As horrifying as the Covid-19 pandemic has been, I can't help but marvel at the people who got through a bad bout of the virus and are still here with us today. The stories I have heard have unnerved me: Quite a few people I know honestly thought they were going to die before things got better. (That's the crazy thing about this virus––you could feel like hell for a while only to experience a major turn-around within 24 hours.)
After Redditor Rares asked the online community, "What is the worst 'I'm gonna die' situation you've been through? people shared their stories.
"In a particularly rough place of the river..."
I was canoeing with my dad when we were on holiday in France. In a particularly rough place of the river, another canoe bumped us and our boat went upside down. I got carried away by the current until a man pulled me out. To this day I am glad that the man was there, otherwise, I would not be here.
"That same year..."
I was kayaking with some friends down a familiar river but the water was much higher than usual. My boat got stuck sideways across a wave. I could move sideways across the wave but I didn't have the strength or skill to get out of either end. After two or three minutes I realised I had to capsize and swim. I was carried about 200m downstream before I could get out. Someone got my boat and paddle but I'd lost my shoes. I had to walk about a mile downstream barefoot to catch them up.
That same year I travelled to the French Alps to do some skiing. I had lessons and thought I was competent enough but on my last day, I found myself on a run that was too steep for me to handle. After falling multiple times I found the only way I could stop myself from going too fast was to fall again. It took me two hours to get down a slope that others were finishing in about five minutes. I kept having flashbacks to the kayaking incident. I kept thinking how stupid I was not to have learnt anything about keeping within my abilities.
"I got a viral infection..."
I got a viral infection that spread to my brain in 2019. By the time my sister got to me to get me to the hospital, I was blind and deaf and "feral" (bit my sister, she has a scar). Everyone at the hospital told her I would've died a few hours later, definitely wouldn't have made it through the night.
Now I'm a disabled amnesiac with chronic pain.
"Had to make an emergency roof repair..."
Had to make an emergency roof repair on my house during an ice storm. Slipped, slid towards the edge of what would have been a 30' fall onto concrete. Stopped with my feet off the edge.
This is terrifying.
To come so close to that and to be stopped in the nick of the time by some dumb luck!
"Remainder of their family..."
A person with a gun shoots and kills one neighbor. The remainder of their family runs to our house for protection. We all hunker down as the person with a gun tries to get into our house.
Also terrifying.
Hopefully the authorities arrived in time.
"Facing down my then wife..."
Facing down my then-wife who was armed with a 9mm handgun. She pulled the trigger and thankfully nothing happened. I took the gun away from her and she ran out of the place. Still don't know why the gun didn't fire. She ended up going to jail and I divorced her shortly thereafter.
Well, there's a happy ending to this one...
...I guess? Sorry you had to go through that.
"A woman was being assaulted..."
A woman was being assaulted outside of my apartment by what seemed to be a boyfriend or husband.
I went out to shout at the guy, and he turned his rage on me instead.
I was about 85% sure I was going to be shot or stabbed. Fortunately, he didn't, and he backed down when he noticed that a crow of concerned people had arrived, and everyone was on the phone with 911.
"When I was about 14..."
When I was about 14, my church went on a youth retreat to rebuild a church on the coast that had been devastated by a hurricane. On the Saturday night of the trip, we went to a bowling alley to finish the weekend on a high note.
I was with all my buddies, there were the "hot" girls in the youth group to be impressed. I had way too much soda and popcorn and was ready to light up the night. The church had rented a Chevy express 12-passenger van, the kind where the seatbelt for the middle row of seats crosses the doorway and you have to duck under it. Well, my idea was to get a running start and launch off of the step into the back seat of the van.
So I did it, and it went pretty well. I got a lot of momentum, and when I launched off the step of the van it was almost perfect. I had intended to go under the seatbelt of the van, but I missed. The seatbelt hit me on the chin, and my momentum forced it down, onto my neck. Feeling the pressure on my neck I panicked and slammed into the back of the second row. The impact flipped me over the seat, into the floorboard of the third row, and twisted the seatbelt behind my neck. I'm not a small kid so my arms were pinned and the more I tried to get them free the tighter the seatbelt got because it had locked due to the impact.
The elapsed time of what had happened was maybe 45 seconds, and the youth leader was still inside paying for the rest of what the group owed. It took about five minutes for a kid to realize that I was actually struggling, and run inside to get him. He ended up cutting the seatbelt with his pocket knife and I am convinced that he saved my life.
"I don't know why I never told her..."
When I was a kid, my mom was a single parent and had awful taste in men. This one, in particular, was a drunk, at all hours of the day.
One day, he was babysitting us while my mom was at work and took us to the local park/lake to swim. About 3 hours go by with my sister and me having fun in the lake but we were tired and hungry and wanted to go home.
The guy had been sitting under a tree the whole afternoon with one of those one-gallon igloo coolers that he said was water, and was "sleeping." When we got out to tell him we wanted to go home, he didn't wake up. It took probably half an hour to shake him out of his alcoholic coma, and then my sister and I (about 4 and 8) had to get him up a very steep hill to the parking lot. He wasn't exactly a large man, but we were little, and pushing a grown man up a hill who keeps stumbling back down was not easy.
Finally, we make it to the car. That was when I realized we were in trouble. He actually got into the car and drove us home, and I use that word lightly... We were on sidewalks and people's front yards more than on the road. I was terrified and kept begging him just to stop, but he ignored me. How we made it home without crashing or being seen by police is anyone's guess. The worst part was that to this day, my mom doesn't know about this event. I don't know why I never told her... Maybe I thought I'd be in trouble. But I was a much more timid child after that.
"My scariest situation..."
My scariest situation was when I was about six. My family and I were at a camping site in a forest. I decided to go a little further and I started getting chased by three stray dogs, but I managed to get back to my parents safely.
Everyone you meet has a story.
You really do not know what other people have been through unless you ask. The resilience of the people around you might surprise you.
Have some of your own stories to share? Feel free to tell us about them in the comments section below!
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