The most nerve wracking time of our life

[wolram]

What was the most nerve wracking experience of your life?

 

[Jack21222]

It was 5 years ago when my sister got shot through the neck during that first week or so when we didn't know whether she'd live or die. (She lived, though the bullet hit her spinal cord, so she's a C4/5 complete quad). I was a wreck.

 

[Evo]

It was 5 years ago when my sister got shot through the neck during that first week or so when we didn't know whether she'd live or die. (She lived, though the bullet hit her spinal cord, so she's a C4/5 complete quad). I was a wreck.

That's horrible! What happened, or do you not want to talk about it?

 

[wolram]

That's horrible! What happened, or do you not want to talk about it?

Agree, that was horrific.

 

[wolram]

My most nerve wracking experience was to stand in front of a board of a multi national company and tell them a piece of plant we had just installed did not work.

 

[Evo]

My most nerve wracking experience was being in labor, the epidural wearing off and they can't find the anesthesiologist. Spawn was face up instead of face down and her back was jammed against my spine causing excrutiating pain. 32+ hours of intense labor.

 

[CFDFEAGURU]

Wolram, I know your pain. I have had a similar experience ...

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

My most nerve wracking experience was being in labor, the epidural wearing off and they can't find the anesthesiologist. Spawn was face up instead of face down and her back was jammed against my spine causing excrutiating pain. 32+ hours of intense labor.

Ouch, I know how that feels. My most nerve wracking time is right now. Thanksgiving is tomorrow and I still haven't decided whether to serve the Riesling or the Gewurztraminer.

 

[turbo]

I have had many nerve-wracking times over the years, but the most recent one started a couple of years ago when my mother-in-law lost functionality due to dementia. 4 of my wife's sisters insisted that they keep her at home and insisted that each sibling had to spend a night shift every week to tend to her. My wife and her remaining sane sister finally rebelled and refused to play along. My wife works 40+ hours every week at her job and losing a night-shift every weekend was just too much. The crazy sisters have never forgiven her, and the family is torn apart. A year+ of that stuff is torture.

 

[lisab]

My most nerve-wracking moment, I think, was when I worked on a fish processing ship. The ship was underway from one place to another, so we didn't have to work. The management would allow us to have a little celebration during these times, and would even give us a beer or two. What a treat!

It was late and I was walking back to what they called "girl's town", where the female workers slept. The only way to get there was by an outside deck. The ship was in rough water, and I slipped and fell. I skidded straight towards an opening in the railing. I managed to catch a chain just in time. I got back on my feet, and made my way to my quarters.

At first I was really shaken. That would have been a really bad way to die! I could picture myself in the cold Alaskan ocean, the Bering Sea, in the water watching the ship move away. That vision was strangely detailed in my mind. It's a very real possibility that no one would notice I was gone until I didn't show up for my next shift, some 10 hours later.

But a little while later, I became very, very calm and relaxed, and it didn't bother me at all.

 

[Pengwuino]

I was about to talk about this one time I tried to make a pie, but clearly it is not up to the standards of this thread.

 

[rootX]

Things like running off a tractor, failing a course, going to first interview, setting house fire, getting electrocuted ... but I don't know what was the most nerve wrecking.

 

[Jack21222]

That's horrible! What happened, or do you not want to talk about it?

Argument in a bar between her boyfriend and some guy. My sister convinced her boyfriend to walk away from the argument, so they got in the car and were driving away. The thug went out to his own car, got his gun, and fired at the car my sister was in.

Just another night in Baltimore, Murderland.

I kept my hospital wristband from that night, and carry it with me at all times as a reminder that no matter how rough things get for me, I shouldn't complain because it can always be worse.

 

[wolram]

Things like running off a tractor, failing a course, going to first interview, setting house fire, getting electrocuted ... but I don't know what was the most nerve wrecking.

Getting electrocuted i imagine, hope you are looking over us

 

[Borek]

It wasn't a single situation on a single day, rather several months of a fight over who will control the publishing house I was working for. Pretty stressing time.

Not to mention waiting for my Mom to get back from a parenting evening (or whatever you call monthly meeting of parents with the class teachers at school).

 

[Andre]

My most nerve-wracking moment, I think, was when I worked on a fish processing ship.

At first I was really shaken. That would have been a really bad way to die! I could picture myself in the cold Alaskan ocean, the Bering Sea, in the water watching the ship move away. That vision was strangely detailed in my mind...

Big ships give me the creeps, too. Being under the bow of one...!

Weird phobia that you can't explain, explained?

