Having a brush with death causes a profound change in a person. It gives them an entirely new outlook on life, for better or worse. For those who lived to tell the tale, you can guarantee that their stories are nothing short of gripping, which may also make you ponder on your own mortality.
These responses to a Reddit question are excellent examples. Someone posted a short yet loaded query: “How have you cheated death?” Replies came flooding in with personal accounts about early cancer detections, car accidents, and narrowly escaping septic shock.
We’ve collected some of the best stories for you. Make sure you have enough time to kill because you’ll likely be here for a while.
#1
Don’t know if I can say I cheated death as much as had an amazing medical team that knew what they were doing. But when I was 19, I was diagnosed with stage 3 lymphoma. It was on my stomach in ulcers that equaled up to 5 pounds worth of tumors. Was told on Tuesday when they were trying to figure out what specific type I had so they could know how to treat it, that if I didn’t start a treatment plan by Friday it would be too far gone to save me. Cut to Friday morning and they basically flipped a coin and went with Burkett’s Lymphoma. Luckily they were right because it has been nearly 20 years since my last round of chemo and I’m still cancer free. Had they been wrong, I wouldn’t be here typing this.
Image credits: B-Tron85
#2
My mums cat saved my life. Was sleeping on my mums couch after a break up. The cat got sick and the vet determined it was carbon monoxide poisoning from the frontroom gas fireplace.
Image credits: Big_Ad9960
#3
We were holidaying in the Lake District, I was only very young. I was on the top of a grassy hill and thought it’d be great to run down it really fast! My dumb a*s didn’t understand momentum and I could not stop I was running and running and running. I saw a little wire fence with old wooden posts and BOOM some guy leaped on me and bear hugged me and we stopped. My parents utterly panicked caught up and came rushing to me. My parents lost their s**t and I was just in like shock, came very very close to tumbling over a high cliff and turning into strawberry jam.
Thank you stranger whoever and wherever the hell you are ❤️.
#4
When I was still a fetus, my mother suffered a heavy injury to her stomach, causing the death of my twin, but I survived somehow.
The doctors basically told her she must stay bedridden for the rest of the pregnancy or else she would lose me too. So my grandma got her a SNES, and she just played video games all day. I still have that SNES.
Image credits: Raemnant
#5
My bio father punched my mom in the stomach 9 weeks before I was due. A few days later she was feeling just “a little” off and called her doctor who told her to go to the hospital. It turns out the placenta had ruptured and the surgeon said we both would’ve died that day had she just decided to sleep it off instead. One very emergency C section later and we both made it, if not a little undercooked.
Image credits: BeepCheeper
#6
Remembered to put on my seat belt.
Got into a bad car wreck. Survived with bumps and bruises.
Seat belts save lives.
Image credits: GOODahl
#7
I got in an accident with a drunk driver. Everyone that saw the car afterwards said the same thing, "how are you alive?".
The roof where I was sitting was damn near touching the seat. I couldn't have fit back in there if I tried.
I got pretty f****d up, for sure... but thankfully I didn't die.
Image credits: KingGuy420
#8
I was hit by a drunk driver while I was riding my bike at 13. If I hadn't been wearing my helmet, I would've died. The helmet was cracked all the way through on the back. Safety equipment has never been a joke to me since, and all any of my nieces or nephews need to do is call me saying they need a new helmet and they'll have one.
Image credits: TypeGreen51
#9
Getting my bloods done regularly and the doctor says come back in 3 months PSA is high. I do as I’m told and it’s gone higher, biopsy shows that I have an aggressive form of cancer and I’m told if it’s not removed I’ll be dead within 5 years. That’s 9 years ago. No symptoms, nothing out of the ordinary. Get your bloods checked on a regular basis.
Image credits: Southernmanny
#10
My high school school resource officers (SRO) stopped a school shooting with literally less than seconds to spare. I was walking past the kid as he was at his locker pulling the gun. I saw the student get tackled. If the SRO had not stopped the student I would likely have been first since we were the only students in that hallway.
