Near Death Experiences?

[Bill Marsh]

Josh's thread on the totalling of his Honda reminds me of a possible near-death experience I had.

I was riding a Honda Hurricane 1000cc road rocket in fast moving but heavy Atlanta expressway traffic. In the center lane of seven lanes of southbound. Cars and trucks all around me. Beautiful morning. Clear sky. Perfect day.

Suddenly a blanket or tarp in the open bed of a pickup truck in front of me blew out and wrapped around me and the motorcycle.

Instant darkness. Zero visibility. 60 MPH. Did I mention the cars and trucks all around me? Did I mention that I was in a big, sweeping turn?

Motorcyle began to wobble. Maybe I was shaking, maybe the tarp was caught in the bike somewhere. I began yelling and praying. Suddenly with a terrible yank the tarp was torn away and gone.

Maybe I ran over a flapping end with my rear wheel. Maybe God heard my prayers, but the tarp was gone. I was still in the middle lane.

Shaken I made it to the shoulder of the road. Put down the kickstand and sat there wobbly kneed for a long time.

For the rest of the day and for some days more, I experienced a love of life that was near overwhelming. The beauty of the world, the people I knew, the people I did not know --- all were brighter, clearer, finer.

A close brush like this really makes you appreciate life more.

I would like to hear some stories from othres who have experienced possibly near death episodes....


.

 

[DaQo'tah Forge]

.....walked into the bedroom when I hear my wife crying....find her standing infront of the mirror looking at her back-side...

She turns to me and tearfully asks,,"Im I as big as a cow?"

I try to be helpfull and answer:, "Yes, but you are My cow".......

(Enter the near death experience here___)

 

[richardallen]

Dunno if it was near death, but I was scared as hell.

I had been surfing in Spain, Mundaka. Dunno if any of you guys have heard of this place, but it's a pretty radical wave. We had been staying there and surfing for 5 days. It's a rivermouth flowing into the ocean, so there's a pretty strong current going on. A swimmer isn't able to go against the current, but with a surfboard it's possible.

5 days, no problems. on day six, i was out with a dutch friend of mine when things started getting too heavy for us, so we decided to head back to the shore. to this day i have no idea what the cause was, but the current had increased significantly. we had been out for a couple of hours, 2 or three maybe, and were a bit exhausted. we didn't have a chance against the current, we were drifting out into the ocean.

we decided to not work against it, but to try to go out on a different spot. as it's a rivermouth, the shore is running in a 90° angle to the break for a while, so we decided to climb out at the cliffs. you can actually see them on the pic, they're on the far right next to the white church.

it was a hard an scary way to get there, but we made it. arriving near the rocks, I thought it was a good idea to make the last 2 meters swimming, to avoid damaging the surfboard. bad idea, due to the waves there were currents that pulled you under water. I figured that out pretty fast. I dont know how i made it up to the surface, but I did. took the board, climbed up the rocks. lot's of cuts, but i made it. then i had to pull up my dutch friend, who had lost his strength to make it on his own. we walked away from this, with some fingernails missing, and our legs and feet completely cut up, but quite alive. the cuts on my feet go infected during the rest of the trip, i was surfing with ducktape aound my foot from then on, but that's a different story.

after getting out, we had a couple of beers. that was the best beer i ever had, even though it was cheap spanish stuff and warm as well.

I plan on surfing the spot again next autumn, we'll see what happens.

 

[cognitivefun]

When I was younger I was diagnosed with a disease that is rather fatal. Then after a bit the confirmations came back negative so I didn't have the disease. I felt differently about life for awhile. Then I sunk back into the normal blissful ignorance of mortality that I carry with me to this day

richardallen, I had a similar though more mini experience recently in Mexico. I haven't come that close to drowning ever. It made me think harder about nature and being more careful. I think that is why it happened to me.

 

[Dave Rishar]

There's been a few times. They don't make for good stories and almost always center on stupidity - mine or someone else's. I'll spare everyone the gory details.

 

[Thomas Linton]

1. Summer 1967. Come around the curve on a freeway in Oklahoma, under an overpass, and drive into a wall of rain. Hyrdoplane. Spin 720 degrees. Seems like it is all happening in superslow motion as the tractor-trailer rig zips inches past the front of my Plymouth. Rest of the trip to California completed at VERY sedate speed.

2. Driving down a canyon in Utah. An approaching pickup goes left-of-center and passes the right side of my van. It all happened in the blink of an eye. If I had time to react, I probably would have steered to my right - into the path of the pickup. (He went over the edge and was killed.)