 

[MarneMath]

It's weird, I remember the first time I had to do Combat Life Saving was pretty nervous moment for me. I didn't know if I did it right, and I spent the whole time afterward shaking hoping I did everything right. Yet, I still remember shaking pretty badly when I asked my wife to marry me. However, if I had to say the most nerve wrecking time in my life is the first time I met my daughter after a deployment. She was only 6 months when I left, and she was 14 months when I came back, the whole trip back I was very unsure if she would remember me. I lived on a little fob during that whole time, so she only heard my voice when I called. It was a great relief to hear her say, 'daddy' and point at a phone :).

 

[wolram]

It's weird, I remember the first time I had to do Combat Life Saving was pretty nervous moment for me. I didn't know if I did it right, and I spent the whole time afterward shaking hoping I did everything right. Yet, I still remember shaking pretty badly when I asked my wife to marry me. However, if I had to say the most nerve wrecking time in my life is the first time I met my daughter after a deployment. She was only 6 months when I left, and she was 14 months when I came back, the whole trip back I was very unsure if she would remember me. I lived on a little fob during that whole time, so she only heard my voice when I called. It was a great relief to hear her say, 'daddy' and point at a phone :).

Awww. how cute, and thank you for your service.

 

[nsaspook]

Spending 3 months (We left port in January for the mission that ended in April) waiting for the 1980 Iran rescue to happen while operating with the Nimiz battle group as a staff communications technical controller near Oman praying that more than half the people involved would make it out alive. Then having to deliver the news to our commanders that the mission had failed, we left dead men behind and having to deliver the whole story of what happened to the crew from the Russian TASS news service broadcasts from Afghanistan because all we could offically release was the message from the President.

http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/detail/3936
http://www.press.umich.edu/pdf/0472108670-03.pdf

 

[Evo]

Funny what affects people. I witnessed a murder, the man was shot down across the street from me. The murderer was holding a shotgun hanging out of the backseat window of a car driving by. Didn't affect me.

A bomb threat was called in by the KKK as being left in the elevator 10 feet from my desk at a radio station that got bombed earlier. The police and the FBI came, removed some parts of our radio tower that was bombed (left in the elevator by the bombers), that they claimed was another bomb. They didn't evacuate us, hmmm. Didn't affect me.

I could go on and on about life threatening and very tragic events in my life and they didn't effect me. I have trouble even remembering a lot of them. I've had an odd life.

I broke a date with a guy and he killed himself. His family and friends blamed me. Yeah, there's a bit more to this story, but not much.

Oh, when I was young, living at home, I lived around the corner from the boy who's body was the first to be found that turned out to be the 28th victim of a serial killer. That was sad, had to take a back road to my house due to all of the police.

When I got my first apartment, detectives knocked on my door questioning me, the girl that lived next door had been murdered.

Went to work, noticed that the glass door was smashed, just missed a gunman that had broken in and opened fire and killed 2 people.

My best friend at the same workplace borrowed a nickel from me to buy a soda, I must have given him a strange look because he said "hey, it's not like you'll never see me again", I never saw him again, he was murdered a few hours later, shot through the head in his own car.

BTW, I lived in wealthy areas with almost no crime, worked for one of the world's largest companies in a nice area.

 

[TheMadMonk]

Getting shot at in Angola was a pretty rubbish experience. Felt pretty helpless sitting there hoping I didn't get hit.

 

[Evo]

Getting shot at in Angola was a pretty rubbish experience. Felt pretty helpless sitting there hoping I didn't get hit.

That definitely sucks.

 

[Evo]

Do you know what PTSD is?

Oh yeah, I was in an elevator crash where there was an explosion and the cable broke, the safety cable caught and prevented us (me and my two little girls) from falling all the way. The ceiling crashed on us, flourescent bulbs shattered, we were cut by glass and metal rods from the ceiling and we were trapped for 2 hours, covered by debris between floors until they could attach a cable to the car and manually winch us up. I had the girls curl up on the floor and covered them with clothing I had purchased (we were in a department store), both to protect them from breathing the heavy white vapor in the elevator, the falling debris and in case we fell again, i wanted them on the floor. The elevator would rock if we moved and parts of the ceiling that was still hanging above us was falling. The girls suffered from PTSD, couldn't even get them into a public builiding until after a couple of years of therapy.

 

[TheMadMonk]

That definitely sucks.

Funny thing is I'd been shot at before elsewhere and it hadn't really bothered me anywhere near as much, I'm not sure why that had such an effect when similar incidents didn't seem to.

