My number one rule in life has always been "trust your gut". Your body and brain know you better than anyone, and are able to warn you when something just isn't right. Your gut is there to warn you- listen to it. Here are a few examples, courtesy of the kind people over at Reddit.
u/IChronoI asked: Hey Reddit, when did your "something's not right here" gut feeling ever save you?
A good save.
I went to hospital with shortness of breath and my heart racing. They did a chest x-ray, blood test for blood clots, ECG, and a few other tests but all came back normal. After observing me overnight everything still looked good, oxygen saturation was perfect, my heart rate was still a bit elevated but nothing too crazy, and it seemed that it was likely leftover symptoms from a bad virus that I'd had a week or so earlier.
The ER doctor asks me how I would feel if they sent me home and I just had a bad feeling about it all. I told him as such and that I had no real basis for it except that I just felt off about it. He said fair enough, let's try one more test and if that comes back negative then we'll send you up to General Medicine and see if they can track something down.
That test was a VQ scan that found despite all other tests showing no results for blood clots, I actually had a whole bunch of them in both lungs. I ended up with a diagnosis of unprovoked bilateral pulmonary embolisms and am on blood thinners for life.
Super grateful both for the bad feeling and the ER doctor who was willing to listen to it!
Stupid deer.
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I used to just drive around country roads when I would feel stressed out or sad as a way to just get away and listen to music. One evening I was driving with my best friend in the car and we're on a gravel road that has a huge hill. We were driving towards the sunset but it was winter and the light was fading fast. As the car started down the hill I had this moment where I thought to myself "my brights should be on" and I flicked them on and at the bottom of this super steep hill stood 6 deer on the road.
I slammed on the brakes and the car turned sideways and skidded to a stop like 4 feet from the deer. Those stupid deer didn't even move, they just stared into the passenger side of my car and my best friend pointed at them and said "hey, deer". The car was fine, we were fine, and Bambi was all good. I don't drive around like that anymore.
Glad the parents listened.
I was learning violin when I was about 10 from an instructor at my local music shop. I got the weirdest feeling from him even though he didn't do anything out of the ordinary. I wanted to vomit every time I looked at him, especially his hands. After 4 lessons I told my parents that I had a terrible feeling about him and I never wanted to go back. Luckily, they listened and didn't make me ever go to him again.
A few years later he was arrested for assaulting multiple of his students. I have no idea how I knew something was off. He never did or said anything but I just felt it.
Poor pup.
I woke up from a deep sleep at like 2AM during a winter storm, something wasn't right... I immediately went looking for my senior dog and couldn't find her anywhere in the house. My roommates had had let her out for a walk and closed door. I ran to the front of the house and found her laying on the welcome mat, she was hardly breathing and covered in snow... She had been outside alone for at the very least 5 hours.Good intuition.
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I was walking out of a grocery store when I saw this kid about to cross the road. Something came over me and I yanked him back onto the sidewalk. Not even a second later a truck came flying past. He was probably around 7 or 8ish.
No more late night strolls.
When I was in college, I lived in a sketchy part of Chicago (Humboldt Park/Logan Square before gentrification).
I liked to take late night strolls, even when I was living in that neighborhood as a 20-year-old woman. Yeah, I know. Pretty dumb of me.
One night, I was feeling stressed out so I embarked on one of my late night strolls.
I was walking along a somewhat busy road. Cars were zooming past me. Pretty normal. I wasn't paying much attention because I was too wrapped up in whatever was stressing me out that night. Suddenly, a chill shot up my spine. Hypervigilance washed over me and I became more alert than I had ever been. Something was wrong. Someone was watching me.
I quickly spotted a car. It was driving in the opposite direction, a little slower than usual. It was too dark for me to see anyone inside the car, and the car was pretty unassuming. But I still knew something was off. They were watching me. I just knew.
The car drove past me and then made a u-turn. Now it was right behind me, creeping along the curb.
Luckily, there was a Walgreens a few blocks ahead. I started walking faster, and the car eventually sped past me and disappeared into a corner. I somehow knew I wasn't safe yet, so I still sprinted to Walgreens.
I told the security guard what happened, and we both went outside. The car was parked up the street, about 50-100 feet away. The security guard was a big guy who looked intimidating. He marched toward the car, and the car immediately backed up, made a u-turn, and then booked it out of there. The security guard called the cops, and they drove me home.
I never took a late night stroll again.
My gut made me more alert, but it was really the security guard who saved my life. I'm positive that if he wasn't there that night, something bad would've happened to me. I wish I could find that security guard to thank him.
A freak accident.
Not me but my science teacher, when she was a teenager she was standing near some lights at a pedestrian crossing with her and her friend. Very chill but out of nowhere she had this gut feeling that both of them had to move.
They moved just a couple metres away and the next moment a car had hit another car and had hit one of the street electricity utility poles and it had fell and exploded (minor explosion enough distance away that it didn't hurt the girls) exactly where they were. One of the wires had also snapped and hit it exactly where they were standing as well.
They basically were in a scene of car wreckage and snapped wires and electricity explosions and the pole collapse. Just real insane. If the pole had missed them, the wire would have hit them and if not that then most likely the cars.
That gut feeling of moving away saved both of them. I remember this story so clearly from high school science class because it was such a WTF, pity I only paid attention to these things and not actually science hehe
That's terrifying.
