The closest to death you've ever been?

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Ok, we're talking human death here, not "this morning when I splatted a fly on my window". From what I can remeber, I have had two close encouters, somewhat different in nature but they both fit in.

The first one was when I was about 10-12 and me and my family went to Teneriffa (Canary Islands), during the flight the man in the opposite row (The only one between me and him was my mum so I had a first hand view) died. Fortunetly for him and his wife there were two nurses on the plane who could bring him back.

The second was a little more personal, again on a vaccation, I was struck by an unusual feaver, in a matter of hours my body temperature had rised to 41-42 C (105,8-107,6 F) and stayed there for a week. I have no really memory of that week exept for some weird dreams and the few times I managed to drag myself outside to cool down. It was ~-20 C (-4 F) outside (I can tell you, I've never felt as cold as when I was out there in just my pants ), so the open window and the occational going out might have saved my life. Coherent memorys from five and a half days and nights: 10 min.
Then it went away as fast as it came. Take my advice, get these kind of stuff when it's a hospital nearby, not 150 miles to the nearest.

So... anyone els still alive to tell the story?

I accidently trapped myself and my brother in a car once?

Also, I would have got hit by a car once if my good brother didn't hold me back.

Both related to cars and my brother... hmm...

I had a sever asthma attack in 1966. I was becoming cyanotic and I thought I was a goner. I went through the five Kuebler-Ross stages in under an hour.

One good result: I am no longer terrified of dying. I have been scared s**tless and I will not be scared again.

ruveyn

I went scuba diving for the first time in the virgin islands with my wife. I am very clastiphophic, and my mask kept filling with water(malfunstioning mask) had to clear it every20 secs or so. I was too proud to tell my wife that the mask was broken, it's been her dream for years! I didn't want to delay it a anoughther sec. Went on a hour dive, after about 20 mins I was done, pushed through 40 mins. I actually started to swim away from my wife and instructor to die. I didn't want to take the time away from her enjoyment. The instructor caught up to me and we had to surface, my air very low. I don't think my wife ever understood the look I gave her afterwards.

Was blown out of a Tank in a war
Actually,
in 20 days of very intensive fighting i was hit 4 times and it took a lot of luck to survive an exploding tank and navigate through enemy lines back to more friendly zones
Was wounded at hit number four which happened on the Egyptian side of the Suez canal so my rescue happened to be long, hazardous and complicated


Many years later that i fell from a rock in a desert and lost consciousness and was found only hours later by few other trekkers
As i was homeless and broke at that time i escaped the hospital the minute i woke up which might been a mistake as i should let them check me first

i sat in an airplane w a faulty landing gear

lufthansa btw

it worked out tho

those germans are so clever

I suddenly without warning stopped breathing one night in my sleep, this woke me up and I gasped for air, managed to get my breathing back to normal, though by rights I should have seen a doctor about that the very next day I didn't want to worry anyone about it and didn't do so

when i was about 11, i went with my father to a block of flats he owned when he was collecting rents from them. i just went for the ride. i liked to see them hand dad envelopes of money when he knocked at their doors. (yes i was not a nice kid. whatever.)

anyway, there was one tenant who paid monthly, and we were walking toward his flat ("flat"="condo" in US ?) and dad said "oh jeez!". i noticed some flies at the window and i wondered why dad said what he said.
maybe he was going to get angry with the tenant because he let so many flies stay in his flat. maybe the tenant was so dirty that his flat attracted flies i thought.

my father said "mark go back to the car and i'll be down in a minute", and i knew that some major situation was starting to happen so i did not obey him.
he strode rapidly to the tenants door and used his key to get in without knocking first (dad always knocked first). i thought my father was going to blast the tenant for being so filthy so i ran into the flat and got in front of dad and suddenly i smelled a putrid smell and i thought that there was rotten meat in his kitchen. so i opened his bedroom door and phewwwwwhoah!! !. there he was dead in his bed. i got a 1 second glimpse before i ran out and vomited because the smell was indescribable and it seemed to coat my mucus membranes in my nose with unremovable filth.

there were hundred of flies in his bedroom and the temperature was much higher than it should have been, and he looked black and swollen and he had sunk into his mattress as if the liquids exuding from him "melted" the mattress and he just sunk into it.

after i vomited i ran back to the car and dad rang an ambulance and the police from another flat (he came out of the dead tenants flat quickly and closed all the doors).

the police told him he could take me home and then come back to talk to them.
so i was taken home and dad went back over.

yuck!! !! !! that smell is worse than dead cows (on our farm) i have smelled by a multiple of 3 at least.


