Near Death Experiences

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Have you nearly died.

A few years I got a massive shale crap on my leg while playing baseball. I cleaned it out with soap and water, wrapped it and continued playing. A few hours later I showered, washed it and peroxided it and thought I was good to go.

A few days later it was still seeping and oozing so my wife (at the time she was in nurseing school) dragged me to the hospital. The doctor told me to treat it like a normal scrape. Keep it clean and put polysporin in on it.

About a week later it was still seeping and I was getting sick of waking up with my leg stuck to the bed. But I waited, then one day when my wife went to work for her afternoon shift as a Nurseing Aid I went into septic shock. I am unclear about the next 8 hours or so as I hallucinated my way through the day. I recall my wifes best friend being in the apartment with her, but both of them have told me that she wasn't and other small things that I have slowly learned from my wife.

That night she got home and took me to the hospital where I was brought in right away and the crew went to work. They swabbed the green stuff, and cleaned my leg with a bristle pad (ouch), filled me with saline to rehydrate me, pumped me full of antibiotics and morphine. The left an IV catheter in my hand which allowed them be able to pump antibiotics into me every 8 hrs. For 5 days I went back and forth from out apartment to the hospital for treatment. I was so relieved when they pulled the catheter.

From the swab we learned that the infections I had included both Staph and Strep as well as about 5 other kinds of bacteria. The doctor wasn't sure if the wound would heal and we were worried I would need skin grafts.

The really dumb thing is about three weeks after the scab had healed, I was left with a large purple scar on my leg, that I re-opened playing baseball again. This time there was no shale, I was wearing thick sweat instead of nylon track pants and it opened when I slid in the outfield. I cleaned it out properly afterwords and called my baseball days quits.

Now I barely have a scar.

 

The closest I ever came was when I flipped my pickup truck on the highway in 1997. I was doing about 65 and flipped 5 times. Time slowed down and I was able to reflect on my situation. It was really weird. Anyway, I was wearing my belt and kept my head back, so I survived. Got banged up pretty bad, but I count my blessings.

 

That time slowing down thing is a bizarre but very real phenomenon ... I wouldn't be surprised if you also reflected on bigger things (life, people righted and wronged, etc.).

What counts as near-death, anyway? Are we talking 'go to the light' type stuff or just close calls? I'd imagine most everybody's got a few wrong place at the right time stories.

 

My stories are lame.

There was one time when I was carrying stuff with my dad in the garage, and as we were deciding how best to move something, the table behind me - large, solid, standing on its side - suddenly fell down with a giant crash. Quite sure it would have mauled me had I taken a step backwards.

There was also this one time I was in Florence, and I had eaten nothing but small, supermarkety breakfast-type cakes for the whole day because I was out of money, and I was wandering around the streets feeling very sorry for myself, although that kind of doesn't count as a near-death experience.

 

I was out at sea for a few weeks and came home. My wife (at the time) had been shopping and wanted to try on stuff for me. She came out in this hideous peach knit pant suit and asked me how it looked. I told her, "That color looks terrible on you and the pants make your hips look enormous."

My life flashed before my eyes.

The closest other than that was hanging under a helicopter in a horse collar rescue sling at 1,000' and 90 knots.

 

I once ate a particularly undercooked strip of chicken. It was dicey for a while the next day.

 

What is a shale crap?

 

A spelling error. It was meant to be a shale scrape.

 

Bear in mind that I hate sports. What is a shale scrape? I know what shake is, surely there wasn't any in the baseball field. Help the ignorant!

 

Hit by a bus when I was 14. My fault entirely, although he was going way too fast.

Stalling right in front of a fast on-coming truck is the time I can really remember the time slowly right down. The whole van falling absolutely silent, punctuated by me bursting out laughing.

 

It wasn't a near death experience, but a couple of months ago I had an attack of kidney stones and I wanted to die.

 

When I was a kid, I dove into a pool and my bathing suit went down to my knees. I thought I was going to die of emabarrassment.

 

@Rotku, how did you survive the bus encounter? Usually those result in fatalities.

 

I assumed the sedimentary rock that is sometimes used as a lining on lawns and grass to stop encroachment and give a definitive border a little more evenly than bark chips.

He could perhaps be referring to a large ex-dwarf transmuted into a stone being with a bone to pick with fleshy people.

As for my near death experience. I died but I missed it. I was asleep at the time. Was confused when I woke up surrounded by surprised looking people.

 

Shale is that read dirt that is around the bases. I scraped my leg up when I was attempting to slide into one of the bases.

 

I have to say, in all the years I both played and have followed baseball, I never knew the dirt around the bases was called shale. In fact, I have never even heard of shale being referred to in any baseball sense.