Have you ever cheated death?

My quiet, loving and vegan son, who lived with me, was working on the design of the latest nuclear submarine. Being a Government project it was, naturally, vastly over budget, very late and continually running up against problems. He was having trouble sleeping, and occasionally resorted to smoking cannabis to help him relax. Though I didn't approve he insisted that it was harmless, and just helped him to unwind.

One evening he came home as usual, had something to eat, chatted, put out the dustbins ready for morning and went up for an early night. A while later he came downstairs in a terrible state, shaking and distraught, saying that I was going to hate him. He was hugging me and saying that he was sorry. When I asked him what was wrong, he said that he was the Devil, and had to kill me. He went to the kitchen, and came back with a knife.
I grabbed his hand and tried to take it from him. As we struggled he kept on saying that he was sorry. Something must have been holding him back. He was much younger and stronger than I am, but he never actually thrust at me, however my hand was cut quite badly. We overbalanced, and ended up sitting on the floor. My mind was racing. What would it be like to be stabbed to death? How would my family cope? What would happen to my son? How could I get out of the situation?

We stared at each other, then I told him firmly to go to his room. He got up, and went, and I dashed around to a neighbour's house.

It turned out that the cannabis had been laced with something a lot stronger, which had made him delusional. Luckily we got through it, after a lot more trauma, and he's back home. All was immediately forgiven, as it was obvious that he was 'off his head' at the time. Luckily I lived to plead his cause, and he got off very lightly as a result. We still love each other very much!

Two incidents . I was driving and came round a blind bend to see what looked like a long black shape in the dark. It was a lorry driving trying to turn around as he’d missed the motorway entry and he was only on quite a narrow road. I braked but still went under him and my bonnet caught fire and my foot was caught under the pedal, driver door jammed shut. I remember stopping struggling and being very calm and knowing I was going to die. My only regret was my teenage daughter who I had made get out of the car would see it happen.

Lorry driver leant in the passenger side pulled me out ripping my foot and as we got to the pavement the car went up in flames.

Years later my abusive husband kept me captive in our house threatening to kill me . I stayed calm and managed to call the police. The angels were definitely looking after me both times

Until reading this, I thought I'd lived a quiet, boring life.

But now I'm remembering...

The times I was thrown off horses - once landing face first onto a brick (thankfully only receiving a bloody and bruised nose)

Swimming in the sea near a groin and being sucked under taking several minutes of struggling to get out.

Dying on the operating table - I still remember the 'lady' bringing me back to my body as 'it wasn't my time'.

Numerous near misses driving (it is why I drive as though every other road user is a complete and utter idiot) and one accident where, if the other car driver had hit my driver's door instead of the panel in front of it, I'm not too sure I would still be here.

Going to bed with what I thought was bad flu only to find out later (after I'd recovered) that I'd actually had a rare form of pneumonia. Considering I didn't seek medical attention and only took paracetamol...

Living with an abusive partner who tried to strangle me... That one, I think I chose to forget all about!

As a child on my way home from school, a strange man following me. Thankfully, I lived in a village so knew where to turn to for help. One kind lady took me in then walked me home later.

When I was five, my heart stopped at the dentist's as he was taking teeth out using the old-fashioned gas. Obviously, he managed to get it started again, but not before his receptionist had called my poor mother in and frightened her half to death!

God reading this has reminded me of many of my near misses and now I’m worried to death for my granddaughters!!
Starting from when I was about 4 when I decided to leave the back garden and walk to my nanny’s house, about 3 miles away. Several main roads and therefore dangerous in itself but I was then picked up by a couple in their car. They were horrified to see me trying to cross a busy road on my own and stopped and asked where I was going. I didn’t know my nanny’s address but guided them there. Scary when I think what could have happened.
When I was a teenager I got into a stolen car with a boyfriend who was only 15 himself so didn’t really know how to drive and he then wizzed around the streets of Birmingham. I was actually terrified. He did finally stop and let me out and that was the end of that relationship.
I was never a strong swimmer and got into trouble, out of my depth in a swimming pool at Butlins when I was about 11. I really did think that I was going to die that time. My mum couldn’t swim and she was screaming at the bodyguard to save me but the pool was full and he couldn’t work out where I was. I had actually sunk to the bottom when another swimmer (a man in the pool) pulled me up and swam to the side with me.
I stepped out between two parked cars when I was in my early 20s and got hit by a car. I remember going up onto the bonnet and hitting the window. The first thing that I remember after I landed was thinking ‘well I think I’m still alive’!
And I won’t bore you with any more other than to say, when I was newly married in 1974, my new husband and I had arranged to meet friends for a drink in the Mulberry bush pub in Birmingham on the night that the Birmingham bombings took place. But I had come home from work ill and gone to bed. I remember my husband coming up into the bedroom later in the evening almost in tears and saying ‘I’m so glad that you were ill tonight’. Thankfully our friends didn’t go out either as we couldn’t make it!