 

[Yvsa]

When I was younger I was diagnosed with a disease that is rather fatal. Then after a bit the confirmations came back negative so I didn't have the disease.

CF would you share with us what disease this was and how long it took too come back negative?
Was you hospitilized with it? How did it present itself and how did it make you feel, ie, what were the symptoms?
A few of us here have weird or unusual diseases. Just look at what Uncle Bill is going through with right now. Not a common form of cancer.:grumpy:

I was diagnosed with Stills Disease, "The Systemic Adult Onset of Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis," in 1998. Stills Disease is a form of rheumatoid arthritis like it says in the long name.
It is often fatal as well do to the systemic nature of the disease.
Systemic means it can affect all parts of the body and not just the joints like is usually associated with RA.
People with Stills have died from kidney, heart, lung, stomach and all sorts of internal organ failure.
I have been in remission for a while now but there are a few symptoms showing up again here lately and it looks like I might have to go back on the damned medicine, Methotrexate, that makes me so damnable Sick the day after I take it.
Besides it's administered by injection and I hate giving myself the shots!!!!:grumpy:
But I hate the initial symptoms of the disease worse and don't want to go through them and/or wind back up in the damned hospital again.

 

[cognitivefun]

CF would you share with us what disease this was and how long it took too come back negative?
Was you hospitilized with it? How did it present itself and how did it make you feel, ie, what were the symptoms?

I was getting respiratory infections constantly. I always felt very tired and I was constantly on anti-biotics.

I was tested and came back positive for lupus. At the time, lupus could only be treated with prednisone to supress the immune system. It is an auto-immune disease. Prognosis was (probably still is) a greatly shortened life with progressively worse symptoms.

I think a lot of diseases these days that people suffer are auto-immune.

 

[Yvsa]

I was tested and came back positive for lupus. At the time, lupus could only be treated with prednisone to supress the immune system. It is an auto-immune disease.

Yep, I'm very familar with Lupus. One of our dear friends walked West from it about 2 years ago.
And we have a daughter that was dx'ed with it just this last year.:grumpy:
Lupus, Stills, RA and several other similar diseases are all auto-immune. I'm also very familar with prednisone as that is what put most of my weight on me.
And for some reason a lot of ndn people have and are coming down with Lupus and RA instead of Diabetes. There's one Rez in the southwest where Lupus and RA are more common than Diabetes!!!! It's a tossup as which one may be worse as they are all devastating for us ndns.

 

[munk]

I was on the freeway in a little Toyota Tercel Easy. This is the vehicle that made my wife and I swear off Toyotas. I realize they are great cars, but we bought a bad design and had to live with it. The least we can do now is not reward Toyota for bad designs.

I was on the big freeway outside of Fontana Ca. Can't recall the number now-Maybe the 5. Anyway, I'd shifted lanes, turn signal, easy drift over, and suddenly there was a brief honk.

In the second I heard the honk, I knew exactly what it was, don't ask me how, but a hotroding ass-h999 needed my lane and was too commited to stop. I could tell just by the sound of the honk- brief, franic, not hopefull of success. Idiots go in and out of traffic and get themselves and everyone else in these predicaments.. Now, i did not see the truck behind me in my blindspot, but knew it was there- (and knew it was speeding as it hadn't been there a moment ago) I swerved suddenly and violently back over to my lane, avoiding a rear end collision in heavy traffic. The vehicle went up on two wheels, and I continued down the lane like that; bouncing from one battery of wheels to the other. All traffic slowed in anticipation; they knew I was going over and we were all in for it. Meanwhile, the truck that started this, and I was right; it was a day glow painted after market prepared So Ca BS Chevy- you know the type, was roaring out of there as fast as they could, cutting people off, taking small openings, doing whatever they had to to get out before the crash.

Well, I didn't crash. The car eventually wobbled back to all four and we kept going, those around me and myself.

I've been knocked out cold MT biking, had a rope break while climbing a RR bridge, had my skull fractured with a coffee mug and chair, jumped out of a moving truck, and blew out my knees on San Gorgonio, running out of water and taking 8 hours to make it to the trail head. I had a semi truck run over my VW van, too, that was fun.

When I think of near death though, I think of those dreams that occur to some with hints of the afterlife. I find that much more interesting than a list of injuries or near disasters.

