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You are here: Home / Archives for death

death

01/18/2017 By Jason Bean Leave a Comment

This Thing Called Life Is Trying to Kill Me

Near Death Open CasketAll of us have had those close calls in our life. For some reason though, I seem to be collecting them. Currently there are three that go above and beyond the normal close calls. I personally only remember two of them. I was a little too young for accurate memories of the first one. The other two I actually remember pretty well. Let's get started...

My Near Death Experience #1:

It was something involving an oxygen tent being left open when I was a baby. For whatever reason I had to be placed in an oxygen tent while I was a baby or very young toddler. The nurse came in to feed me and got interrupted by something and forgot to reseal the tent. When the next doctor or nurse came in I was gasping for breath because I wasn't getting enough oxygen into my lungs.

My Near Death Experience # 2:

There was a group of people from my church at a local park one night. I was three of four at the time. My parent's drove in separate cars and my dad decided he was going to head home and was going to stop my the mall on the way. On his way out, he saw my brother's and I playing and stopped to see if we wanted to go back with him or stay a little longer and come back with my mom. I was standing by the front fender on the passenger's side. I was jumping up and holding myself up by pushing down on the hood and fender. I was still trying to decide, but my dad thought I had said I'd stay and started moving to leave. When the car started moving I lost my balance and slid underneath the car. I don't remember the car actually rolling over me, but I do remember being under the car and hearing everyone screaming. They pulled me from underneath the car and rushed me to the emergency room.

The doctor's didn't believe them when they said the car had completely run over me. They said I probably just fell in between the tires and it just looked like they had rolled across my body. While they were examining me the bruises started to show up on my chest. Dark blue bruises in a tread design across my chest. The doctors and nurses couldn't believe it!! They said it was a miracle I was even alive much less breathing normally and no internal injuries. I ended up with just the bruises on my chest and scratches on my hand. Now, before you write this story off. Just remember. This wasn't the 90's when cars are made out of plastic and fiberglass. This was an old Cutlass Supreme, double steel paneled doors, etc. My dad isn't exactly Mr. Slim-body either.

I'd like to try and track down the actual doctor reports concerning the accident and include them. I don't tell this story much anymore. The usual response after I finish is "Well, that explains what's wrong with you."

Near Death Experience # 3

The third near death experience happened my sophomore year in college. 

I wrote about this experience specifically in a post awhile back you can read here:

I Shouldn't Be Alive... Sledding Accident

Filed Under: Featured, Personal Tagged With: baby, car accident, death, doctors, life, near death, nurses, oxygen tent, sledding

02/01/2011 By Jason Bean Leave a Comment

I Shouldn’t Be Alive… Sledding Accident

With the snow we’ve had in the Indianapolis area recently, it got me to thinking and telling the story to my kids of how I almost died one year in college during a sledding accident. I was a sophomore at Mount Vernon Nazarene University.

On Sunday, January 3, 1994 my friends were going sledding at the golf course after church.  I told them I had gone to Pleasant Hill Dam the day before and it was great. I convinced them to go and I went with them.  We all loaded up into a friend’s gold Ford Escort and made the trek from campus to Mohican State Park area where the dam was located.

Pleasant Hill Dam - Top from Parking Lot
This is the view from the top. Notice the 45 degree angle of the hill.

We finally got to the backside of the dam. I grabbed the inner-tube off the top of the car and said “Now this is how you do it”. I walked over to the top of the hill and pushed off (mistake #1).

The previous day the snow was fresh and powdery, that day it was a solid sheet of ice and fast.  The day before we had gotten to the bottom but not at any great speed. About half way down the hill it leveled off for a second and we had built a ramp.  The day before, anytime I had ever hit the ramp I flew right off the tube.

Pleasant Hill Dam - Dam Wall
This is looking back up the hill. You can see where it levels off towards the top where the ramp was. I landed at the bottom.

Today, I just flew. I hit the ramp and flew about 30ft. through the air and landed at the bottom of the hill.  When I landed I couldn’t believe it, I did realize that I was going way too fast and was going to hit the chain link fence pretty hard. I decided to roll off the tube so I would stop (mistake #2). You’re probably like most people, when you go sledding you bundle up and try to wear somewhat water repellant or resistant clothing. Now, before we left I had put on bike shorts, long underwear, sweat pants, a t-shirt, two sweatshirts, and…. my waterproof running suit.  I was now a human sled.  I hit the fence with such force I pushed myself and the tube under it.

As I went over the wall and saw the water I thought to myself “This is going to be cold”. I hit the water (I was right). I went under and it was just like TV, the bubbles everywhere and I was looking up through the surface of the water at the sky. I fought my way to the top and inhaled as much air as I could. I tried to swim to the wall I’d just flown over to hold myself up. The wall was too slick and icy and there was nothing to hold on to so I sunk below the surface again.  I decided to try and push off the wall and swim towards the center of the stream to get out into what little current of water there was at the time.  As I pushed off the wall, I noticed a guy at the top of the 15′ wall with a 3′ branch trying to help me. All I could think was “You idiot”. By now another guy had rushed down the hill and was trying to wade upstream towards me, he was really far away and I thought to myself that there was no way he was going to get to me in time.

All those clothes I’d put on before were now completely soaked and heavy, they were slowly pulling me deeper and deeper into the water. The frigid water had sucked all the energy out of my muscles and I couldn’t move.  As my body slipped below the surface again, I looked up through the water at the beautiful, blue sky and thought “Well, this is it. It’s actually quite peaceful”, and I gave up.

Pleasant Hill Dam - Reservoir Wall
This was the view I had when I looked over the wall.

I’m not sure how long it was between me giving up, but somehow, the wading guy made it to me. He pulled me up from my arms and said “Fight, you’re not going to &@)%^ die” and pulled me over to the rock wall. Another group of people threw down a rope and pulled me to the top of the wall.  As they started taking my jacket off they leaned me over the wall and I was looking straight back down to the surface of the water.  I told them they had better not drop me back in there.  I heard someone next to me say I was the third person he’d seen go over the fence that they had to rescue. I thought, “You might want to strengthen the fence then”.

People grabbed a cheap, plastic sled and they laid me in it and started dragging me back up the hill.  Every time they would pull on the sled I slipped out of it a little. I finally completely came out of the sled. I said, “Forget this”, and I started running up the hill in my bike shorts, no shirt, and my sock feet. The guy that just came close to drowning is beating everyone back up the hill, it’s amazing what adrenaline will do.

sled_UpHill
This is a view from down the reservoir looking back up the hill.

To shorten up the story, the park ranger and rescue squad arrived. My heart rate was extremely low and my body temperature was 94 degrees.  I spent a few hours in the emergency room with huge heating pads all over me. We got back to campus about 7:00pm and many in the student body, professors and staff already knew about the event. So I began telling this story for the first of many times to come.

About 6 weeks after the accident I still couldn’t feel my toes, but other than that no permanent damage. Just another experience in my life. Maybe I’ll share the stories of the other two times I should have died sometime on the blog.

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: death, Mohican State Park, Mount Vernon Nazarene University, near death, Pleasant Hill Dam, sledding

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