As you might already be aware, we’re currently running a Bloodborne competition. The theme of that competition is ‘Face Your Fear’. We’re organising for one lucky winner to face their fear (and win loads of other stuff). Anyway, I thought it might make for an interesting topic: what’s the scariest thing you’ve ever done?
I find that fear is all relative. I’ve gone skydiving, for example, but I’m not afraid of heights so I don’t feel like I had to muster up that much courage to do it. I was far, far more nervous for my driving test than I was to go skydiving.
When I was 19 I went by myself to the United States for four months. I found that quite scary back then. At that time in my life four months felt like an eternity.
What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever done?
Comments
99 responses to “Off Topic: Scariest Thing You’ve Ever Done?”
Probably the scariest thing I’ve ever done is to go diving with great whites in Gansbaai. We went to a little spot called Seal Alley. I was in a cage but let me tell you when a 4 metre shark smashes into your cage, the cage doesn’t necessarily feel like the protection that it should be.
Amazing experience though.
…
This is super high on my bucket list. They’re my favourite animals, and I’m terrified of the prospect of doing it, but I know I’ll love it once I’m doing it.
Yeah, I think living in London was pretty terrifying.
Also this might sound stupid, but going to first Kotaku gathering was scary stuff. 😛
In fairness, my car was kind of shit.
Was that when you were looking for an Asian me?
Nah, I went to theme park with a bunch of strangers for first gathering. I met you on the second karaoke gathering. 😛
Ah!
That was the time he thought @sernobulus was me hahaha.
Well done, me.
It’s all good 😛
I’ll see you Friday, nobs.
:p
Hahaha.
Aw, since others are being serious I guess I should be too:
Coming out to family and friends was probs the scariest thing I’ve done.Also one of the best things I’ve done! *decisive nod*
That’s still too scary for me to do.
I’d tell you that you should just do it and you’ll feel amazing and things will be good and a weight will lift off your shoulders, but it won’t make it any easier for you to do. I know from experience that you’ve got to get right with it yourself and there’s no time frame for that to happen. Wish you all the best, though. You’ll do it eventually and it will be a good day for you. (No matter the responses you get!)
Thank you so much for the kind words. (As you’d know, it means a lot 🙂 )
I should’ve said the same thing. I likely didn’t think of it because while it was incredibly scary and stressful at the time (and the decade leading up to it), I no longer associate it with that. I built it up in my head as something that would destroy my life; my parents would disown me, my friends would desert me. At a more base level: that everyone would think of me differently.
But once it was done? The opposite happened. I became closer with my parents and my friends said it was great to know the real me. I’d basically been engineering a person since I was a teenager, someone who was only partly me but also wasn’t someone others wouldn’t think was gay. To me at the time, thanks to conservative parents (who’ve thankfully softened since) and growing up in a country town, being gay was the worst thing I could be. Even if future-me had told me in person with unrefutable evidence that coming out would be a positive experience and my life would be better for it, I wouldn’t have believed it. It still would’ve been the scariest thing I’ve ever done. But now I only wish I did it ten years sooner.
I absolutely agree with you on both your points @dc.
You’re awesome, my friend! You’re right too, I wouldn’t have believed my future self either!
I thought it would’ve been saying avant garde outloud!
😛
That was just embarrassing. 😛
Have kids… and not knowing if I will do something to screw up their lives.
Absolutely this!
First time dad was terrifying, even though we thought we had it all planned out. wouldn’t trade the little fella for anything now though
Agree with you 100%. Still, I am constantly aware of my own flaws and terrified that they will negatively affect them in anyway.
I’d like to put this as an entry for the Bloodborne competition. Alas it’s not Bloodborne related nor I can think of a way to face it.
hmmm…neither can I.
Unless once they reach majority we turn them loose on the world and let society judge wether or not we’ve raised them correct. Although the way society is headed I probably won’t care for the general opinion.
When I brought my first home that was pretty terrifying. Now that my wife and I are planning a family I must admit that is scaring the bejeezus out of me.
Ride it out @shamrocks. Best thing in the world is when your kid(s) wake up in the morning (they ALWAYS wake up happy…when did we lose that?) and run into your legs for a hug. Priceless.
I gave an unpopular opinion on the internet!
You bastard!