I hope some of you with those experiences will share them.


munk

 

[cognitivefun]

Yep, I'm very familar with Lupus. One of our dear friends walked West from it about 2 years ago.
And we have a daughter that was dx'ed with it just this last year.:grumpy:
Lupus, Stills, RA and several other similar diseases are all auto-immune. I'm also very familar with prednisone as that is what put most of my weight on me.
And for some reason a lot of ndn people have and are coming down with Lupus and RA instead of Diabetes. There's one Rez in the southwest where Lupus and RA are more common than Diabetes!!!! It's a tossup as which one may be worse as they are all devastating for us ndns.

I belong to another forum that is about eating according to "paleolithic" principles. This type of eating eliminates foods that are relatively new to mankind and therefore that we are less genetically adapted to. This includes grains, beans, dairy. I no longer eat religiously this way but many people have found it very helpful in treating auto-immune disorders. There are various theories as to why, but all I know is that there are many people whose symptoms are said to disappear when they eat this way.

Native Americans have a high incidence of disease like diabetes and lupus, could this be caused by a diet not suited to their genetics? Who knows...

 

[munk]

Grains, beans and Dairy relatively new? Well, I suppose that's true. How long has man been cultivating fields, 20000 years? More?


It's too bad we insist upon homogenizing milk- a lot of trouble comes from that. But grains? The noble bean?


munk

 

[cognitivefun]

Grains, beans and Dairy relatively new? Well, I suppose that's true. How long has man been cultivating fields, 20000 years? More?


It's too bad we insist upon homogenizing milk- a lot of trouble comes from that. But grains? The noble bean?


munk

The Neolithic period started about 10,000 years ago so we haven't been eating grains, beans and dairy very long.

Compare that to millions of years we've been eating tubers, animal protein and edible greens. Hunter gatherers still living in New Guinea eat some 600 different types of plants and they will also eat insects, rodents, fish, birds and other beasts.

To some degree what you can tolerate depends upon where your family is from, of course.

For me, "new world" foods cause problems too -- tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, chocolate -- as for my genetic background these foods are very, very new. I eat a bit of them but they cause me problems.

Homogenized milk -- how natural is milk anyway? It isn't natural for one mammal to eat another's milk. It may be natural to eat a bit of fermented dairy as hunter-gatherers probably ate the stomach contents of their prey which were often the slowest to run and easiest to hunt down -- the youngest. I think this makes sense and I find that raw milk cheese or yogurt doesn't cause me problems in moderation.

From the paleo group and my own experiences, I have discovered that diet is a key to health. I feel that includes not only waht you eat, but frequency and quantity also. Diversity is important. I can eat a bit of bread now and then but if I eat it every day or in any great quantity, I have problems.

 

[Ben Arown-Awile]

...It isn't natural for one mammal to eat another's milk...

I agree. From now on I am only going to drink milk from lactating women. I'm sure processing and storage has negative effects, so I am going to get it fresh, straight from the source.

If it works out, I am going to sell franchises. Anybody want in?

 

[munk]

And hunter gatherers haven't been planting corn? I think this is interesting but not for me. I think it borders on baloney, if not firmly entrenched in that strange sandwich product, but if it works for you all the more power to you.

There are many insects I would invite you to eat around here we don't like.
I suspect the trouble with grains is processing, not the product. But I'm just thinking aloud- I'm not a scientist or botanist. I know white bleached flour has problems as does white rice without the husk.

I've been meaning to ask you, are you Spiral Twista, or an old voice we knew from another time on this forum? You seemed to know the Kamis names right off the bat.

Food is like everything else men put ideas into- we can get pretty silly. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't do what we think we should.
My wife is crazy about food allergies- she thinks she has it doped out. If I'd listened to her, the youngest kid wouldn't be eating dairy by now, but would be on a renewed 6 month moritorium until further introduction of the product. I figure he'd get his first ice cream cone when he was 20 at that rate. Today he can eat pizza with the rest of us.

I believe sitting around the table and eating pizza is the activity of a highly evolved family.

munk

 

[richardallen]

richardallen, I had a similar though more mini experience recently in Mexico. I haven't come that close to drowning ever. It made me think harder about nature and being more careful. I think that is why it happened to me.

Well as I said, to this day I don't know what caused the current to be stronger than it usually was. All I know is that I should've know before. I have a huge respect of the nature and the ocean especially, as I am living very close to it. I have seen a lot of people getting into trouble, until then I wasn't one of them.

Then again, not being cautious enough is the only thing ever that can hurt us (or whatever happens due to not being ~), isn't it.

