What was the scariest moment of your entire life?

It's Saturday morning and I hope you're feeling better.

Scariest moment. Well besides the normal near-miss accidents and people jumping out from behind doors, I got a biggie.

When my son was 7 years old he got sick and his Mom stayed home with him. Appeared to be just a flu or cold and we didn't think much of it. I got a call at work just before lunchtime to come home because he was having trouble breathing. I rushed home and found that he was having such a hard time getting a breath in that his stomach (diaphram) was sucking in and out. He couldn't speak and there was such a look of panic on his face. We spent about 30 seconds getting him together to rush him to the hospital and, in that time, he grabbed his throat and stopped breathing. The look of terror on his young face and the thought of losing him was the scariest moment ever.

We knew that we would not make it to the hospital which was 10 minutes away and an ambulance would take longer. In about 15 seconds we determined that it was not choking and we reasoned that his throat had swollen and closed over.

This may sound stupid, but thanks to a MASH episode many years ago I did a tracheotomy on him. He had passed out and was turning blue. I got a sharp knife from the kitchen, a bottle of rum (alcohol), and cut a piece of large tubing from the fishtank filter. I poured alcohol over all this stuff and his throat, picked a spot that I thought was right and shoved the knife through his trachea. I had butchered many animals in the past when hunting and working on a farm and knew what it felt like to do this. When I felt that I was deep enough, I pushed the tubing into the hole I just made and blew into it and saw his chest rise. He immediately started breathing again. We wrapped a cloth around the tubing and his throat and headed for the hospital. He woke up in the car and we knew he was going to be alright.

Anyway, to shorten the story, we got to the hospital and explained (several times) to the staff what had happened. They took him to surgery to repair what I had done and to place a tube down his throat. Apparently, he got a rare infection in his throat and was in ICU for about 3 weeks to get rid of it.

Today, he has a very slight scar where I pierced his throat.

Aww that sucks, being sick.

The scariest moment of my life was a really bad car accident I got into. I was working from midnight to 6 am, and on the way driving home I fell asleep behind the wheel for what seemed like a split second, but it was enough to cause a really bad accident. I totaled my car and flipped the truck I hit, three times. The truck separated into two pieces. It was really bad, and pretty scary.

Hmm this wasn't a scary moment but a very strange one. I had a nightmare or a dream a couple of months ago about opening my eyes and seeing a big grim reaper in front of my bed looking at me with black eyes and his face was painted black. It was creepy and I woke up the next moment covered in sweat. I also checked my door and it was locked.

Hmmm gotta go to work soon, so guess my night won't be too boring :).