Have you ever cheated death?

Oh yes. I was booked on a Dan Air flight. I was getting impatient so asked the travel agent if I could get the flight a week earlier. This was agreed. The flight I was initially booked on crashed and all died. Always sends a shiver when I remember that.

I was terribly accident prone as a child. My Mother loved me very much but was a bit irresponsible. At aged 2 my Mum purchased an electric washing machine with mangle attached, while she was outside hanging out washing I decided to have a go with the mangle and tried to put some paper through, switched it on and my arm shot through got to elbow arm wouldn’t go further. Completely crushed my arm, my Mum hysterical left me to run down the street to her sister who was a nurse. I was unconscious with loss of blood and shock probably but after months in hospital (on my own) they saved my arm. Terribly scarred, so is my leg from skin grafts but works fine.
Then before I was 5 had two stomach pumps from swallowing a bottle of aspirin and a bottle of ink.
I crushed all my toes standing in the gutter of the road and a bus went over them, narrowly missing hitting me. I carried on playing and didn’t realise I had a problem until my pumps turned red from the blood.
Then at 5 I was on holiday on the beach in Croyde Bay in Devon a freak wave caught me and carried me out to sea. My Dad tried to reach me but wasn’t a strong enough swimmer. An off duty lifeguard managed to get to me - I was over a mile out.
Since then have never really been accident prone,

My husband and I were going to see his Mum in Manchester, and in the fast lane on the motorway.

There was a huge lorry alongside us on the inside lane, and all of a sudden the middle part of its tyre shot out across the front of us like a rocket, then bounced across the central reservation into that oncoming traffic. If we'd been a few foot further ahead it would have come through the car. I've never been so scared in my life and it did shake my husband, we came off at the next junction.

I was cycling to school when I was about 10. It was through a quiet village but suddenly a dog ran out of a side road knocking me off my bike . Because the lorry driver behind me reacted quickly with an emergency stop I actually suffered little more than a black eye. It could have been a lot worse.

Several times.

* As a child, I almost choked on a piece of Lego.

* As a young adult with my own daughter, we could have died on (of all things) a pedalo in Greece, in ridiculously choppy water that we really shouldn't have gone out in.

* Later, in a terrific hurry in the car, I overtook too late and only just made back into my own lane in time.

* Finally, and most obviously, I survived a high stage, aggressive cancer.

Oh! And driving 300 miles through the New Mexican desert, in the early 1980's, we were nearly (deliberately) run off the road by a pick-up truck. No idea why. It was terrifying and we only got away because my husband took a very last minute exit, almost overturning the car.

The route we took was almost totally uninhabited, so if we HAD been run off the road, or killed, no one would have found our car for days.

There is only one incident where I know I would have died because all the others did.
I was asked to be crew/cook on a sailing trip. I couldn’t get the time off work so had to decline. The yacht was sunk by a ship and all 4 crew died.

I did pray to God one awful night outside Dover harbour. We were caught out in a storm and the engine failed. Added to that the wind wasn’t in our favour. The only thing we could do was use the entrance that is only for the the ferries. Sod’s law being what it is: a ferry was coming out ?This was all in the pitch dark.

I got too close for comfort with a bridge on the French canals. A split second from being decapitated.

When I was nine I narrowly survived mastoiditis. I was desperately ill. The surgeon left an official dinner and arrived still in evening dress at the hospital to operate on me. He saved my life.

Then when I was about thirty I choked on a boiled sweet. My mother was with me, but didn’t realise what was happening. Everything was going black but I managed to gasp out “Hit me on the back”, which she did, though mystified, and the sweet was dislodged. Oh, the relief!

When I was 11 I was amongst a crowd watching the launch of a new lifeboat. The winch failed, the boat continued down the slipway, the rope tightening as it went, until it snapped and hit me round the back of my legs flinging me head first onto the concrete slip. These days I would be helicoptered to the nearest trauma unit. Then, I was carried by a policeman into the police station to await an ambulance which took me to the local cottage hospital. My Mum thought I was dead. I was severely concussed and unconscious for 48 hours and broke my skull. Luckily my legs were only badly rope burned. If it had been a metal rope my legs would have been amputated .
Luckily I lived to tell the tale and my DH often said the head injury obviously accounted for quite a lot

I've been lucky to survive 2 accidents involving cars.
The first when I was 4, I was hit by a passing car when I ran out to cross the road to the shop to buy sweeties with my threepenny bit. Knocked clean out of my shoes apparently but survived the resulting fractured skull with no apparent scarring.
Second time I was 19 and front seat passenger in a car that went off the road on a hill and rolled. Survived another fractured skull this time but now am a bit of a patchwork with wounds and surgical scarring but nothing too bad. The resulting tinnitus is the worst thing.