Tell me about Mexico, what happened ?

regards, Keno

 

[cognitivefun]

Well as I said, to this day I don't know what caused the current to be stronger than it usually was. All I know is that I should've know before. I have a huge respect of the nature and the ocean especially, as I am living very close to it. I have seen a lot of people getting into trouble, until then I wasn't one of them.

Then again, not being cautious enough is the only thing ever that can hurt us (or whatever happens due to not being ~), isn't it.

Tell me about Mexico, what happened ?

regards, Keno

It was the placid waters of the Carribean...protected by corral reefs (the largest living reefs in the Western Hemisphere)...no danger.

We were near Tulum, about 60 miles south of Cancun. About 200 feet from the beach is a cenote. A cenote is a deep pond that is fed from groundwater. This one apparently fed into the ocean around the beach.

I waded out with my snorkel and mask. No fins. Lots of rocks so it was tough on my not-tough feet. I was paying more attention to that than anything. Finally rocks dropped off and I could swim. At that point I looked back and was way further from shore than I should have been. At the same time I realized there was an extremely powerful current pulling me out.

At first I ignored it. I snorkeled but that was uncomfortable becuase I kept swallowing water. The current seemed very strong and every time I snorkeled I'd inhale water. I finally determined that the snorkel was broken. It had a valve at the bottom and the valve was leaky. By this time I was still further out and the current was very strong. I realized at that moment that I had better get back.

I swam for shore and every once and a while I would look and the shore was as far away as when I remembered it being the last time I looked up. I suppressed a growing sense of panic. I ditched the snorkel that I had in my hand as it was useless anyway. I thought about swimming parallel to the beach and I would have done that, but there were lots of big rocks to that side and the current was pushing me into them and out. So I just swam and swam and trusted that I would get to shore and finally I did.

When I waded out I noticed the very strong current in this shallow water and wondered why I hadn't computed on it before. The water looked placid and I think I got lulled into being unaware. I believe it was the dynamics of the cenote that was responsible for the current but I don't really know for sure.

 

[cognitivefun]

And hunter gatherers haven't been planting corn? I think this is interesting but not for me. I think it borders on baloney, if not firmly entrenched in that strange sandwich product, but if it works for you all the more power to you.

There are many insects I would invite you to eat around here we don't like.
I suspect the trouble with grains is processing, not the product. But I'm just thinking aloud- I'm not a scientist or botanist. I know white bleached flour has problems as does white rice without the husk.

We've been eating grains for a relatively short period of time, a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. Grains contain lectins that are proteins that trigger immune reactions in many people. Some people are okay with them but many are not. Then there is the very high carb nature of grains and the carbs trigger a lot of insulin in people and cause BP problems and obesity and so forth, as in my family.

I have eaten insects several times. I wouldn't go out of my way to eat them but they were delicious in Oaxaca

I've been meaning to ask you, are you Spiral Twista, or an old voice we knew from another time on this forum? You seemed to know the Kamis names right off the bat.

No, I'm not. I have pestered people with a lot of newbie questions and you are all kind enough to answer. I also read the HI website.

Food is like everything else men put ideas into- we can get pretty silly. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't do what we think we should.
My wife is crazy about food allergies- she thinks she has it doped out. If I'd listened to her, the youngest kid wouldn't be eating dairy by now, but would be on a renewed 6 month moritorium until further introduction of the product. I figure he'd get his first ice cream cone when he was 20 at that rate. Today he can eat pizza with the rest of us.

I believe sitting around the table and eating pizza is the activity of a highly evolved family.

munk

You're probably right! I love pizza, and who doesn't? I find that I can eat pizza now and then, especially now that I fast every day until dinner.

 

[munk]

The thing about food, is things change. We can't feed 300 billion people on the diet of hunter gatherers.

If we stayed still, what would come of that?

When steak hits 20 bucks a pound, we might see more insect eating. Now that's one source of food whose time may come again.
If grains didn't taste good, we wouldn't eat them. Isn't that how creatures change and adapt?

Why is it desirable to hold back the evolution of our biology?

Cogfun, we've had some people banned from the forum from time to time, and many more who've left of their own decisions. Many of them returned in a new guise, and if they didn't repeat the mistakes of their past, could have made a new start. So, anyway, I was just asking.
munk

 

[cognitivefun]

Cogfun, we've had some people banned from the forum from time to time, and many more who've left of their own decisions. Many of them returned in a new guise, and if they didn't repeat the mistakes of their past, could have made a new start. So, anyway, I was just asking.
munk

I understand. I moderate two very busy forums so I deal with this issue routinely.