To ask if you’ve ever had a “near death” experience?

[SinkGirl]

When I was 18 I almost amputated my arm on a bathroom sink - I slipped on a wet floor, landed on the sink which was cracked and broke in half, and I cut my arm down to the bone almost 3/4 of the way around. I lost consciousness quite quickly and lost a terrifying amount of blood - my mum found me in a giant pool of blood and had she not found me then I would have died - but I never experienced anything like the reports of near death experiences. Maybe because I lost consciousness so quickly. Losing consciousness was a bit like going into a tunnel I suppose as my vision gradually reduced to a point and then I was out, but I understand why that would happen.

Just wondering if anyone has experienced this, and what happened? I’m very curious about the scientific reasons for common experiences in this situation. I’ve never spoken to anyone who’s actually experienced it.

My mum passed away three years ago today and for her final 24 hours she was unable to speak and sometimes I wonder what those final hours were like for her - she did seem very peaceful. I’m not at all religious so no comfort to be had there!

Not me but i've read plenty of books about people who have. Very faith inspiring.

Closest I've come was PPH. I lost 3.5 litres.
I wasn't scared and it felt like about ten minutes before they stopped the bleed. Turns out it was a couple of hours.

I was scared afterwards at the thought of my children waiting at home and not going back to them.

But during, I wasn't scared.

Last month my family ( Mum, Dad, my ten month old and I) were in our car on the M5 coming home. It was 5am. I woke up to hear my parents screaming. I just heard skidding and I thought the car was out of control going down a hill. I didn’t look up and out the window. I looked up at my baby and just saw her looking at me, oblivious. I just held her hand and thought ‘ what is going to happen, will happen.’ I lay my head down on her car seat and waited for the bang. It never came and next thing I knew my dad was yelling ‘get it, get out!’ And I was struggling with my daughters car straps. We got out and only when at the side of the road I realised what had happened. We had been pushed along he motorway by a massive lorry. Our tiny car was sideways in front of it. Why it didn’t drive over us we shall never know but someone was looking over us that day. I nearly lost the most precious things in my life that morning. I was in severe shock, I couldn’t cry, but I was just numb. We could have all been killed. It’s making me well up now. It must affect me more than I thought as I saw a damaged car on a tow truck yesterday and I burst into tears and had a mini panic attack. I am so grateful we are still here and just appreciate every day so much.

I don't remember mine. I was breech, I was transverse, I was breech, I was transverse. The midwive kept turning me, I kept returning to transverse. 1967.

My DM ended up having an EMCS. Her CS scar goes down not across. I'm 50 and still have a scar across my left side from the surgeon's urgency to get me out. He cut me too but to me it is the most life affirming thing. He saved both my DM and me. And my scar represents the fact that I'm here and alive.

I fell out of a tree when I was nine. I technically died and was in a coma for four days and in hospital for a month. If I try to remember the fall it's just black and I don't remember anything at all until I was i the high dependency unit after coming out of intensive care.

student26 your post made me well up too.

Lots of inspirational accounts on this thread.

I nearly died after routine gall bladder surgery went wrong. I remember a room filling with people as my blood pressure just got lower and lower and I was in and out of consciousness. The nurse told me they were calling my husband and I asked them not to as they’d wake my kids. Then a dr said I didn’t understand, they HAD to call and I’d be in surgery by the time he arrived so did I want to say anything?
I was very calm and sleepy, I don’t remember feeling anything other than warm and sleepy and calm.

Afterwards, the surgeon offered me counselling, said it was a very scary time as I’d come so close to death. I told him I didn’t need it, that while it must have been terrifying for everyone else, I was so out of it that I didn’t really know what was happening until later, when I was fine! I was very lucky. If I’d been at home that night I’d have died in my sleep.

I’m allergic to anesthetic. It slows my heart too much.... but the issues come in recovery where my body gives up. I have been given adrenaline to restart my heart - I knew I was dying and was very calm it felt like going to sleep. When I heard the dr say - prepare rescus I decided I wasn’t ready to go I apparently terrified the dr by starting shouting «i’m not going to die today» ... I also had similar after my c section - I was losing blood so was tipped back. That sent the anesthetic towards my heart. I remember losing sensation in my head and being unable to speak. As my husband left with a seriously ill baby he heard the medical team request a defrib. A blood transfusion later I was fine. The obstetrician said it was the closet he had been to losing both mother and baby. (Ds was fine after a brief slerp in an incubator!