In the 1970s several people I knew had dreadful motorbike accidents. Some sadly died and others were badly injured. At least two people I knew lost legs. This was in and around Henley on Thames. Then it was my turn. My boyfriend at the time and I were on his motorbike and were hit by a car. He was fine but I was flung off and broke my neck and my arm in several places. My broken neck wasn’t spotted until the next day when they tried to sit me up in hospital. Years later when I slipped on wet pavement and broke a bone in my lower back, I was put straight on a spinal board. Anyway, back to the broken neck - I had to wear a moulded plastic support which stretched from the top of my head and past my shoulders! For three months. As well as that I had an extra thick plaster cast on my right arm (I’m right handed) after an operation to fix the broken bones with two metal plates. Many years later (not death defying) I slipped on wet pavement again and the metal plates (still there after thirty years) managed to break the bones in my arm very badly, I needed a 5-hour operation to put my arm back together with new and improved metal plates.

I nearly died giving birth to my first baby 52 years ago. I ad been rushed to theatre or an emergency caesarean because my son had gone into the transverse postion in labour and was passing meconium.
In those days all caesareans were done under GA and there had been no time to prepare me.I stopped breathing under the GA before they got the baby out I remember them bringing me round my head was hanging over the table and I can still remember the noise of the sucker tube clearing my airway. People were shouting and yelling at each other and I could hear myself saying ''Where is my baby'' before everything went black again.My son was eventually got out nearly dead as well we were both very ill for a few days but are alive to tell the tale

We had a blue Fifties /sixties style kitchen cabinet ( quite popular again in vintage mid-century shops)
Glass fronted top bit which stored glasses , then a hinged pull down flap in the middle and double doors on bottom section that stored pots and pans

My mum stored the breakfast cereal on top of the unit.
One morning whilst everyone was still in bed, I decide to make my own breakfast. I would have been about four at the time.
I pulled down the hinged flap, climbed on to it from a kitchen stool and tried to reach the cornflakes on the very top of the unit.
Unfortunately the cupboard toppled forward with an almighty crash , trapping me underneath the unit.

My mum was hysterical but luckily my aunt, a teenager herself was able to take control. She said would get me out , unfortunately the cupboard had fallen across the kitchen door. But somehow she managed to squeeze through and lever the heavy cupboard up just enough to pull me out.

Badly shaken with only cuts from the glass and bruises and hair full of glass. I was fine, miraculously had no broken bones .
Not so my poor mother who was completely traumatised.

On two occasions, the planes I was flying on were hit by lightning. It sounded as though a bomb had gone off. One other time I was eight months pregnant watching the OH play rugby at London Irish. A supporter from the other side offered to share his umbrella when it started pouring with rain, followed swiftly by a huge flash of lightning, which electrified the metal tip on the umbrella. I was thrown one way and he was thrown the other way.
The gentleman suffered burns to his hand, I was just very shaken. My OH ran off the pitch, checked how I was and said to the ref; "It's fine, she's talking and breathing, lets carry on" . At least his side won.
The final one, Friday 13th, two crashes in the space of 15 minutes, same stretch of road. I had come to a stop trying to get on the dual carriageway, a transit van hit me on the back wing of my car doing about 60mph, which shunted me towards a ditch. We exchanged details and I carried on. 3 miles down the road, the carriageway split, two lanes to come off and two to go under the underpass.
An artic lorry realised he was in the wrong lane, shot across three lanes, misjudged the length of the lorry, when his back wheels scraped along the side of my car, then caught my front bumper which flew over the top of my car. It was like a bad comedy scene, the front of my car was missing. I thought I had got away without being injured, as it turned out I had fractured a bone in my neck. The insurer couldn't stop laughing when I reported the crashes and thought I was joking. I could have been killed in either crash, so I think of Friday the 13th as a lucky day for me. Sorry about the long post.

We were due to sail on the Stranraer - Larne ferry, The Princess Victoria to Northern Ireland in 1953 but we caught measles and were unable to go. The ferry sank with the loss of 133 people and no women and children survived.

I was an adventurous child so probably had other close encounters I don't remember. However as an older teenager I was hitchhiking and the lorry I was in jack-knifed when the brakes failed. The skill of the driver saved us and we ended up right across the road. I remember us sitting in silence and he said, 'Were you scared?' I answered, 'A bit.' 'I was terrified.' he said!

Later on my 21st birthday I ended up in hospital with alcohol poisoning after being bought a pint of whiskey by my mates. They left me to stagger home but another more sensible friend found me by chance and rang the ambulance luckily. I had my stomach pumped and was told it was touch and go at one point.

