When did your world go quiet?

[PalominoOrGreyOrChestnutOrBay]

inspired by a tiktok trend recently, just thought it might be an interesting thread. I’m a regular poster not a journalist or anything like that (MNHQ can verify!).

When did your world go quiet? Basically, what was a time you got a fright and time seemed to stop or go quiet?

mine was I was on my horse and he decided to rear up, over concrete ground, and I felt him wobble back. As soon as I felt that first tilt backwards everything sort of went quiet and it was like an out of body experience (not a good one!). I couldn’t hear anyone around. I just remember the last thing I thought was along the lines of this is it im about to die and it was like everything was in slow motion. Luckily it was all ok but that split second was easily the scariest moment of my life and my world completely stopped.

So, when did your world go quiet?

I was on a small plane that plunged on take off off an island - we dropped like a stone but picked back up again. Definitely felt like that was it for me!

See my user name.

Certainly not in the league of other horrendous events other posters have had, but when my dad was at home dying from cancer, in a syringe driver, when it was my turn to sit with him, I turned my back for literally about 10 seconds and in that time he passed away, it was as though he didn't want us mothering over him... Time did seem to stand still as I turned back round and realised he had died, just slipped away, and my brain just couldn't process what I was looking at.

When my then 2 year old was struggling to breathe and the ambulance was on its way. I honestly though I was going to lose him. The phone handler kept talking to me but they sounded like they were in slow motion, everything felt surreal (he was ok in the end, but we had a few more of those scares until he got his asthma under control properly)

When they tested my reactions whole I was in labour with severe pre-eclampsia. I felt my leg kick so fucking hard from it and instantly the tone in the room totally changed. The way the student Dr looked at the consultant with panic in her eyes. The way the consultant took a breath and spoke much more calmly and confidently than he done previously. How everyone looked to the two of them frozen, waiting for one of them to make the call.

It was a few seconds probably before the consultant told everyone to prep theatre for a C-section, but it felt forever.

When school rang me to say my dc had attempted to take their life at home the night before, it had failed obviously, but we needed to get them and go to a and e... I felt like a void in a & e as they listed what they had done that evening and it was a case of so many times we had been a hair's breadth from losing them, it was just a case of there but for the grace of.... I felt like I was watching us in the room listening to it and just felt hollowed out

When DD was 3 or 4 we were walking home from the shop, there's a busy road we cross and then have a small section of grass to cross and then another road (quieter but people still speed along it.)

DD was normally so good at always holding my hand crossing a road or just waiting at the kerb but that day we crossed the busy one and halfway across the grass she let go of my hand and just ran across the grass and didn't stop at the next kerb.

Time slowed right down for me, I couldn't move and I was yelling her name but it was like that was in slow-mo as well. All I could see was my child flying ahead right into the path of a 4x4 coming down the road.

Thankfully the driver stopped and I was finally able to move again, I scooped her up and crossed the road, I tried to wave thanks to the driver but they drove off before I had the chance between holding her and the shopping bag.

DD is 18 now and I still feel a small amount of panic when I walk that way, thinking of what could have been and I'll be eternally grateful to the driver for being careful along there unlike so many.

1. On the back of a boyfriend's motorbike, watching a car pull out in front of us, with no way of him avoiding it. We were both OK, bike was written off. (Car driver also ok and not remotely concerned about what she'd done, walked off because she was late meeting a friend, leaving her car in the middle of the junction 🙄 )

1. When my brother's friends knocked at my parents house, and told me one of our friends had died suddenly of meningitis, 48 hours after I'd last seen him.

When we received DH’s unexpected terminal diagnosis.

And 3.5 years later in hospital when the young A&E Dr said ‘It’s going to be tonight’. Despite everything, it took me a while to realise what he meant.

10 minutes later he died, and silence was replaced with my guttural howl.

When my son was choking and I had to do first aid on him

So much trauma on this thread, sorry to read what many of you have experienced

When the sonographer said she couldn't find a heartbeat and I laughed about it because I thought she couldn't find it because of my fat belly..... then she gently stroked my arm and said it again, I'm so sorry, I can't find a heartbeat......

When my 3 year old fell into a deep river and sank. Worse I just froze!

Ooo. Really similar. I was on a quad bike when working on a farm in my early twenties. I misjudged the steepness of a hill I was climbing and the quad bike load contact with the ground and started to tip backwards. I thought I was going to end up on my back/neck with the bike on top of me. Somehow it managed to tip forwards again.

When I got a phone call to say my mum had died, I'd been sitting with her ten minutes earlier and was on my way home. Everything just stopped and I can't even now remember much about the rest of that day.

When my foot missed the edge of a pedestal I was (stupidly) dancing on in a nightclub. I wasn't drunk, just clumsy. I started falling off, the disco lights were flashing and people were dancing all around. It felt like slow motion as I went down. I remember thinking 'this is going to hurt'. I hit the ground (can't really remember the impact). Next thing I was on the floor and I was aware of a lot of people still dancing but looking on curiously.

I broke my arm and badly twisted my ankle. That's the only time I had the 'slowed down time' feeling.

I was in the room when an a&e doctor told my sister that the cancer had spread to her brain. I felt like the world had stopped but I was still spinning.

@Darbs76 I assume it was a disassociation with the pain I remember it so clearly and I felt completely calm.

I had my first ever car crash. I really thought I would stop. I thought that my life would flash before me. It didnt. Everything went very quiet and it seemed slow. I only came around when the person I hit was shouting at me to get out of the car.

@bloodywhitecat I so sympathise. My moment was when I heard my son was dead. I'm sorry for your loss

When I had a huge post birth haemorrhage - I felt like it was the end and I was staring across the room at my newborns thinking is never see them again and screaming. Then everything started to go blurry and I could hear my scream but like it was coming from someone else then silence. 😭

When I was about 13 I was crossing the road with friends, stupidly I walked out in front of a car. The car stopped, but I absolutely had the time standing still, everything going quiet feeling. Can still remember it all so clearly.

Yes accident on my scooter - car pulled out into me. I seemed to see it happen in slow mo.

Finding my toddler at the bottom
of the swimming pool, still alive thank god, after ripping off her very secure armbands. I was just looking for sunscreen at the time in the bag on the sunbed next to her. It was literally seconds. Terrifying. I held her in my arms and couldn’t let her go.

I was poisoned by an accidental morphine overdose In hospital and was so close to death I actually welcomed that option. Despite leaving two small children at home.

Hearing the screams of the mother who lost her little girl to drowning. I can still see the small pink sandals by the door. 27 years later.

When my then preschooler escaped in M&S and seemingly vanished into thin air and it took an age to find her. A woman told me she was hiding in a rail of clothes, I couldn’t even speak to thank her.