#11
Congenital heart heart defect (WPW) completely unknown until 35 years old. I was playing board games with a small group- vision narrowed until I came to looking up at EMT's. They had taken turns doing CPR for 14 minutes until medical arrived and shocked me 3x to bring me back. One surgery and defib install later and everything is pretty much normal with a cheap med. Had I been driving or at home alone that would have been it. Those 4 guys dont pay for beers ever when we go out. edit - ~~Grammer~~* Grammar, and now spelling.
Image credits: Desertrayne
#12
I was in a brutal car accident, my son was 5 at the time in the back seat.
Our vehicle was hit 3 times like a ping pong ball during rush hour, pushed over 3 lanes into oncoming traffic. When we finally stopped, we had narrowly evaded being sandwiched between two transport trucks.
My right arm was crushed and is now all titanium, but otherwise we made it out alive; my son without a scratch thanks to a properly installed car seat.
Hours later I went into another portal hopped up on a cocktail of ketamine, morphine, etc. I am convinced I entered the edge of life/death as it was a surreal experience.
Image credits: turtle-bird
#13
I had a screening for something else and my Doctor found very early stage cancer at age 34. It was removed painlessly and completely in an afternoon. It’s a cancer that usually affects people over 60 and doesn’t have symptoms until it’s too late. If I didn’t have this other screening, I likely would have died a painful death from it in 10ish years. When the doctor first called to give me the results he said it was divine intervention, and never gave me the results of the test I came in for.
Image credits: BunsMunchHay
#14
Congenital heart failure -- I was a competitive swimmer growing up and misdiagnosed by many doctors for many years. I was 2 months away from my mitral valve completely closing and suffering from complete heart failure by age 9. Luckily, a cardiologist found it after a 'last ditch' effort to try to figure out what was going on and passing out in my last pool. Scheduled for a rush surgery, had mitral valve replaced, am alive. Thankful for cardiologists, get your heart checked!
Image credits: offensivemailbox
#15
In 2019, I had an ex boyfriend hire a hitman to kill me. He emptied his entire clip out on me and I was shot once behind my back & it punctured my lung. I was rushed to the ER, I was set on a table while the nurses and doctors tried to revive me. I remember at one point everything stopped hurting and I was just feeling really at peace & slowly drifting off. They kept putting warm blankets on me because my body was getting cold, but I wasn’t cold, my body was simply shutting down! When they realized that one of the doctors stabbed me with a giant needle and that s**t hurt so much. I started feeling all the pain from the shooting again. A couple more minutes and I would have been completely gone.
Image credits: ApprehensiveHost5472
#16
Went in for bloody stool in my mid-20s. Turns out, it was just blood in the bowl from popping a hemorrhoid during pooping. Doc suggested a colonoscopy just to play it safe. Found a pre-cancerous polyp that would have 100% turned into cancer within the next few years. No way I would have gotten a colonoscopy in ever the next 10 years had that hemorrhoid not popped. I get a colonoscopy every three years now and will continue to do so for life. Saved my life. Could save yours. Get your colonoscopies, people.
Image credits: jim182182
#17
Had a friend who hit a puddle going 80 and lost control. He rolled his car 4 times. He crawled out of the car and called 911. Fire rescue arrived and pulled out the jaws of life. They didn't believe that he had survived and escaped. He only had one visible bruise of his arm from it, so he declined treatment.
A few months later he started exhibiting signs of schizophrenia. Within a year he was completely dissociated from reality. About 7 years later they did an MRI and found very old brain trauma. They suspect that the car accident caused a TBI, which triggered/created his schizophrenia.