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as gross as the last example was, i was still about 10 ft away from it.

the closest i came to death however was when my mother died.
i got to the hospital about 20 mins after she died and everyone was kissing her forehead, and i was expected to too.

so i gave her a nervous "peck" on her forehead (oh dear! i loved my mother, but it freaked me to kiss her dead head).
it was still warm. that also unnerved me and i started to wipe my lips off savagely and my sisters almost attacked me. they told me to get out and wait in another room.

then a few days later she had a funeral, and all the sisters and dad (destroyed dad) put little keepsakes in her coffin and kissed her forehead again.

i put my black and white panda teddy that i loved all through my childhood in her coffin and then i decided i would kiss her forehead because it is the last touch i would ever feel from my mother.

it was horrifying. she felt cold and hard and waxy, and she smelled of some embalming agent or something. her face looked grotesque, and again i could not handle the experience and i went to the toilet room and i washed my lips savagely (no one saw me that time).

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Well, OK, there are two ways to interpret this question.

The closest that I have ever been to the death of someone else was when my mother died from complications of cancer. I was right there, you know? Frankly, it was good to see her dead. She had suffered for more than ten years with cancer, and she finally looked peaceful when she died.

The closest that I have ever been to my own death would be the many many near-collisions I've been through while driving...

... Or it would be the time I went camping in the woods in the depth of winter, with some other people. We had been drinking beer all afternoon, and when the sun went down, we broke out the red wine. Big mistake. After dark, the temperature had fallen rapidly to about freezing, and I was drinking wine on top of too much beer. We were unprepared as well, not having taken enough warm clothes with us. I had on a T-shirt and jacket, which wasn't nearly enough. At some point, I got up to relieve myself, and staggered off into the dark woods. That's when the alcohol hit me. Far enough from camp to where I couldn't even see the fire we built, I passed out while walking. I woke up on the forest floor, covered in a light frost, who knows how much later. I somehow found my way through the darkness, back to camp. As I said, it froze that night. I really easily could have died from hypothermia, passed out in the woods.

Glad I'm not dead yet

Two events and I'm not sure which one is closer to death.

As in my "have you ever had a near-drowning experience?" thread, I almost drowned. I passed out under the water and if someone didn't pull me out I would have died. My step sister sat on me because I tried to save her when she was drowning. It's the last time I try to save a drowning person and probably the last time I go swimming too.

2nd event: once I was home alone and my chest started feeling a bit strange, next thing I remember was waking up on the floor and my heart was racing and my chest hurt really bad. I called a medical helpline to ask what to do, and they actually called an ambulance for me. Turns out that my heart rate got up to 217 bpm and was fluctuating between that and 50 bpm on the way to the hospital. The rhythm was apparently abnormal as well and they gave me something (I can't remember what) to stabalize it, but no doctors ever found a cause for this event.

Climbing down the Palenica Mountain http://www.staypoland.com/about_szczawnica.htm in my teens I slipped on slippery ground – luckily nothing happened to me then but I slid down several meters. But theoretically I could sustain severe injuries, broken bones, I could even be killed.

Another war veteran over here.... I won't go into details. Had many close calls. Two sniper attacks (those are by far the most disturbing), many many MANY close artillery strikes from every artillery piece imaginable, one air attack, once some jackass turned a 23mm anti aircraft gun onto ground targets. That was certainly interesting.

Just as I thought things couldn't get much worse, I ended up behind enemy lines... got captured... tortured for 2-3 hours not sure how long exactly... placed before a mock firing squad.... then locked up and used as a human shield. I escaped after 19 days, quite cleverly I just walked out through the front gate.

I was just 18 years old. I had PTSD for a number of years. It kind of faded on its own. I'm back to being a typical Aspie.

Nearly drowned at 5 and well at 12 months old had a very bad respiratory infection they thought would cause my lungs to collapse.