Our time here is not guaranteed.
We know that people die––death is all around us––but the fact that we could die at any moment doesn't usually hit us until something really sudden or terrible happens. It's times like those when we realize that absolutely nothing is within our control.
After Redditor Sponge-iopotortoise asked the online community, "What is the closest you have come to dying?" people lined up to share their stories.
Warning: Some uncomfortable reading ahead.
"Experienced surgeon..."
Appendix burst. Experienced surgeon said it was one of the two worst cases he'd ever seen. Sepsis almost got me.
"When I was 2 years old..."
When I was 2 years old I started having random seizures. A really bad one put me in a coma for 2 weeks. During that one week doctors were struggling to find out what was wrong with me. They had doctors fly in from other states to run tests n stuff. Everyone thought I was never going to wake up and die while in a coma. Turns out I had a rare iron deficiency that caused blood to clot in my brain. The doctors had to go in there and get rid of it. One misplaced snip would've either killed me or left me mentally handicapped. Luckily the doc snipped the right spot and all was well. I woke up a while after that but had lost all of my memories and forgot how to do everything. I learned quickly though according to my parents.
"What I remember..."
One time when I was 10, I was at a public pool on top of the highest diving board. I tried to be cute and jump as close as possible to the edge of the board.
What I remember is seeing the concrete of the edge of the pool JUST miss my head by millimeters. I seriously was panicking at the bottom of the pool thinking I was dead. My Mom thought I was dead. The lifeguard probably thought he was gonna be sued for not seeing me be this stupid at the board in the first place.
But I'm still here, twenty years later, and I like to think in an alternate universe I'd be dead from cracking my skull.
"On the interstate..."
Driving home from college. Exhausted. On the interstate, going through the mountains. I was driving, and the I woke up going 70 mph straight down a switchback, on the wrong side of the yellow line and careening right for the edge. I was able to slam the brake and wrestle the car away from the guardrail that certainly wouldn't have stopped me going over the edge at that angle of impact. If I'd woken up a half second later I wouldn't be here.
"The worst part..."
Nearly being strangled by my batman cape when it got caught in the elevator door at my grandparents house. The worst part was having to explain the giant red mark on my neck the next day at school.
"I fell off..."
I fell off a 175 foot cliff in the desert. The ground I should've landed on was hard dirt. There happened to be one singular bush as far as I could see and I landed on it. That bush broke my fall just enough that I only broke one rib. I was totally fine. Then as I'm laying there in shock, I see that the quad I was riding before I fell was falling down as well and coming right down on me. I was in too much pain and shock to move and by some miracle, the quad landed upright with the wheels on either side of me. Barely even grazed me. I was convinced that god was real.
"I'd been out for a night..."
Choking.
I'd been out for a night on the town with a friend. We bought some food and got in a cab to take us home. We were both sitting in the back. The cab driver said that it was OK if we ate the food in the cab, so I started eating mine (a mixed kebab). My friend was talking to the driver and he said something that made me laugh, just as I put a piece of steak in my mouth, and I involuntarily inhaled it and started choking.
For the first 30 seconds or so, I was trying to either swallow or cough it up, but neither worked. I couldn't breathe at all. At that point I started to panic. I was trying to get my friend's attention, but he was still talking to the driver. I started whacking him and pointing to my mouth, and thankfully he realised what was going on. He grabbed me and twisted me round and started whacking me on the back, and just as I felt like I was about to lose consciousness, I coughed the piece of steak up.
"When I saw..."
Crushed in a head on with a semi and actually felt myself leave my body as my bowels tried to void themselves... Every sensation was that of death and in my state of hyper awareness and more real than real perception I was floating in a void knowing without question I had been killed.
When I saw the stereotypical light at the end of the tunnel I realized what I was seeing was what my eyes were seeing through my slumped over body. In the image I was seeing, I saw my cell phone on the floor of my truck and had a thought that if I could get to the phone I could say goodbye to my family before I pass. With that thought, I was pulled forwards and back into my normal perspective within my skull where I got to experience every degree of pain and shock while bleeding profusely.
Since I had revived and was in a normal state of awareness again, I decided it would be pretty awful to call my loved ones and let them listen to me bleed out so instead, I grabbed for my exposed arteries and squeezed and screamed until help arrived and I got bandaged together enough to ride in the back of the job site ambulance for some 300kms before meeting the real ambulance and getting some gas...
"My car was full of glassware..."
Clipped a barrier in my car. Spun five times and the Pontiac flew backwards up a hill. My car was full of glassware so it was a broken glass tornado. Got out without a scratch and worked a 12 hour shift. May be indestructible.