Walking to work one cold icy morning, and saw a car approaching on the other side of the road, just before it got to me it must have hit a patch of ice, as it crossed the road and bounced off the wall right in front of me. It then hit the pavement the opposite side of the road, which sent it sideways again, where it hit the wall behind me and eventually managed to straighten up and went on it's way, leaving me a blithering wreck, as another second either way and I'd have been completely squashed!

Also, as a teenager, I was waiting for a bus one afternoon, I knew it was likely to be a couple of hours, as I'd just missed one, so when a car drove up and a very nice man offered me a lift, I stupidly accepted. Don't know what came over me, as I KNEW I should never accept a lift. I spent the whole journey petrified about what he was going to do to me, but then he stopped in my village, and as I went to jump out, he said 'didn't your parents ever tell you not to take lifts when they're offered?' I couldn't understand whether he'd stopped with bad intentions and changed his mind, which caused him to give me the warning, or whether he thought it better to offer me a lift knowing that he would keep me safe, where perhaps if I'd continued to wait I'd have accepted a lift from someone who had evil on their mind. I was just MASSIVELY grateful to still be alive, and ran the rest of the way home, although never ever told my parents what I'd done that day.

Aged 17,choked on a ? peanut. It dislodged just in time. My life flashed before my eyes.

Lilydily9 I remember the Kings Cross fire as I knew someone who died in it.

My sister and I aged around 7 and 9 were chased by a man in a playground near our school. We escaped under a gap in a wire fence we ran towards. Reported it to the headmaster of our primary school who said we were making it up. Didn’t even bother to tell our parents who would probably said the same.

I had polio as a baby so I suppose I could have died. Having my first baby I was very I’ll and in hospital for weeks. Also , my OH and I survived a nightmare coach trip in Corfu when everyone on the journey thought they were going to die as the driver steered with his knees shouting YEE-HA on narrow, high up roads,dislodging the edges of the crumbling path and skidding from side to side at great speed.

I was driving my husbands beloved jag when a huge tree fell on me luckily I had put my foot down as I saw it start to fall but it flattened the rear of the car. It was that or crash into it!

Annoyingly if I had have been driving my fiesta I wouldn’t have been there quite as quickly therefore tree would have already fallen?!!

I cannot even find statistics for trees that land on moving cars? I think I’m incredibly lucky to be here

Apart from sepsis and being taken to hospital I had a cardiac arrest after I had my cancerous kidney removed in a hospital that had no cardiology dept. I was in intensive care when it happened and my daughter watched it happen. That was in 2017 and will never forget the Cardiologist who still looks after me shaking his head asking me how I could have had a major op in a hospital with no cardio facilities given that I have severe heart failure! I am still here and nearly 88 so I am thankful.

1. Haemorrhaged after a miscarriage and remember hearing the doctor telling the ambulance man to hurry as I was dying.
2. Crashed my car into a river when I swerved to avoid a deer. The windscreen broke when I het the water and I was knocked out but came to in a pocket of air in the back of the car -managed to swim into the front and open the door (it was a two door Mini). The man from the garage that retrieved the car said it was a miracle that anyone had survived.
3. The other day I went to the front gate to collect my newspaper and half and hour later an enormous lime tree fell exactly where I had walked.
Feel quite lucky to h=be here!

I too had an ectopic pregnancy. My DC and I had one daughter aged 5 yrs old and I was 33yrs old. I had been feeling unwell for several weeks and at that point I had suffered with irregular periods and occasionally spotting. This day I dropped my daughter at school, DC had gone off to work and I was getting worse, feeling a lot of abdominal pain and nausea so I drove myself off to the GP and 2hrs later I was in a hospital theatre having surgery to remove a Fallopian tube. It never occurred to me that my problems were an ectopic pregnancy because I had had coil for a couple of years and irregular periods. The foetus was around 9 weeks old but of course unviable. The experience hit me once back home, sadness at the loss even though I was using contraception and then the fact that I could have died. Thank goodness for our NHS!

Chocolatelovinggran

Can I recommend a book? It is by Maggie O'Farrell, and is called I am, I am, and is her life in near- death experiences. I enjoyed it, and it makes a thought provoking read. I discussed it with my daughters and learned about some events in their life which I was glad not to have known at the time!

Just read Maggie O’Farrell - it was amazing and so life affirming.
My own lucky escape was a cardiac arrest a few years ago. Luckily I was with my daughter who is a nurse and brought me round with CPR. I’ll be forever be grateful to her and will never forget her pleas of «breathe Mum, breathe «. I’m still going, not quite as fit as before but life is good.

I was 11 and walking home from school on my way to Nanna's house. She lived on a busy road. I had crossed the road on my own many times but on this occasion I hadn't noticed a motorbike. I felt something swish past me almost as if it had touched me. I ran to Nanna's house and knocked the door but by this time a lot of people, including a policeman, had obviously seen me almost run over. They gathered at Nanna's gate while the policeman checked that I was all right. I was fine but really embarrassed by all the attention. Nanna opened the door and talked to the policeman. I was standing there with wee running down my legs and I just wanted to get inside the house.

