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One quote that many take to heart is, “Live for today because tomorrow is not promised.” It’s a meaningful reminder of how short and fleeting life can be, and that we should make the most out of it.
These people likely have this quote as a personal motto, especially after their brushes with the Grim Reaper. They shared their unsettling stories in a recent Threads post, which expectedly drew attention online.
If you have your own experiences that you feel are worth sharing, don’t hesitate to do so in the comments below.
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#2
29, went to get my first tattoo. At the end I stood up and…hit the floor in a grand mal seizure. Hit just right/wrong that my breathing and heart stopped. Funnily enough the person I went with just completed CPR certification the week prior and the tattoo artists wife was epileptic so everyone knew what to do.
#3
I was 6 getting my tonsils out. Surgeon cut my artery in my neck and left a tonsil. Sent me home. Started vomiting blood in the back of my mom’s van. By the time I made it to the hospital I was in a coma and by the time a pediatric surgeon was called I needed 3 blood transfusions and had lost over 50% of my blood. Had to be in the hospital for a week. Was so weak I could barely lift my head for a couple days.
#4
I fell 60 feet out of a tree as a kid. Hitting branches on the way down saved me. Knocked the wind out of me so bad. My brother kept saying "please don't be dead" while climbing down to get to me haha
Hume 57 minutes ago
The same thing happened to me. I fell out of a tree as I spotted a spider crawling slowly towards me, so I, having a phobia of spiders, tried to climb down as fast as possible, but I slipped and fell back first on a branch going down. I stood up off the ground, not hurt at all. Still waiting for some secret back pain to hit me as I get older, ha!
#5
Accidentally drove up a mountain overlooking the sea with no space to turn around and the ocean on one side and a cliff on the other and had to slowly back down
#6
I choked on food and couldn't breathe and vomited it out before i lost oxygen completely (No hospital needed)
#7
I accidentally poisoned myself with carbon monoxide when I was 16 in a snow storm warming up my car. My dad kept me alive with CPR for at least 30 minutes after they found me until the EMT’s took over. I had 42% carbon monoxide in my blood stream when I finally got to the ER and they told my parents I’d either die or be brain dead. Luckily they were wrong, but I did get out of having to take all of my finals junior year 😂
#8
Many years ago I was kidnapped by my ex. 😬 He drove me to the woods telling me he was going to bury me somewhere no one would find me. I jumped out of the moving car & ran in front of a logging truck waving for help. My ex told him he was “just joking” & the trucker told me to get back into the car & told my ex he’d better take me back to town & he’d follow us. I got in & my ex turned the car around & drove so fast out of there laughing because the trucker couldn’t keep up.
#9
I have epilepsy; when I was about 12 I had a pretty long tonic clonic (grand mal) seizure. I stopped breathing my face went purple an ambulance came and I was about to be shocked, but my sister screamed “just wait one second please…she just needs a second!” Right as they were about to shock me I started breathing again.
#10
I almost died in an apartment fire because a resident on another floor was smoking while hooked up to oxygen. The cat I had back then woke me up at about 5am in a panic. There was smoke everywhere, and I grabbed her, put her in her carrier, and called the fire department to let them know we were still in the building. We were some of the last people to get out of the building. When we got out, I just sat on the road curb and sobbed.
This is the cat that saved my life.
#11
broke my spine in a short fall. it’s true how your life flashes before your eyes before you hit the ground and i’m very lucky i’m not paralyzed or dead
#12
A man I knew - as in, I’d met him twice - turned up at my house. Said he’d just moved to the area & thought he’d say hi. We chatted for an hour or so, when I said he needed to go so I could go to bed he tried to force himself on me then he attacked me in the neck with my own bread knife. The knife hit the junction of my sternum & clavicle. If it had been a cm higher, it would’ve gone into my throat.
#13
Germany, 1991 - I’m driving on the Autobahn in morning traffic to turn in Army gear ahead of my transfer back to the states. Stayed up too long. Dozed off behind the wheel. When I woke up I was drifting right at 80 miles an hour; I over correct and slam into the middle guardrail.
I end up backward with cars zooming at me at 90 miles an hour. I prepared for death, but it never came. Everyone else was wide awake, thank God.
#14
Yeah….. I was choking on a piece of beef roast and my dad had to give me the heimlic. The feeling of swallowing and trying to clear your airway and not being able to is terrifying.
#15
While pregnant with my daughter I had bad heartburn. One day I leaned down in the bathroom, no one else was there, and started choking on my bile. Then while choking I vomited and had not taken a breath so I hopped in the shower, peed myself, and popped a blood vessel in my eye.
