incredibly vivid dream. In that dream, a doctor was examining my dead body. He was dictating a verbal autopsy..."
"...I heard him say, 'The victim’s cause of death was asphyxiation due to gas poisoning. The pilot light went out, the apartment filled with gas, and he never woke up.' I woke up.
It was after midnight. The apartment was ice cold, my vision was blurred, and I was disoriented. I immediately opened up my bedroom window and breathed the outside air. Feeling a little better, I put on some warm clothes, walked past the heater, and saw that the pilot light was out. I opened up all the windows and doors and went outside."
Have you had a near-death experience or a moment of your life flashing before your eyes? Tell us about it in the comments or in this anonymous form.