I'm not sure about cheating death but there have been other occasions when I've come close. Maybe we all have without realising it.

I was driving to work, following a lorry loaded with timber. An enormous piece of timber, a pine tree/log, really, detached itself, and I can still remember seeing it hurtling towards my windscreen, and thinking..."well, that's it...I'm so glad my DD isn't in the front passenger seat", (she was off school ill that day). It bounced on the right hand side of the car, about 6 inches from it, then flew over and bounced again on the left hand taking out the side mirror. Just like throwing the caber. The lorry drove on, ignorant of what had happened. I managed to stop, shaking uncontrollably, and large Holden ute behind me also stopped. The lady, in floods of tears, came running over and enveloped me in a huge bear hug - "I thought you were a gonner", she said. Then she said "I'm going to get that bastard" ...and off she went after him. Well, she stopped him and gave him absolute beans. She was one of those big, jolly, strong, loving Maori women who won't be pissed about. The police were waiting for him at the next town, 20 miles further on.
I was so unbelievably lucky.

Age about 6 at a traction engine rally Dad had to shout at me to get out of the way of a steam roller doing full speed, I was like a rabbit in the headlights.
Age 14, on a skiing holiday I challenged a lad to a race, hurtled down the mountain and fell at the bottom. Just in front of an orange rope, beyond which was a sheer drop.
Pushed into a river and nearly drowned, managed to grab a builders plank floating near me.

Caleo

Horses ran away with me on them, one time among scattered rocks. Not having a good seat I sometimes got bucked off.

Oh, that's just reminded me of the time a friend asked if I wanted to ride her new horse. I did, and everything went fine for about five minutes until I was riding up hill and the horse reared up without any warning, and went right over backwards and landed on top of me! Another time I was amazingly lucky not to break any bones - or worse - but again, I was black and blue from head to foot.

I have enjoyed this thread. We have some harrowing tales to tell. I never consider myself the be clairvoyant or believe in anything like that but reading some of these posts about not being able to travel on a planned boat or plane journey and then learn it has subsequently sunk or crashed makes me wonder if other forces are at work in our lives.

crazyH

Daring back home on the Motorway , after a long, tiring day, I dozed off for a couple of seconds, I guess, and swerved into the middle lane. ?

I once did the same - very long journey with small dds in the back.
Nodded off momentarily, was woken - thank God! - by someone hooting at me as I was wandering into another lane.
Another ‘shudder to think of it’ episode.

Hope there aren't any ' no win, no fee' ambulance chasers reading this, they'd have a field day ??

I was in my early teens and we were on holiday in Ireland, we'd spent the day in the North and were travelling back to the republic late in the evening.
Driving down a country lane, my dad saw a car parked at an unusual angle and a man was flagging him down, he presumed that there'd been an accident so stopped which was when the man pointed a gun at him / us.
He spoke very softly, telling us nobody would get hurt if we stayed in the car etc.
I can recall seeing my dad's hands shaking and his knuckles absolutely white holding the steering wheel....on hearing my dads accent, he then started chatting about our home city and the Beatles, it was totally surreal and after what felt like hours but was perhaps a few minutes, he backed away and told us to drive on suggesting to my dad that nothing had happened.
It was one of the few times I saw my dad cry afterwards and I'm sure his total calmness saved the situation.

I shall be having nightmares after reading this thread! It's reading like a horror film. Never realised how many dangerous experiences people have had. ?

Dear Chestnut. I so understand. ran in front of a bus when I was four chasing my dad who covered his eyes as the bus stopped inches from me...I thought he was beckoning me but I think he was just waving.
Again ran in front of bus when about ten as I threw my GLB hat which was like a frisbee into the broadway (these are all in Wimbledon) and I was scared it would get crushed by the bus so ran to get it. I hid in shop window afterwards and police told me off for being so careless. (I loved that hat)
Ran away from men on Wimbledon common when I was collecting fungi and they were trying to stuff hay into my knickers (about 8). Hitchiked home to from Cafe des Artistes many times at 3 in the morning. Got hit by a car outside Cafe des Artiste and hid afterwards as it brought back memories and I was sure it was my fault. that's enough for now.

I had sepsis and went into septic shock almost four years ago. I remember very little apart from an out of body experience in resus; where I was looking down on myself and in intensive care trying to pull off my oxygen mask, someone placing it back on - and I remember thinking there I was going to die. Thankfully I'm still here ? but my family had been told it was touch and go and my daughter (a nursing sister) honestly thought I wouldn't make it ?