#16
at 15 i had a reaction to the suture used in my tonsillectomy. my throat was almost completely closed. i could just barely breathe but couldn’t drink water or anything. my mom took me to an ER and in eight hours they didn’t even triage me, though i was drifting in and out of consciousness and was visibly gray. eventually she took me to a different hospital where i was triaged immediately and they found my blood pressure to be 65/40. i was maybe an hour tops away from organ failure, they said
#17
My alarm went off one day and I was like ehhh i kinda want to sleep a little longer… then I’m like no, get up. Less than 1 minute later a giant tree fell right where my head was on my pillow.
#18
Appendix burst. Drs kept fobbing off my pain for over a week as women’s issues. Ended up septic with appendix fused to my bowel & k**ling me. The only reason I didn’t die was because a Nurse convinced a General Surgeon to do a laparoscopy after he finished the day’s vasectomies. He opened me up & found a complete mess. Needed a bowel re-section on top of appendectomy. Woke up in Intensive Care.
#19
"Literally got choked out by my ex. As my favorite m*rder podcasters say: F**K POLITENESS.
(Save yourself and be sorry later)"
#20
On Valentine’s Day 2025, I had a seizure behind the wheel of my car. No history of seizures. Later found out I have a mild form of temporal lobe epilepsy. I hit the median, and ended up the wrong direction in opposite lane of traffic. Very lucky to be here!
#21
My horse and I got hit by a drunk driver when I was 15. Had the car not hit a sigh post a Range Rover would have rolled over my head. I broke my back, collarbone, dislocated my knee, damaged my thigh bone and snapped virtually every ligament in my foot. Unfortunately the horse was too badly injured
#22
My ex tried to kill me, I needed over 30 stitches. He was within millimetres of hitting an artery. I have a disfiguring scar and permanent spinal damage that affects me everyday.
#23
"I also choked on food. Home alone during covid. That’s the one I remember.
I did a couple of somersaults and got tangled up in my umbilical cord and was born dead though. I just (thankfully) don’t remember that.
Honorable mention: I stood on the edge of a cliff in Ireland. And, while I didn’t come close to falling over, I’m extremely lucky my clumsiness or a sneeze didn’t take over. So, didn’t almost die but death would’ve been so accidentally easy."
#24
I slid out from under my seatbelt as an improperly secured six-year-old in a rolling van. I flew out the window and shot seventy-five feet before landing on my back in a field. Got blood on the scene, life-flighted to a children’s hospital, had a broken right arm with nerve and tendon damage in my left, and never did finish kindergarten.
#25
Standing in Circle K, after buying my stuff, I saw designs in front of my eyes. Two seconds later (at least to me), I was on the floor, with a scalp gash, freshly bleeding. Because I have AFib and it puts me at risk for stroke, I take Xarelto, an anticoagulant. Had to go to the ER for stitchup and x-rays to verify no brain bleeding.
However, because I have a pacemaker with defibrillator, they decided to check its memory. Turns out, I was hit with Ventricular Tachycardia, and ten seconds in the defibrillator fired, shocking my heart back into controlled sinus rhythm. The ER cardiologist told my wife and I that if it hadn't shocked me, I would've died before the EMTs would've arrived.
#26
I have Wolff White Syndrome. It's supposed to be rare that it k**ls you. One day while walking in my hallway, I just felt a terrible pain in my chest and fell to one knee. I couldn't particularly feel my hand itself but it was clutching my chest. My kidneys felt ice cold in my spine. Then my mind started yelling at me "No, you're not dying. You have a little girl to raise. Get up. She needs you. You are /her dad/ so get up" and I slowly recovered and stood back up.
#27
I was jumped by some skinheads high AF and they nearly slit my throat. Only reason I was saved was someone inside the house party heard me screaming.
#28
I survived a carbon monoxide leak that lead to weeks of being on life support while I was in a coma. I died and the doctors didn’t think I would wake up.
#29
"Fell into a spring river got hypothermia, was stung by a bee just after and found out I was allergic.
The only reason the bee sting didn’t kill me was the hypothermia"
#30
Last year. Stopped being able to eat. Like, at all. Could barely sip Powerade. I dropped 55 pounds in 6 weeks. Doctor didn't care. Finally got to a gastroenterologist who sent me to the hospital and diagnosed me with gastroparesis. My stomach doesn't send food to my guts correctly. He put me on a regimen of meds that got me eating within hours.