I was on holiday at my Gran's in Ireland, aged about 8 or 9.
I ran around with the local kids, and one day I started playing with a gypsy girl. We played together for a few days, and then she asked me if I'd like to meet her mother.
She was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. I was mesmerized. She asked me to come back at 8 the next morning. To be sure and be there. I was hypnotized, but when I smiled up at her husband to say I would be, I was surprised that he didn't smile back; he just looked over my head at his wife. I was puzzled as she had been so friendly but he was a bit scary. There were two teenage lads in the back of the caravan but I didn't see them closely. When I left, I couldn't see my friend. She had disappeared.
The next morning I was in a rush over breakfast, and my gran was suspicious when I said I had to go out for 8 o'clock.
She took me by the hand and we walked to where the gypsies had been. They had gone.
I didn't think any more about it but my Gran was obviously upset about something, later I wondered What if.....?

Age 11, attacked by what a thought was a nasty man. He was greasy and filthy in a dark grey long coat. It was six am and I was delivering papers down a quiet street. Suddenly he was on top of me, saying bad bad things, one hand around my throat, I kicked him in the balls and bit him. He let me go and I ran and ran.

Ran into the road, a bus screeched to a halt. I wet myself and cried. Two old ladies came seeing my distress and told me to go straight home to my mummy. I was 11.

Age 18 I stood for half an hour by an IRA bomb in a waste bin on Aldershot train station. It was Christmas Eve.
Two plain clothes policemen came early next day to my home. I had no idea.

Aged 25 getting a lift home from my work in a pub a Geest container lorry hit the car at 50 mph this was on a crossroads. Driver sadly killed on impact. I was thrown through the windscreen. I could remember going down the dark tunnel and a light getting brighter and brighter. It felt lovely just going towards the light.
Next thing I hear police say ‘she’s a gonner’ . Whoosh, I’m back in my body though many broken bones, five vertebrae in my neck damaged, kidney damage, 70 stitches in my face.

These are hair raising stories; I have always felt that when it is your time to go, you will - regardless of what happens. Some have amazing escapes from death, some will trip over the kerb, break their neck and die. Your sell by date is woven into your DNA in my opinion.

Only time I've ever felt I cheated death was a few years ago. We were driving home on one of the local roads, DH zooming as always, and we came over the brow of a hill to see about 150 yards ahead a line of cars stopped to allow the cows to cross the road for milking. DH braked hard and we must have skidded as we went up the verge, rolled at least twice and ended up in the field upside down!

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202203/medium-927974-cafedesartistes.jpg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202203/medium-382933-20190704-202447.jpg

Grannygranby and Minerva

The Café des Artistes!!! I used to hang out there a lot around 1868-69. On the tables they had candles dripping from Mateus wine bottles (the height of sophistication) and arty people sitting around them. My mother disapproved, she called them 'the twilight set' ha ha. By the way, the Café features in a 1965 Oliver Reed movie called The Party's Over which might come up on Talking Pictures. In the movie it was called 'The Crypt'.

See Capture 10 on this website:
The Party's Over
(Sorry, folks, just couldn't resist talking about the Café!)

Bikes coming off cars etc - me too. I was on the M25 following campervan-type vehicle when 2 bikes came off and headed for my windscreen and I thought my end had come. Some sort of air current suddenly lifted the bikes up, probably 10 ft, and to one side and I scraped past. In my mirror I could see chaos behind as cars tried to avoid the bikes on the ground. The camper van carried on regardless, and no amount of flashing and tooting would stop it. Still can’t drive anywhere bikes on cars.

It was 1987, the night of the Kings Cross fire. I was Systems Operations Manager for a bank and responsible for their communications system. I usually left the office around 7 pm but that evening the computer went down just before I was about to leave. Unable to restore it myself, I called an engineer and stayed with him until the issue was resolved and eventually left for home at 9.15 pm. The fire in the underground station started around 7.30 pm which would have been right about when I would have arrived there on the tube from Covent Garden. It was a terrible tragedy, so many lost their lives. The memory has always stayed with me.

I had an ectopic pregnancy, but the hospital didn't realise, they told me I had had an early miscarriage and discharged me home, five days later I was absolutely doubled up in agony and feeling like I was going to pass out. Rang hospital who said to go in and I'd probably need a D&C. One of the junior doctors was a bit troubled by my condition and decided they would do a laparoscopy first just to see what was going on. When they looked inside my fallopian tube was now starting to rupture and I had to be additionally sedated for emergency surgery. I was in hospital for 10 days and off work for a month. If they hadn't found and dealt with it when they did, I might not have made it.

Just watched 'This is Going to Hurt' and it reminded me...

Aged 40, first baby, 35 weeks pregnant, swollen legs with pitting odeama. GP unsympathetic but took my blood pressure and started asking if I was stressed at home. Didn't believe my normal BP was very low or that I was normally very skinny and I was actually very relaxed about things until my legs had swelled up. Finally agreed to test my urine, then changed her tune and wanted to call 999. Good job I knew the signs of preeclampsia and was persistant or both me and my lovely baby wouldn't have survived.