Not me but my dad during resuscitation. He remembers floating & seeing me in the corner & the team working on him. He says he wasn’t scared.

I’m welling up at these stories. What you’ve all been through is too much to understand. And the brilliance of other people who work so hard to keep everyone alive.

I can close to death and also had that tunnel vision as I went in and out of consciousness. No life flashing before my eyes. I remember feeling incredibly sad rather than scared (which is strange as I'm panicked by the idea of death) that my then, three year old ds would miss me but so proud of the life I'd made for him. I felt oddly calm and resigned to it.

I was hit by a large lorry and my car rolled whilst driving 70mph landing sideways because a tree stopped the rolling.

When the car started to spin everything slowed down and I felt calm and in my head I said ' this is it then this is how I'm going to die' I honestly do not know how on this earth I bounced out the side window straight away and lived with only a few scratches.

Everyone on the motorway pulled over and fire engines and ambulances turned up and were in so much shock that I was just standing there looking at them. I got told off by the ambulance men for doing that and they made me lie down.

When I had my DD by ECS, I was close to death and needed quite a lot of blood, also my XH had to sign to allow a hysterectomy if needed if they couldn't stop the bleeding. My placenta had started to come away so if my DD had been born naturally, or 10 mins later she would've been severely brain damaged or dead. I don't remember any of this as I was under GA

Also, I fell over twice (onto the back of my head), once off a chair and once I was crouching down pulling on a freezer drawer.
The strangest thing was it all went into slow motion, as in it literally happened really slowly for me, was very strange!

to you all. What truly terrifying things you’ve been through.

I was having a routine kidney scan where they put dye through your veins and then a diuretic to make the kidneys work really hard, very quickly. I was allergic to the dye and seconds after they’d injected it into the cannula I had a sensation of whizzing backwards at great speed and thinking ‘I’m dying, I have to tell someone ‘ I was beyond frightened. I couldn’t speak but obviously the radiologist realised something was very wrong and when I woke up there were a lot of doctors stood around the scanning table. There was no feelings of peace or resignation and no visual hallucinations. I think the sensation of whooshing backwards was probably the table being tipped backwards very quickly to get some blood to my head as my bp was in my boots. If that’s a near death experience I don’t rate it at all. Think I got the Poundland version without beloved relatives and Jesus.

Wow, I didn’t expect so many tragic and terrifying stories - I’m so sorry you all had to go through those things. Mine is like a comedy sketch in comparison!

No beloved relatives for me either, and definitely no Jesus.

When I came round, my first thought was “fuck I broke the sink - Mum is going to kill me.... wait, what hurts?”. My ribs really hurt where I’d fallen and I thought I’d cut myself open there. I remember looking down and seeing the blood and shouting for my Mum. She came in muttering what have you bloody done now (I’m quite accident prone) and turned the light on and was confronted with what I can only imagine was one of the most terrifying things you could ever see - your child in a pool of blood, she described it later as “like that bit in Dexter”. I said I think I’ve cut my arm, I lifted it up, blood sprayed up the wall and then I was out again. I could hear my mum screaming down the phone to the ambulance. I remember just wanting to go to sleep. I remember coming round and trying to cover it up with my sleeve as I didn’t want to upset my mum. I remember paramedics running in and one saying “holy shit”, which I took as a bad sign, and then I remember the world just sort of gradually closing in to a tiny point and then disappearing. Next thing I knew I was in hospital. Although I wish I’d stayed unconscious through that - first they told me they’d have to amputate, then they said they were sending me off somewhere else for surgery, then the next thing I knew a doctor and a nurse were stitching it back together in A&E, no anaesthetic, I heard them say they didn’t know how to sew it so that it would stay closed when my arm was straight and bent - why the fuck they did it there themselves I still don’t know to this day but it may be why I have minimal sensation in my arm.

Still, the paramedics saved my life no question, if I hadn’t lived so close to the hospital and it wasn’t the middle of the night I’m not sure I’d be here now. They said if I’d been cut straight across rather than diagonally, I’d have died before my mum could have gotten to me. It’s terrifying to think what can just happen at home on a normal day.

