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 think your brain reprocessing the accident puts in slow motion.

I do not believe fatal instant accidents happen in slow motion.

Mine was when I slipped slightly off a curd as a bus was passing, I was leaning on the curb rocking for some reason, I was only 12 and it still gives me the shivers.

I felt it passing my body with centimetres to spare.

Your brain speeds up as a survival mechanism, so everything happening outside appears to happen in slow motion. Time itself doesn't actually change. I've had it happen several times, once when I was attacked on the street and kicked unconscious.

Many years ago I had a bad car accident on the M1, Everything just went into slow motion as my car went across the front of a huge lorry and then bounced off the other side and I ended up facing the wrong way on the hard shoulder. I was just kind of waiting for death. Amazingly no injuries bar a slight bruise from the seatbelt.

I've had two of these moments. The first was when I had a PPH after my second daughter was born. My bp was dropping and I started to feel sick and faint. I could hear the theatre staff talking about the meds and fluids they were pumping into me and then 4 of them where standing two on either side of me holding something across my stomach to press down on my womb to try and get the bleeding to stop. The second was over 6 years ago when I was wheeled off to theatre for an emergency surgery at about 9.30 in the evening. My two daughters had just left and I felt so ill I was afraid I would die during the operation and as I'm a single parent I was petrified that they'd be left on their own. My haemoglobin had fallen from 16 to 8 at that stage and they had just given me two units of blood before the surgery. The next morning the surgeon came round and said everything he saw was bleeding!!! I didn't know it at the time but he had also removed concerning (for cancer) large lymph nodes, my uterus, tubes, ovaries, cervix. So everything basically. Luckily I have nine lives and I'm still here although I'm awaiting further surgery for a disease that was discovered incidentally after I had a second DVT three weeks after the operation!

When my phone rang on a random day with the news that my DH (now late) had been killed. He died on holiday in another country. The 5hr flight to get to him was the longest flight of my life. I never got to say goodbye.

When I choked on some mangtoute.

The worst one was sitting my baby on the sofa next to me when he had a fever. He wasn't moving much and I thought his eyes weren't focusing.

Suddenly, he started seizing and going blue.

I remember grabbing him, yanking his clothes off and taking him outside in the snow to try and cool him down. I have no idea how long it took for the ambulance to come but it felt like forever. I think it was ten minutes but time had stopped.

I've been through some horrendous things, even thought I was dying myself, but nothing was as terrifying as thinking my baby was dying in my arms.

This was in the '80s in the US. There was a (well known) serial killer on the loose in the general area I lived in, it was on the news every night. I lived in a 'back house' and one night I (foolishly) went out after dark to check my mailbox which was located on the street so I had to walk through my landlady's dark back yard and down the unlit driveway. Halfway through the yard I heard rustling in the bushes by the fence and some snapping of branches. I was absolutely paralyzed with fear. I couldn't move, couldn't even scream. Time stood still until I realized that no one was coming out of the bushes, it was probably no more than a few seconds but seemed like a lifetime. Then suddenly I was 'free'. I turned on my heel and ran back into my house. I don't think I ever checked the mail after dark after that. It could wait til morning!

What was truly scary for me was the realization that if I had been in danger I would have been powerless, a deer in the headlights.

My mother died suddenly, her partner knew and told me to get to the hospital. I knew it was a heart attack and thought there might be an operation.

The doctor took me into the family room and started talking but I don't remember hearing anything just thinking I need to see my mum, was she OK? I said "OK" after he finished talking and the penny hadn't yet dropped. He looked at me and realised I'd not taken it in, then I did hear him say "I'm sorry". Everything went cold and numb and got quiet, any hospital noises became really faint.

Another time I was choked (teens messing around play fighting like idiots) and everything went white and very peaceful. I now believe when you slip away that's what it's like, just a white, quiet blankness.

When the Itu consultant told me he was going to ring my partner to come in as he didn't think I had long left

I was on holiday with my family in Turkey. We were all very naive and went along with the scratchcard people. It was a time share ploy but obviously we didn't know that back then.
We got put in a taxi to the meeting and once they'd done the pitch etc we got some free tat and were put in a taxi back to our accommodation.
The journey seemed to last for hours and I thought we were all going to be taken somewhere and killed.