 

[Evo]

Funny thing is I'd been shot at before elsewhere and it hadn't really bothered me anywhere near as much, I'm not sure why that had such an effect when similar incidents didn't seem to.

I think being shot at any time would be nerve wracking. I certainly don't want to experience that.

 

[TheMadMonk]

I think being shot at any time would be nerve wracking. I certainly don't want to experience that.

I've found it to be quite exciting at times for some odd reason, probably quite a dangerous way to think but I can't really explain it.

 

[nobahar]

Evo, remind me to never hang-out with you.

 

[turbo]

I think being shot at any time would be nerve wracking. I certainly don't want to experience that.

No fun!

 

[turbo]

I was shot at by a hunter from New Jersey who heard me coming through the woods and assumed that I was a deer.

 

[dlgoff]

I shouldn't have looked at this thread. The electrocution thing brings back a memory I just as soon forget. Now that the images are clear in my mind now, I guess I'll share.

It had been a long work week of 12-14 hours/day doing electrical maintenance at this chemical plant; one project being installing some conduit into a large control panel/cabinet. This cabinet was about 7 feet high with access doors which were open in order to fasten the new conduit coming from above. Inside this cabinet was a maze of relays, switches, etc with live 440vac on them.

There were three of four of us doing the job; me being on a ladder, which was leaning on the front of the cabinet, directing the conduit down into its entry hole. As I was trying to get it aligned and inserted for the person below to fasten, the ladder flipped over throwing me directly into the cabinet.

They say, "things move in slow motion as your life flashes before you". It's true.

Well, one on the guys reacted very quickly putting himself in the cabinet and deflecting my trajectory. He put himself at risk as we both were within inches from the power as I crashed down.

I stood up shaking like a leaf with the first thing out of my mouth being, "Thank you for saving my life".

 

[wolram]

I shouldn't have looked at this thread. The electrocution thing brings back a memory I just as soon forget. Now that the images are clear in my mind now, I guess I'll share.

It had been a long work week of 12-14 hours/day doing electrical maintenance at this chemical plant; one project being installing some conduit into a large control panel/cabinet. This cabinet was about 7 feet high with access doors which were open in order to fasten the new conduit coming from above. Inside this cabinet was a maze of relays, switches, etc with live 440vac on them.

There were three of four of us doing the job; me being on a ladder, which was leaning on the front of the cabinet, directing the conduit down into its entry hole. As I was trying to get it aligned and inserted for the person below to fasten, the ladder flipped over throwing me directly into the cabinet.

They say, "things move in slow motion as your life flashes before you". It's true.

Well, one on the guys reacted very quickly putting himself in the cabinet and deflecting my trajectory. He put himself at risk as we both were within inches from the power as I crashed down.

I stood up shaking like a leaf with the first thing out of my mouth being, "Thank you for saving my life".

A very lucky escape, i have had a few near misses with HV electtrics

 

[Danger]

They say, "things move in slow motion as your life flashes before you". It's true.

Too true. I have experienced the time dilation effect hundreds or maybe even thousands of times, when circumstances demanded it. No "life flashes" though; it was just a matter of my mental processes accelerating to an incredible level so that everything appeared to happen in extreme slow motion. A few times, it saved my life (like when I fell head-first directly onto a spike-belt conveyor from 3 metres above, and landed on my feet beside it); most times, it allowed me (as pitcher) to catch a ball that the batter had aimed at me in hope of hurting me. There was also the occasional bar fight...
I was originally going to say the my most nerve-wracking experience was that bit about dying last year, but in retrospect that seems sort of mild.

 

[trueo]

You experienced similar fights before; or do you want them to take place with you in some very near future ? <<< this is why I believe I don't have a flight and I will never accept or be accepted to deal with anyone in charge, especially those who could see me from above

 

[Pythagorean]

The birth of my first child. We did it in a hospital and it was like medieval England.

Second child was in a birth center with midwives. Way smoother and more enjoyable.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

My daughter was born in Japan. When my wife went to birthing lessons at the hospital, I asked to join in. However, they told me husbands were not allowed. Then when the time came I asked if I could be in the delivery room and they said no because I hadn't taken birthing lessons. When I first saw my daughter it was a few minutes after she was born. Right away I noticed a drop of blood on her forehead and it made me think she got hurt coming down the birth canal. Then it hit me that when she was born she was covered head to foot in blood and that she had been cleaned up.

 

[Pythagorean]

In the hospital birth, they stuck a thermometer right in my daughter's head. We didn't realize it actually gets stabbed into the top of the head until she was out. I'm telling you, medieval!