Have you ever cheated death?

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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'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.

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

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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,

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.

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

Oh my goodness welbeck, it wasn't Brady and Hindley was it? Was it the right time and place for them? That really was a close shave, it would not have ended well. Someone was looking after you.

fortunate that i wasn't posh, so not used to big cars, nor too politely obedient.

when i was about 6 or 7 on a saturday afternoon, very quiet, no one around, a large car pulled up beside me.
i was out and about as usual amusing myself, going exploring.
people sometimes asked directions, so i wasn't surprised.
what was a unusual was that the back door opened and a woman who seemed to be at the far side told me to get in.
i knew it must be mistake, as i didn't know anyone posh with a big car. she said, it's a party, there's other children there. well i'd never been to a party so i knew it wasn't for the likes of me.
at the time i thought it would be embarrassing, if i got there and was then told that it wasn't for the likes of me.
but there was something about the way she was trying to persuade me that put me off too.

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. ?

When we were driving home from a disastrous Turkey and Tinsel weekend, it was very bright and sunny, but very, very cold. A huge lorry passed us and as he did so, the sheet of thick ice that had been on his roof top, slid off and hit our windscreen. Luckily the windscreen held, but after an emergency stop, we were quite shaken up.
I can see now why it is law that drivers ensure that their lorry tops are ice free.

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!

Yes on a serious note I divorced my ex husband who ended up violent towards me. He also put my children at risk until I stopped access.

Gosh, what interesting stories! I slipped into a swimming pool when I was 4 when all the adults were busy, very close to drowning apparently. My friend and I got into a car which pulled up, with two lads in it, what were we thinking!!?? Fifteen and invincible despite many warnings, but no harm done, I shudder when I think of it