Driving at night though tropical north Queensland, in flood season. DC was extremely sick and we needed to get to the nearest hospital which was hours away. The choppers don't come out if the storms are too bad, so we felt like we had no choice. It would be fair to say that we took a risk driving in that weather.

Another car was speeding through flood water on the other side of the road. Soaked our windscreen just as we were going around a bend. We couldn't see anything. Car spun out.

Amazingly, we didn't hit anything and everyone was ok. The whole thing happened in about 10 seconds, but it felt like time slowed down. I know I screamed as we were spinning, and I'm sure the tires must have been screeching, but I don't think I could hear it. It really did go quiet. I just remember thinking that we were all going to die.

When the car stopped moving and we all realised that we were ok, it was like someone had turned the sound back on and time went back to normal. Very eerie.

Oh I never realised other people experienced this too. I remember a moment as a child, walking barefoot along a small stream, with my family only a few metres away and realising I couldn't hear or speak for what was probably only a few seconds but felt like minutes.

When I was in a high dependency ward in hospital after having a major allergic reaction to some medication causing burns and blisters all over my body, I was given ketamin (human variety I assumed?!) to handle pain whilst being turned for a dressing change. It was 100% the drugs but I remember floating out of my body up to the ceiling and thinking I was going to die. I could hear myself screaming but it was like listening to someone else.

Another time when at my 12 week scan and heard 'I'm sorry but your baby has died) ...same again, I didn't feel like I was in my own body but could hear my own crys.

When I did a terrible uturn when I was a young and inexperienced driver, I still have no idea how it ended up being all fine, scariest moment ever

When I had massive internal bleeding after c section and they were rushing me to the CT room, I asked the junior doctor who came with me and was in the surgery what have they done to me

When I got out of the car at Mums and Dads house, there was 2 ambulances and a responder vehicle outside. I walked into through the door and felt Mum downstairs. So went in the living room expect paramedics but there was just Dad. And he told me Mum was gone. No idea how long I just stood there.

When I was about 21 and still very naive I almost got abducted. I got to a venue early, it was still closed and locked but very dark and there was a weird guy hanging outside. He started talking to me and I was too polite/stupid not to respond. He rapidly had me in a corner, arm barring my exit, leaning in. There was a car behind us. The whole street was dark. I remember this like it was yesterday. It turned out someone was inside the venue and saw what was going on, turned on all the lights, slammed the door open and came out to ask if everything was alright and the guy said yeah and went away. I truly that was it.

Honestly, never.
This is a really interesting thread though, and I'm sorry about the trauma suffered by many

Car crash when I was 14. I remember the car just spinning in slow motion. According to my brother I was shouting "shit shit shit" as we span (and we never swore aelu d our parents!) But I have absolutely no notion of that and only remember slow motion silence until the impact with the central reservation.
All okay thankfully minus whiplash and some long lasting anxiety when I wake suddenly on a car journey.

This is heartbreaking, I'm so sorry for your loss.

I'm so sorry for so many of your losses and awful experiences.

I get a mini version all the time, pretty much every week, but it's always been much smaller stuff - I'm about to drop something or fall over or make a massive mistake. I get that echoing silence and "frozen, everything moving in slow motion" feeling, then the thumping sensation and time speeding up again afterwards.

Funnily enough the few times I've almost died it hasn't kicked in.

I'm hoping that you are all
In a better place now

I'm sorry

When a horse threw me and then did a little tap dance on my back, fracturing my spine.

When I rolled my car down a hill.

Those seconds lasted hours.

Btw I'm much more sensible now and don't stand in dark places alone or give the time of day to weird men who persist in talking to me. But even though I knew it intellectually, until that moment when he slammed his hand across and pinned me into a corner, I never really believed there were men out there who would just...abduct young women. Or I believed it but I never thought it could happen to me, or that a man I encountered would be one of them.

Well there are.