"I had to be rushed..."
After I had my first daughter, my cervical tear started hemorrhaging. I had to be rushed into surgery, then a bunch of blood was transfused into me. Scared my poor husband. I always joke I would have died in Victorian times.
Wanna jump off the bandwagon? Then keep reading!
U/lit3rallyuseless asked: What doesn't deserve the hate it gets?
​Film and media are probably the biggest contender for being hated on randomly. It may seem harmless, but not always deserved.
Actors are people too!
Actors who played characters that people didn't like.
Really if you hated the character then the actor did a good job (assuming that was the role).
The best cartoons.
nice day summer GIF by PBS KIDSGiphyChild cartoons. Some are actually really good, even as an adult.
I feel like watching cartoons aimed at generally a younger audience allows for you to be reminded of some life lessons, I know I forget some things, or didn't realise others, or it at least partially renews my awareness of something I should still like or appreciate
This doesn't deserve awards, it's just my opinion that is apparently shared by many.
This man did nothing wrong.
Guy Fieri, he literally is the nicest person in the world but since he looks like he was electrocuted by mountain dew people want to saw his head off.
Even before that, I was witness to his other charitable work. A few years back, Santa Rosa was hit by some terrible fires and he showed up at a few shelters and personally cooked up and served some killer buffet food. No cameras, no massive team of PR, just a dude with an assistant to keep him on schedule to hit up other shelters in the area. Guy Fieri legit earned a lot of respect in my book for that.
You know who DEFINITELY doesn’t deserve hate? Animals. They’re just living their best lives, and need to be left alone.​
The best cats.
Black cats.
We got a black cat for the first time last year. I've since formulated the theory that black cats might get some of their reputation from the fact that people can't see them well in the dark and so they seemingly appear out of nowhere and they might be instinctually cautious because they know people have a tendency to kick them while walking in the dark. Our black cat is the sweetest cat I've ever known.
They get a bad rep.
Discovery Sharks GIF by Shark WeekGiphySharks. They are beautiful, complex creatures, deserving of respect and, like any wild animal should be left alone in their natural habitat, but they get this reputation as vicious bloodthirsty monsters. This is only because every shark attack is news, and only then because they are so rare. More people are killed EVERY DAY by mosquitoes than sharks kill in a year.
Any apex predator that has remained evolutionarily unchanged for hundreds of millions of years, whose existance predates TREES, is deserving or our respect and admiration. Shine on, you crazy cartlaginous fish, shine on.
So cute too!
Opossums. They're neat little critters. They eat tons of ticks that carry Lyme disease, (mostly) don't carry rabies because their body temp is too low, and they're the only marsupial native to North America! They get a bad rap because their first defense is to hiss and bare teeth, but failing that, they just play dead.
If you don't have the predisposition to hate them, you'll find they're pretty cute too.
E: this is about /opossums/, the north American species.
Kiwis, I feel for you, but this comment isn't about your possums.
​Hating on other people for just living their lives also seems to be a big contender for things that don’t deserve to be hated on.
This is so true.
Unemployed people. A lot of people genuinely are looking for work and did not want to lose their last job/it was beyond their control (like a layoff) but they get so much hate and called lazy by most people. I know too many unemployed people that are actually really trying hard. They definitely aren't lazy. (Not saying lazy unemployed people don't exist, but to be fair, so do lazy employed people too lol)
Leave the weather man alone!
Fox Raining GIF by Family GuyGiphyMeteorologists. They try their best to predict the weather based on patterns, models, and data. They're not perfect because predicting the weather is insanely difficult. When they get it wrong, I think we should go easy on them. It was probably an outlier result almost no one could have foreseen.
I've seen people get angry over the meteorologists for getting it right. Like they control the weather - it is their fault we are having rain, that kind of BS. Never made sense to me, but hey, I have plenty of relatives I clashed with growing up.
Please stop being d*cks to these people.
Customer service associates.
I hate when customers think that I, the minimum wage person forced to sit there and listen to them yell, am personally responsible for every policy they disagree with. Like, ma'am, if I had that much power and influence, I wouldn't be sitting here on a Saturday evening serving you.
Wholesome and necessary.
People don't deserve hate they give themselves when they are not doing too good at the moment.
I'm in a weird place and I didn't know I needed to read this. Thanks buddy.
If you haven't heard it from anyone else today, I'm proud of you.
It seems like people hate on things simply because they think they're meant to hate them. But you can always be the change and make an effort to stop being an a**hole about certain things.
No matter what though, sometimes haters gonna hate