Post #117701 by TikiGardener on Sat, Oct 2, 2004 1:31 PM

When I was 17, I got a horrible pain in my chest. I told my parents, and they told me it was just "stress". So I wandered around in excrutiating pain for three or four days. I actually got used to it, and figured out how to move in a way that didn't cause me pain. The I noticed that when I opened my mouth to brush my teeh, I could hear a squishing sound that went in the same rhythm as my heartbeat.
After some convincing that I didn't think it was stress, my parents told me to walk to the doctors office. Which was a mile and a half away. After getting there, and having all the tests come up negative for heart attack. The doctor asked me to walk to the hospital. which was on the other side of the island ( another mile or so ). I told him their was no way I could do that. So a patient offered me a ride. He was a stogey smoking ex marine.
So a dose of lethal second hand smoke later, I get taken to various xray rooms etc.
One half an hour later a nurse tells me that my doctor would like to talk to me. He says;"I'd like you to go to the emergency room"."Oh Really!?!" was my reply.
Turns out I had a collapsed lung.
But thats not the death thingy. After the chest tube insertion, they sent me up to my room. But not before giving me some morphine. About 20 minutes later I just turned to my mother ( who was just about to leave ) and very calmly said "Get Help".
I then went into severe shock. Seems I'm allergic to morphine. I can say it is truly weird feeling when you feel all your muscles go slack, and you can feel your bones sink into the hosptial bed because they've lost all support.
The last thing I remember was the voice of the nurse reading BP values and her voice getting more and more strained.
Then I flatlined ( so they tell me ).
Then I just remember seeing everyone in the room looking amazed, and in diferent places than they were before eveything went black.

Then there was the time I was opening a shop during a nor'easter in NYC. As I walked up, I felt something brush my back, and then heard an amazingly loud bang. I turned around and saw that I had missed getting my skull crushed by a clay 3 foot flower box that had fallen from the fifth story of the building the shop was in. Not even a scratch. I don't no why, but I just looked at it for a second, and then went back to opening the shop.

Several tree branches have tried the same thing. all just grazing me, and not leaving a mark.

And at least a half dozen times have I had other drivers test my driving skill, by pulling various things that the people in the car with me have thought were going to kill us.

Some friends think that death is a really poor shot in my case. Some day he'll get it right...

TG

[ Edited by: tikigardener on 2004-10-02 13:34 ]