bacterial infections that would have probably led to pneumonia and death.
I almost drowned when I fell into a pool at age 5. My cousin was the only one to see what happened and saved me.
When I was 6 I fell onto the ground from two stories up after secretly ignoring my parents who told me to stay off the scaffolding that was being used to build our house. I still don't know how I walked away from that one unscathed.
When I was 14, I was all alone and got caught in a rip current. I didn't know what to do and panicked and actually swam back to shore THROUGH the rip current and collapsed on the shore utterly exhausted. I didn't know then about the "swim parallel to the shore" thing.
When I was 18 (yes this one is real) I went skydiving and when my parachute opened one of the lines was broken and I couldn't control the parachute, so I had to cut away and go to my reserve parachute - that was a crazy, crazy experience.
On my mission, we had a gas leak in our apartment and didn't realize it. I got really sick and had a hard time breathing. But we had an appointment that I wasn't going to miss. Once outside I got my breath back. We decided to spend the night at other elders' apartment and called the gas company the next day. The technician came and took a reading in our apartment and said, "I'm surprised that you woke up today." I said, "We didn't sleep here." He said, "That's why."
Once, driving to Provo from St. George, I suddenly heard a "whump!" right next to my car door. I looked around and then in my rear-view mirror to see a truck leaving the freeway behind me, going the wrong direction and off the road. I realized that they had been going in the opposite direction and lost control somehow, crossed the median, and into oncoming traffic, just barely missing me in what would have been a head-on collision.
I've told this one before on CB, but once I was driving on I-70 towards Denver during a snowstorm. I was surrounded by cars when suddenly my vehicle hit ice and did a complete 360 rotation and then continued on as if nothing had happened.
Finally, I don't know how close to death I actually was, but I've stood, multiple times on the edge of an erupting volcano. The most dangerous thing was the gases being released would have killed me pretty quickly had I not avoided them.