Image credits: toothofjustice
#18
I was riding a motorbike at 60mph (national speed limit road). An oncoming car overtook a car on a blind bend and forced me off the road. The moment my bike hit the grass, I decided to jump off it as I was heading for a stone wall and knew that I would never be able to get control of the bike once it was off a tarmac road. The bike pummeled into the wall, and I hit the floor with force. My leathers and helmet saved me from a much worse fate but I think if I'd have hit the oncoming car or the wall, I'd have been dead instantly. I was on my way to stay with friends and my aerosol deodorant exploded in my rucksack, and my visor completely detached from my helmet.
#19
In 1977 while I was rushing to catch a bus a man stopped me for change of a dollar to use a pay phone. I gave him change, missed my bus and minutes later it was in a horrible highway accident.
Ok_Giraffe_6396: Similar thing happened to me. I was babysat by my grandma a lot when I was a young kid and she was going to pick up McDonald’s with me, but as we were leaving, my dad pulled up and I wanted to stay with him instead of going to McDs. A few minutes later, she was hit by an 18-wheeler who ran a red light and smashed into her passenger side. My grandma survived, but it broke her back and both legs. I was 4 or 5 at the time; who’s to say I wouldn’t have been strapped in the back passenger side?
Image credits: anon
#20
Not sure if this counts but..
Many years ago I was riding home from our local dirt jumps on my BMX. Behind my house is a quarry which has a really rocky bridleway running down the hill. This is the route I would usually take to get home from the jumps.
Anyway, I was heading home while the sun was setting and was absolutely blasting it down this rocky path. I jumped off of one of the rocks and while I was in the air, I watched my front wheel drop out from my forks and before I knew it, they had pummelled stright into the ground sending me straight over the handlebars. I flew a good 20-30ft and landed on a big rock, right on my spine. I wasn't wearing a helmet at the time but fortunately I was wearing my backpack which cushioned my landing.
I walked away in shock but completely unscathed apart from a small graze on my knuckles. I have never felt so lucky to be wearing a backpack in my life, without it I'd certainly have been paralysed or worse..
Image credits: TheWooders
#21
Was supposed to be the passenger in my mom’s little car when it was t-boned &that side flattened.
Ran directly off a cliff in the night in a snowstorm, flipped in the air while falling and land 25 ft below in deep soft snow, face up, head point downslope, not knowing what happened.
The forgotten timer set on my phone, for a COVID test, went off in my pocket as I was about to make a turn….the sound so startled me that I slammed on the brakes, just as a large truck ran the light and cut thru my lane where it would have hit me head on.
#22
5 years ago I went tendum skydiving. After about 30 seconds the dude pulled the parachute but it wasn't opening. After pulling on the ropes a bit he got his knife and cut the chute, then pulled the second one. By the time the second one was fully inflated we were almost on the ground and landed somewhere in a field instead of the small airport we were supposed to land. They had to pick us up by car. Save to say I'm never going skydiving again.
#23
My cousin and I were sitting on the back of a houseboat when we were little. All the adults were inside, as adults were in the 80’s. After a while we stumbled inside instead of falling asleep at the back of the boat. We had carbon monoxide poisoning. Had to be rushed to the hospital. Grandpa bought a new boat motor the next day.
#24
I (unkowlingly) had a UTI, never really had one before but I was always told the symptoms were things like dark urine, pissing blood, being itchy, I had NONE of them. I was trying to "tough guy" it out but I had pain in my stomach for at least 5 days and I decided to go to Urgent Care because I couldn't eat or walk anymore. They thought my appendix had f*****g blown so they sent me to the ER but it was a UTI abt ~24 hrs away from going septic and infecting other organs. I felt pretty f****n stupid but at the same time I had no symptoms other than pain. Shits scary.
Image credits: absentandvacant
#25
I got pushed into the other side of the highway by a 18 wheeler that suddenly merged into my lane. I still have nightmares seeing the oncoming cars.
Image credits: MedicusAthleticus
#26
I was a C-17 Loadmaster and back in 2003 we flew a mission out of Baghdad and our plane got hit by an SA-14 at about 1200 feet. I just happened to be sitting behind the pilot in the Left ACM seat and I got to stare at a giant blow torch erupting out of the top of our number 2 engine and flowing over the wing, where the fuel tanks were full. I fully expected the wing to explode any second until we were on the ground and the fire trucks were spraying us down.
