Close meetings with The Grim Reaper

My close shave that saw my mum die. A week later was made redundant and a week after that, another family member died.

I suppose I’ve come close twice in my life.

In my early 20s (still living with my parents, luckily) came down with meningitis, all I remember of it is the pain in my head and lying in bed for days. By all accounts my parents were sizing me up for my box.
My mother to this day claims that it was the suggestion by the doctor (although I don’t recall it) that I needed a lumber pucture that brought me out of it – I abhor needles.

The second time was during the mid 80s (I’d be about 33/35), coming home from an air show along a dual carriageway (at about 68mph – best fuel consumption speed), miles of nice straight road ahead of me. Next thing I know there’s a right hand bend right in front of me, fortunately I managed to lean into it (did I mention that I was riding a motorcycle) and pulled into the lay-by just around the bend, got off the bike shaking like mad and sat down on the kerb, put my head against the saddle and shut my eyes. How far I had travelled whilst asleep on my motorcyle I don’t know, what had woken me was the throttle slowly closing in the loose grip of my hand causing the bike to judder whilst doing about 15-20 mph in 6th. I woke about an hour later and continued home without further incident.

Due to still having 4 brothers also having motorcyles (I was the eldest and last to buy one, and then only because I couldn’t afford a car) who were never keen on speed limits (I also had another who’d died in an RTA in 1980), I never told my parents until about 5 years ago, mother wasn’t best pleased.

One thing that annoys me when sleep whilst driving is mention on radio/tv it is always stated that one gets warnings of tiredness, whilst I do get them sometimes these days, on that occasion I had no warning at all, if I had I’d have found a place to pull over earlier.

Arnt they just lovely,im still still sporting a burn from a beauty that blew me on my butt from a unterminated live left in a wall cavity.
i hope your ok babe.

A massive electric shock 2 days ago :rolleyes::mad:

To quote ‘Life of Brian’-

Ooh you lucky b@stard!
🙂

Did have that feel about it:o

I clearly remember picking lots of bits of plants out from the bike, I swear there was only just room for the bike the to get through, plus I had to bank very slightly to perform this momentous stunt.

Being young (about 21) at the time, I thought it was pretty neat:cool: but a day or so later, when riding on the same bit of road at a far slower pace, I realised how closer call it had been & became a bit more cautious.

To quote ‘Life of Brian’-

Ooh you lucky b@stard!
🙂

Many near misses with Mr Death, all involving motorcycles & excessive speed.

Maybe the closest of calls was when the driver of a Ginsters (taste of Cornwall my ar5e:rolleyes:) delivery truck decided to do a 45 point turn on the coast road on a blind bend, while there was I, merrily barrelling on my Suzuki GSX1100 at a reasonable pace (for a race track:o)

I had a couple of options, one involved just crashing into the side of the truck (not an attractive proposition) or trying to go behind the back of the wagon that was touching the hedge & pray that it was up against flora & fauna that contained no granite boulders.
I took the latter option, which saved the Cornwall County Council trimming the hedge that year, escaped with no damage, stayed on the bike & bar a sore leg where the fox gloves had given it a jolly good seeing to, I was totally unscathed.

All good character building stuff:D

It’s always been my way to be honest RH. But perhaps now I’m single again that ‘sod it, I’m doing this’ side of me’s not as suppressed as it maybe was.

I’ve always said ‘you’re a long time cold in the ground’ after all… 😉

I DO like your attitude, and empathise with it – is it because you are now single…….? As you say, one day it will be flying a bit too low to be avoided and the lives are used up.

Oh yes…
My local GP tried to kill me when I was 5 too, when he mistook a major infection and failure of my left kidney for ‘growing pains’. Only a persistent arguementitive mum and a more competent GP passing the surgery door and overhearing the ‘frank exchange of views’ persuaded him otherwise- I was blue-lighted to hospital and on the theatre table within a couple of hours.