#31
"I had a seizure on I-10 with cruise set at 80 mph. (Stupid, I know) I rolled my car 11 times according to the girl behind me. I was ejected, they had to cut trees down to tow the car out, and I wrecked so hard that they couldn’t find my shoes.
I walked away without a scratch, bruise, or a concussion."
#32
I was like 8 years old and had been throwing up for 2 days with a lot of stomach pain.
I started going in and out of consciousness and got rushed to hospital.
Turns out my appendix had burst and I needed emergency surgery.
Spent a week in hospital then several weeks at home on the couch unable to walk very far.
I did get a Gameboy and Pokémon blue though so not all bad.
#33
"I dropped a ceramic bowl full of meatballs when I pulled it it out of the microwave and it shattered and a piece sliced my foot open near my ankle.
I didn’t notice, but my then 10 year old did. I wrapped it with a dish towel but I was 🩸-ing so heavily that I duct taped the towel to my foot, threw the kids in the car, drove up to my grandma’s front door, yelled out the window what happened while dropping the kids off.
Drove myself to the ER, left a trail of 🩸-y footprints up the"
#35
I had a hemorrhagic miscarriage and lost >30% of my blood. I had to have four blood transfusions and an emergency abortion.
The ER doc said, “If this was a different time or place, this story would turn out very differently.
#36
1. I was in a hot tub with several grown ups when I was about three or four years old. All of a sudden I was under water. I remember looking up and seeing their faces through the water. It seemed like an eternity before one of them noticed and pulled me out of the water.
2. I had an unmedicated, unprepared stillbirth. Anything could have gone wrong with the birth. I was lucky.
3. I got amoxicillan resistant strep throat. The infection was so bad that I couldn't or drink, and I could barely 🪡
#38
On a whitewater kayaking trip my kayak tipped upside down and got pinned between two boulders. Underneath, my foot was tangled in a rope, making it so that for several seconds I was trapped underwater with the rapids rushing over me.
#39
In 1983 I was hitchhiking and got picked up by a famous serial k**ler, I jumped out at a four way stop and ran. Didn’t talk about it for twenty years.
#40
Living it right now… was in a horrific car accident July 1. Driver hit a tree. I had to be life flighted. Broken heel, broken ribs, brain bleed, staples in head, facial sutures, almost a collapsed lung.. if the cop hadn’t been behind us when he drove into the tree, I wouldn’t have survived.
#41
I drove up to a lookout on the mountain and downed a bottle of pills with vodka. Sat on the hood of my car and closed my eyes.
Someone coming back to their car called 911. I didn’t die. I’m forever grateful for it, and forever regret scaring my parents and brother.
#42
Last summer: got a scratch on my booty while tubing. Cleaned and bandaged when I got home, seemed sore but fine for a few days. Then redness, swelling and too painful to sit. Went to ER, they took me into an OR immediately after an examination. Woke up to find out they'd had to cut a good chunk of infected tissue. Spent a few days in ICU then moved to a regular room before discharge. Was told a few days later after reports came back that there were 2 bacteria, gave me the formal names.
#43
When I was 15, I had a journal where I wrote everything in. I wrote that I had a boyfriend and I lost my virginity to him. My mum read my journal since I left it in the restroom by accident and she was mad. A week later, I wanted to try out an alcoholic drink under the supervision of my parents and they said ok. I drank a Smirnoff ice (the cloudy looking one) and it was the big bottle. I had a bit left and I forced it down because I didn’t want to waste it.
#44
1) Became septic after the dr left a surgical sponge inside me during my c-section
2) Got pancreatitis after my gallbladder surgery. 0/10 would not recommend
#45
I was starved from 84 to 60 pounds in an icu. When I told my family the staff said I was hallucinating on the large amount of medications I was on. I was mute (mechanically ventilated), unable to walk or even turn over in bed. I held up a white board that said CALL HOSPICE whenever my staff wasn’t around. On day 25, I went to hospice.
What you were supposed to think was that I was dying from cancer. People did think that. Was a lie. They were watching me starve
And I left hospice and cured my cancer
#46
My family stayed in a place in China with a coal fire and we all got carbon monoxide poisoning. Luckily I’d just read a book about it, so when my dad collapsed on his way to the bathroom I got everyone else up and out of the house before it was too late.
#47
my stupid managed to choke on a hard lifesaver candy when i was like 5🙃 i wasn’t even doing anything crazy when it happened, i was just sitting on 3 little stairs playing with my slinky😭
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