#27
I was born into a life with every reason, incentive, and all the motivation to kill myself.
Yet I didn’t.
And on top of that, I survived all the countless absurd stuff that should have killed me.
#28
Messed up when I tried to overdose, by not taking enough pills. I was 15. Genuinely, I’m so happy that that I made that ‘mistake’. I got help, found so much love and support from family and friends, and have managed to help others. My life is so great nowadays, I just can’t express the gratitude I have for being alive.
#29
No S*** there I was, Afghanistan. 15 minutes till midnight. Me and another guy were standing outside on guard duty. Every 2 hours you're supposed to get in the humvee and run the engine so the battery didn't die due to the onboard computer that was always on. 2 minutes after we get in, are doing the radio checks etc and BOOM, rpg hits exactly where we were standing (Im sure they were aiming for the humvee). Oh what a night....
#30
When I was around 5yo I shoved a nail into an electric socket and the breaker didn't activate. I kept being hit by a steady current until my body eventually vibrated out of the socket.
#31
I know a gentleman that had colon cancer found like this.
At his semestral check-up he says to his doctor that his stool hasn't been "the same" for a couple days. His dad and his grandad both had gastrointestinal problems, so his doctor decides to do further testing.
It's colon cancer, but it's found so so early that they got it out with a small surgery and that was it.
#32
Survived a bear attack, survived being lost at sea for 4 days (on a fishing boat, ra out of gas, no land in sight), walked away from falling out of a two story window when I was like 4 or 5, walked away from crashing my motorcycle into a guardrail, walked away from my friends 300zx TT crashing though trees and splitting in half....think that's about it.
#33
During 2002, on the day my mother went into labor and went to the nearest govt medical College. Now govt medical college means free treatment but it also means the worst patient care there is. Dirty lobbies, dirty beds, inhuman toilets, nurses treat you like animals etc etc.
Anyway, my mom went into labor and she was admitted shortly afterwards. She had her checkup and ultrasound. There was another woman in her ward who also went into labor that day and that woman's child didn't make it. She gave birth to a deceased baby.
Anyway, the stupid f*****g nurses(and I know you all have huge respect for nurses but I can't help it) then told my family that my mom has a dead baby inside her and they need to remove it. My dad was asked to buy an injection required for the process. That injection would've killed me. When my grandma arrives at the hospital, and she got told that I died, she lost it! She started screaming and saying how even the last night when she was applying oil on my mom's belly, I was kicking and was healthy.
Mind you this is a woman who has given birth to 8 kids of whom only 3 are alive. She knows what she is talking about. Even then those nurses were physically fighting her and won't let her into the ward, she fought her way in and went to my mom(who was oblivious to all this and could still feel me kicking) and demanded that the doctor comes and sees her immediately.
After that I was born, at the exact stroke of midnight(not making this up, I was literally born at exactly, 12 am).
This is the gist of how I cheated death. Ofc there's more to this tale of hell, like mom bleeding for hours after I was born and not even being given some water to drink etc.
#34
Went into a coma from pneumonia that turned my blood septic and woke up 2 days later. The doctors didn't think I would wake up.
I was hung with a rope and ripped my ear off to get out(when they execute you they use a hangmans noose for a reason).
Put in a cd at a stoplight and the stereo kept spitting it back out. In my focus to get it to work I didn't see the light turn green. Just as the guy behind me honked a car ran the red light at full speed and hit the cars that went beside me when the light turned green. The guy behind me didn't move, even when the traffic cleared.
#35
I passed out while drunk/high after going to the bathroom and broke a toilet with the back of my head. Woke up in a pool of blood and ended up with ~30 staples in the back of my head. I showed a doctor a picture of the bathroom scene once and he looked visibly shook.