The GP in question was ‘retired’ soon after, and I’m a kidney short…

Oh crap, that’s ANOTHER life used up 🙁

To me there’s little point dwelling on it, the man with the scythe will come one day and we’ll just be that little bit too slow ducking.
Till that day comes, just say sod it, flip him the finger and get on with enjoying life!!!

Yes, I was just thinking, reading this thread, that we are but a microcosm of the big, bad world so how many people, just in the UK, have flirted with death and lived to tell the tale? Thousands, probably……….

More lucky bunnies it seems… 🙂

Accidently walking across a minefield 1982 behind Sapper Hill and Tumbledown. A Rapier unit watching through binos betting how far before impending explosion,
they all lost, I made it through! ( the fence defining it had fallen over ) My Sgt at the time ( who years later worked for me ) tried giving me a b*ll*cking, instead ended up buying me a beer:D (Blue skies, Dave Elliott)

Baz

Back in 2005, I made a doctors appointment as I wasn’t feeling too well. I had a pain in my lower stomach.

He referred me to the hospital. They did various scans and tests, including shoving a camera up the one place you really don’t want it to go. All the doctors looked a bit upset and told me if I hadn’t visited the Doc’s I would have ended up having a catheter and bag fitted for the rest of my life. Not groovy…

“You need surgery.” he says.

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

So that kind of put me on the back foot… but work were quite good about it. I had the surgery, and had a week off to recover, then shortly after something inside of me went “pop”.

I started bleeding and it didn’t stop. After an hour of waiting for it to calm down (and it didn’t) I phoned A&E and they got an ambulance out to me. On arriving at the hospital, it all started going a bit wrong…

The bleeding was internal, and so it didn’t hurt. Until the guys at A&E decided the best way to stop it was to put a catheter in me and tape me up with a load of dressings. This forced the blood to go somewhere else which hurt like hell.

12 hours later and I’m under observation, and still pumping blood out. Not good. Repeated attempts to ask the staff what will happen when I’ve no more left fell on deaf ears. Apparently; the Doctors know best. I did the maths based on how much I’d lost (the little absorbent pads tell you on the label how much they’ll hold) and how much your body holds, and figured things would get interesting very soon.

3am, Sunday morning, in a hospital bed. My head feels like its fizzing and I feel sick. The room looks like its at the little end of a telescope, and I’m looking in the big end. I rang the nurse bell.A young nurse comes up, and I tell her I’m feeling odd; sort of a 50/50 between passing out or throwing up. She then surprised the hell out of me.

She turned on the light, pushed some button above my head and ran off! Things went black then, but I remember being distinctly annoyed at being abandoned.

I woke up and there must have been about 15 people round the bed. I was on on my side, shaking, retching, with various fluids going into me. My heart was going like the clappers, but there wasn’t much pressure on the clock.

My parents had been rung, and told in no uncertain terms, to make haste for the Hospital if they wanted a quick chat before I checked out.

Turns out, the hospital had nearly let me bleed to death. During the op, they had gone a bit deep, and just relied on my body to heal itself. It very nearly had… but then the strain had been too much.

What saved me was the low blood pressure when I ran low. Where the wound was inside me got the chance it needed to start healing, as there was very little pressure to keep it open. What annoyed me further was the doctors wanted to go in me again to see what had gone wrong. They were told very strongly to leave me alone.

It took me the better part of a couple of months to come back to any kind of strength after that.

Far too close for my liking… cheers NHS.

Rich

Nope, never got round to it RH… :rolleyes:

Hey Ho! 🙂

Blue – just read your account. Sh*t! Well, we’re lucky you are still around to irritate us – keep doing so!;):) But you did order your back copy, I assume…….

OK this will sound weird…was working at a guitar store in Melbourne and had a late shift shifting some new Boss pedal shipments we had got. Anyway i was the last one to leave the store at 1 am.