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My sister since she was about 5 was always obsessed with Tsunamis and would always ask my dad every night before she went to sleep if there would be a tsunami that night (we lived on a beach)
About 5 years later when our family was holidaying in Samoa an earthquake struck at about 6am. It was only a dull low rumble but went on for over a minute. Everyone at the resort woke up and went outside for a few minutes then went back to bed. My sister having been obsessed with Tsunamis ran down to look at the water and noticed the sea going out and saved a lot of lives including my own.
There was about a minute from her noticing till the Tsunami hit. Luckily for us there was a cliff right behind the resort if not a lot more people would have been killed.
So something like a gut feeling 5 years in the making
That is horrifying.
My mom and her entire family were saved from dying from Carbon Monoxide poisoning by her dad. He left for work, got a weird feeling and drove back home. Everyone in the house was unconscious, and he had to drag or carry them all outside one by one. They all survived.
It could happen to anyone.
I went out with my best friend on new years last year and were having drinks with her friends when I realized I was out of cigarettes. I left for a few minutes to walk over and grab a pack and ended up talking to a homeless guy for a while, and when I went over to the entrance of the bar she was outside and said something mean to me for no reason and walked off. I was confused so I decided it would be good if I took a walk to let her cool off and then figure out what she was upset about.
I was going to walk down the street for a bit but something told me to turn left, walking behind the bar and then turning to the side of the bar when I see a girl laying down on the sidewalk and people walking by her. As I'm walking over to help I realize its my friend and she's not very conscious. She was probably drugged while I was getting smokes and who knows what would've happened if I hadn't decided to go that way!
Scares the sh*t out of me.
Earthquakes are no joke.
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This also wasn't too bad of a something doesn't feel right, but an ehh it can wait till later in the morning.
November 30, 2018. Me, my husband and our kids drove down to Anchorage, Alaska. (We live in Palmer about an hour away and my husband's work is in Anchorage). We left at 7 am because we had an event at 5 in Wasilla, closer to Palmer but an hour out of Anchorage, so he needed time to drive back out.
The reason me and my kids drove down was because one of my sisters and her family were down and had a hotel with a pool (luxury to most people here). So that day we planned on buying swimsuits for the kids so they can go and swim.
As soon as we make it to my husband's work I contemplated whether I should head to Walmart then or later to buy swimsuits for my kids. I decided on later as I was still tired.
As some of you may know, we had a 7.2 earthquake that morning at 8:29 am. I watched as the trees sitting in front of me swayed back and forth, same with the huge lights in the parking lot. I looked over to watch all surrounding buildings swaying.
Had I headed out when I wanted to I would have been in Walmart with three children under the age of 5 with the shelves flying everywhere. Idk if anyone has seen pictures or videos, but the Fred Meyer Video made my stomach churn as I thought of us being in Walmart at the same time.
Had my husband left at his regular time that day he would have been near one of the larger road destructions.
That's devastating.
Wife called me while I was at work, just to say she was home from her night shift and planning to go to bed.
She had worked night shift for years and never called me just to say she was home and going to bed before. She also sounded weirdly detached on the call. I asked her if she was okay, she said yes — just really sleepy.
I got a weird feeling and told her I was going to leave work and come home. She told me I didn't need to, I said okay...and then I left work and rushed home anyway.
Found a suicide note taped to the garage door.
I got to her in time, rushed her to the ER, and got her the help she needed. A week of inpatient psych, followed by changes to medications and doctors.
This was about five months ago, and she is so much better now.
Always trust your gut.
Not mine, my old 5th grade teacher.
One day she was driving down the freeway on her way to the store, she was in the far left lane, traffic was light. Then she said she heard a voice saying to turn out of the lane, she ignored it and it went on a few more times before she finally gave into it and turned into the very next lane to her left. A few minutes later a car is speeding down the lane she was just in going the opposite direction. She had said she never listen to her gut before and after that day she said she doesn't doubt her gut for a second.
Always use your EpiPen!!!
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Accidentally ate something I'm allergic to at a family get together. Never been one to use my EpiPen immediately (I know, stupid), so I just took a bunch of Benadryl in the hopes it'd be enough to curb the anaphylaxis that was starting. Luckily, it was. After that ordeal, I asked my father to give me a ride home so I could rest. At this point my only symptoms were intense nausea and cramps. Half way home, I get a "sense of impending doom" and immediately say "go to the ER."
He obviously asks why, and I just say "I don't really know, but something's wrong." He protests a bit, but I insist. Sure enough, probably like 30 minutes later I have a horrible relapse reaction, and end up stuck in the ER for roughly 8 hours because of it. Needless to say, never will I ever ignore that "sense of impending doom."
Never trust a white van.
When I was 13, I was walking home from school with my little sister and my best friend. We lived in a extremely safe neighbourhood, where nothing ever happened. While we were walking, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. It was a white delivery van parked about 100 meters from us. Something about that van irked me and made me feel sick to the stomach. I told my friend and my sister to walk a bit faster.
About 10 minutes later I turn around and the same van is there. At this point my gut is screaming at me to run, so I grab the others and we sprint towards the mall, now that we are off the road, we are safe.
The next day we hear in the news that there has been several cases of vans trying to grab children and kidnap them. Two kids from a nearby school are missing. If I hadn't trusted my gut feeling, the girls and I probably would've been kidnapped.