#36
One morning my GF convinced me it was worth being late to work. *Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink, Know-whot-I-mean-Guvna?*
An hour later when I got to my bus stop, the bus stop and the light pole behind it had been totalled by a car. The lady who had been there had been taken to hospital with multiple broken bones.
#37
I had a tumor removed *before* it progressed to colon cancer, which it likely would have done if I hadn't gone to the doctor.
Image credits: elihu
#38
6 yo and I drowned, was pulled out of the pool and resuscitated. I firmly believe I experienced NDE similar to that of people who have described psychedelic experiences but it was so long ago it's hard to know for sure. In any case with those types of experiences I think it's each to their own.
#39
Dont know if this is cheating, but I was born dead umblical cord twice around my neck and have tried suicide 3 times. Still here.
#40
A bullet was an inch from my face.
#41
I was on a mountain trail in South Dakota. I’m not sure if we took a wrong turn or the trail just ended, but along a mountainside the rope just ended, and the next bit was very sloped and covered in fine gravel.
12-year-old me clambered across but barely, and my parents asked me to come back.
Only later did I realize that the drop was many tens of feet, and a slip was very likely.
This is not a climactic or crazy story, but the slow, creeping reality of death haunts me whenever I think of it.
#42
I was at a stop sign and saw a car swerve to miss another car and head straight for me. Seatbelt laws weren’t a thing yet and I jumped across the center console and grabbed the passenger door handle just as he hit my car’s driver side door. I flew back across the car and into the drivers side door which had been pushed in halfway across the drivers seat.
#43
Managed to get back into my hometown as it was on fire and managed to rescue two dogs. The entirety of the journey throw town was navigated by GPS and feeling the road as it was a total brown out. I did rear end someone but there was no scratch since it was low speed. I also almost was in a head-on collision with a fire truck screaming down the road in said total brownout. You would think I have smoke damage to my lungs because I was walking around outside too trying to recover things. I did lose my house and almost got killed by a falling tree I couldn’t see, missed me by a couple feet because it fell onto where I was standing 3 seconds prior. I managed to get out unscathed with 2 dogs. Sadly I could make it out with my 4 cats as they perished in the fire and their charred bones were found by me and ex fiance the next day. Was sad but I’m thankful I became a hero for the dogs as one is still with me today and loves me a lot. Eastland Complex Fire 2022 if you’re all curious.
#44
Horrible car accident. Car flipped a ton of times. No seat belt, flew out the window. Walked away.
#45
One time in high school, I was walking home through an area of the city that was largely populated by another group of young adolescents. As I was walking down the street, I noticed a car at the top of the street. I walked past it without really looking into the car, but I did notice a lot of smoke coming out of it; there may have been three or four people in it. I got maybe five or six car lengths away and had an overwhelming feeling in my stomach that something bad was going to happen. I crossed the street and had a row of parked cars on the left of me, with the car that was parked further up the street behind me on the opposite side. For whatever reason, something in me told me to drop to the ground. At that very moment, I heard tires screeching from behind me, and I threw myself down just as bullets were sprayed over the top of me. Glass from a few cars rained down on top of me. I was near the end of the street. The car turned right at the end of the street, looking down the sidewalk. I looked up at the vehicle and could see that their bullets had been missed. I turned and ran towards the first house, which happened to have the tenant open to see what was going on. I pushed past them, ran through their house, through their back door, hopped their fence, and up their neighbor's fence. I ran to the next street. The car had turned and followed me. I continued running between the neighborhood deeper into this opposing group's territory. I realized I was further and further from my destination and in a very bad predicament, running out of houses to run through. I hid for a bit in the dark, listening to cars driving around, scared that every car was them. I noticed I was on a street with a girl that I had only hung out with maybe once or twice. I came to her house and knocked on the door. She happened to be awake, and she offered me to come inside. I didn't tell her about what had just occurred, just that I was happy to see her and asked if I was welcome to stay the night.