I went out and looked to hitch a ride to Uni where i was staying, since there was a 24 hrs McDonalds on the same street loads of Uni people used to come there at night. Anyway a girl stopped and i asked if i could be left till the Uni, she mumbled yes and I got in. She started driving slowly into the right lane and looked a bit off. I asked if she was OK and she said yes and suddenly out of bloody nowhere ripped the accelerator of the Skyline and just flew through 4 red lights at about 140 kmph. She stopped at my Uni for me to get off….i was bloody pale as white with fear, 15 odd km in 10 mins flat!! While i was getting out of the car i noticed needles and other drug related tools near her feet.

I requested her to not drive, she told me to ******* off and drove away like a maniac.

I kid you not i saw all kinds of things like my past life, my future everything in those 10 mins. :eek::eek:

One Monday at work, I had a painful belly and didn’t think too much of it. I was very lethargic, went home at lunchtime for a 30 mins snooze and to put on some bigger trousers. I went back into work and stopped by the gents to splash some water on my face and as I stood upright I passed out.

I came to a while later on the toilet floor, very hot, sweating buckets and not able to get myself up. A visitor to the building found me, and went off to find a first aider etc. Somebody else came in, asked if I was Ok, I remember saying something about help being on the way. This guy then stepped over me, used a urinal and then left (without washing his hands :eek:!). I was taken to hospital where it was found that I had a burst appendix, early stages of peritonitis, and the acid leaking from the appendix had perforated my bowel and it was leaking, giving me a nasty kidney infection as well as some other side effects.

I was laid up a fair while and was told that the thing had burst maybe two weeks before, had it been left a couple of more hours then I would have been in serious trouble. The damage caused further complications and I needed another major op a few years later. That was planned and “known” about, but the appendix thing was scary at the time! I woke up near midnight, tube down my nose, various drips etc, 36 staples in my stomach and I had to cancel my stag week-end.

The guy who stepped over me still works here, I’ve never been able to bring myself to ask him……. but the story about it has been told a few times!

Just a few weeks ago, out shopping with Mrs C, I came within a whisker of passing a favourable comment on another woman’s backside.

Well, I suppose we all have our own idea of the grim reaper but this is not one that had previously occurred to me.;)

It may be a little trivial after some of the previous postings, but one of my ‘set trousers to brown’ moments was warbird-related. It was around ’78-’79 and I was living with my father in Coventry. It was the summer holidays, and I’d spent much of it, as ever, up at Baginton hangar-ratting and watching the preparations and arrivals for the big Coventry Air Day. Dad was a press photographer, and as always for the display had obtained ‘access all areas’ press passes for his team, which naturally included me.

Come the day of the display I was in ‘plane-mad-kid heaven, getting to sit into just about every cockpit (the Mosquito impressed me the most – and one of the team got a flight in it), asked to act as tip-walker on the Sopwith Tabloid, meeting Hans Van DerWerf, Starfighter display pilot and my hero at the time, and best of all, being allowed on the runway during the displays. One of the aircraft displaying that day was the B-17, piloted by Don Bullock, a name with which I am sure the majority of Forum members are familiar. The display was as spectacular as ever, with wingovers and low passes aplenty which made for some spectacular photography from the runway centreline. A line of photographers soon gathered across the runway, with me amongst them on the crowd-side fringe. Following one wingover, the pilot lined up on the runway centreline and brought the B-17 down low for a low, fast pass. Then a bit lower. Then impossibly low. My dad, with his long, rifle-stock-mounted lens, was the first to drop down, then each of the photographers in succession dropped flat onto the runway. With the confidence of youth I stood there, nicely lined up with the port outer, knowing that the pilot would pull up in plenty of time, which of course he didn’t, maintaining around 6ft tip clearance to the runway. By the time I had decided that I was surely going to die, there wasn’t much room between me and the whirling disc of Hamilton Standard. I dropped to the floor and as I did, I felt the propeller’s tip vortices flicking the hair across the top of my head.

I doubt it was really as low as it felt, but the following year’s display was photographed from well into the flight line.