Sink as I see it it's not a competition. It's a comfort for me just speaking to others who kind of get me.
I couldn't care what the mechanism was for how you'd got there (although maternity ones will affect me more) it's the shared experience that others can never have unless they've either been knocking on deaths door or dead and revived.

Oh I totally agree- not a competition in the slightest. It’s just strange as, for me, as terrifying as it was at the time, my experience is now a running joke amongst those who know me. I can’t imagine what other’s here have been through.

I had surgery to cauterise a fiberoid, it involved having a tube inserted into a cut in my groin area.
I have no memory of this, but I sat bolt upright during the surgery (as they were trying to make the cut and insert the tube) my femoral artery was severed and I lost over 4 pints of blood.
I have no recollection at all of sitting up, all I remember is being under anaesthetic and dreaming about my children. I felt aggrieved and I "saw" a memory with dd2, she didn't like nursery when she was 4 and when I took her in for her third day she fell to the floor and screamed for me not to leave her, I have no idea why I dreamt that, but there were other memories too (dd2 was 15 when this happened)They were a mishmash really.

I didn't know what had actually happened until I woke up.

I nearly died of undiagnosed Type 1 diabetes aged 10. I can remember brightly coloured things, like being inside a bouncy ball or on rainbow road (super Mario!) ... Weird!

I ‘died’ as a child and was brought back with the paddles. I remember the whole
thing like it was yesterday. No light, no tunnels, nothing. My dad told me I was obviously going to hell.

I want to read this thread when I’ve finished posting.
There is a big lake type of thing here, lots of people go to walk their dogs. In the summer kids will often play at the beach kind of area. Us kids were going in deeper and deeper. It was almost at my shoulder (must admit I couldn’t swim at the time so wasn’t going to go any deeper!) my friend pushed me, because we were messing about, unbeknownst to us we had actually been on a sort of lip before there was a 20ft drop.

I was fighting trying to get up to the water surface, I remember struggling, really struggling to try and get up, I couldn’t get to the bottom, I couldn’t even get an outstretched arm to the surface. It seemed like I was fighting forever and I just lost strength and a calmness started to come over me, like a type of sleepiness maybe? I was letting go. I knew I was going to die, not an anxious type of I’m going to die, but a literal, this is it. It was just like going to sleep. The one thing that still sticks with me is there was an area of green that came at that point. The colour of green that paramedics wear except it was so bright. It’s the only thing at that time that I could notice.
Then I felt an almighty push. I didn’t know what it was but I was able to stand. My mum had seen me go under, she ran in (also couldn’t swim) And she saved me. She had no idea how she did it, but she did.

No one could ever tell me what the green was. I couldn’t understand why the paramedics didn’t see me or my mum, everyone else there told me there weren’t any paramedics or anything with the green I described. 17 years on I can still remember the exact way I felt and cannot understand the green.

My DP and I had hired a buggy whilst in Santorini to explore the island. We had it for a few days and on our final day of hiring it we decided to go to the highest point of the island and look at the view. On our way back down we were approaching a blind corner and my DP started to lose control, our speed was increasing and the brakes weren't working. It seemed to all go in slow motion, I remember turning to him and the look of sheer terror on his face as we neared the edge of the cliff will forever be ingrained in my brain. There was a barrier along the road edge but we were heading straight for a bit that had a gap. I genuinely thought this is it, when suddenly he somehow managed to flip the buggy onto its side. I'm not really sure what happened next but I flew out and landed on the road in front of an oncoming car which emergency stopped a few feet away from me. My DP rolled down the hill a bit in the buggy. I for sure thought he was dead and he thought the same about me because I'd come out the seat since my seatbelt failed. Luckily we were both wearing helmets, which were totally smashed to pieces, if we didn't have them on I'm sure we would have died.

It all felt very surreal and at times I felt I was watching the experience play out and not really part of it. It's made me a much more cautious person and I'm very nervous near cliff edges and driving on roads with a sheer drop. I had a panic attack when we went along one recently.

hungryhippo90 according to Terrence McKenna, history ends in green.

Vitalogy- I think I’m being thick, I don’t understand.

hungryhippo90 No at all. I'm not sure either . I've not listened to that particular lecture of his yet, it's on YouTube, 7hrs long I'll have to break it down in parts.