I hope you learned your lesson.
http://tinyurl.com/m6geec2
Snorkeling in open water. I nearly drowned when I was about 5 years old. Since then I’ve had a mortal fear of being out of my depth in water or unable to see the bottom. Took me 40 years to get over it, but I finally realised a 5 year old child was holding a grown man back and let it go.
I feel this way about safety stops when I do a boat dive. Your sitting in one spot and all you see is the anchor line and everywhere else just dissolves into blue. I still do it but I can tell you I use more oxygen sitting still in the safety stop than at any other point on the dive.
Dropped acid & the only guy with me was drunk.
Got lost within myself contemplating existence, communication & how the mind works (I’d just read Dune).
I had to use the guy’s drunken rambling as a beacon to reality & crawl back, learning how to human all over again.
#DrugsAreBad
Nah.
Abuse of drugs, sure.
Haha! I just like to stay in control. The prospect of being out of control is scary to me!
It can be very scary, but it really puts things in perspective.
Can help you realise how real life is all that scary.
That said, definitely not for everyone.
I’m gonna go with this as well. First time I took it the guy I was doing it with left to go home sick with his girlfriend, just before I came on. Craziest next 10 hours of my life.
Alone? Alone would be full on!
Its fine, you just find a nice tree-filled park to play in, preferrably with fountains as well
works especially well after seeing something like a 3d dinosaur movie at an Imax 😉
I agree with the park idea, but I find movies really bring you back down to reality (and give you your sense of time back which isn’t really what I want). Also, IMO, a poor way to spend your time while waiting to come on if you want the full visual effects. Same goes for watching a music visualizer, wait a few (3-4) hours after taking before you turn that on or it doesn’t work the same.
Just my experience, it’s obviously different for everyone (especially first time users, it will be more intense), but for regulars like myself the first few hours heavily influence the next 8-10.
My semi-experienced friend left about 90 minutes after taking it, then I was alone for the next three hours. Between coming to terms with the sea creatures swirling around in the patterns on the floor in my kitchen (Think octopuses and Krakens), and the giant movie characters jumping in and out of the clouds outside every couple of second, some other friends arrived (who shared between them zero experiences of my current situation) Friends ended up taking me out to the city, which in retrospect was a fairly poor decision but did take my mind off stuff.
This was several years ago and I did eventually have a good time after all of that, have done it alone many more times aswell but prefer to be with people who are sharing the experience. And while I do have positive memories now, at the time it was scary as hell.
Jumping off things. I don’t mind heights (used to climb, have flown in tiny planes, and abseiling is no problem), but jumping even small drops is terrifying. First was jumping off hay bales into a huge pile of hay at a mate’s farm when I was a kid, the high board at the pool, and then again bungee jumping. Did it eventually. Shit scared though.
Also setting off entirely on my own on my tricycle 3 weeks after I arrived in Australia was pretty daunting…
I ride in traffic every day though and people think I’m mental, so I guess fear is a weird thing and all about the perception of danger a lot more than the actual danger.
It’s not the fall that will kill you, it’s the ground at the bottom of it.
The scariest thing I’ve ever done is read the comments on that Anita Sarkesian post from a few days back. The Kotaku commenteriat really, really hates women. Especially outspoken ones.
The scariest thing I’ve done? Your mother… badoomtish!
It’s unconscionable and horrible… but it made me laugh.
Taking a ski lift, during a family trip around Europe when I was 9 or 10. I’ve found I’ve got less a fear of heights and more a fear of falling from heights – had no problems in cable cars or anything that was enclosed… but feeling the raw wind buffetting you about? Wondering if the ski lift was holding you as precariously as you were your skis, as you felt them slip slightly in your grip… I distinctly remember walking back down the mountain, having been too shaken up to make use of my ski lessons.
I’m fine on ski-lifts. Fine dangling by ropes. It’s the drop. Even giant swings freak me out.
Told my best friend I was in love with her.
Them feels.
Uh, in a more conventional sense, I’ve been pretty afraid for my life or others’ lives quite a few times.
Let’s see… Minus the redacted ones, and things I can’t even remember, and a couple that just gave me a panic attack and now I have to take some time out:
* passenger in a high-speed car crash
* passenger in a light aircraft in the middle of fucking nowhere that had engine trouble (and didn’t crash – but I was still scared shitless)
* being caught out on the ocean in a storm
* being in a wooden beach-shack which got impaled by a tree during another (different and more violent) storm
* pulling a kid out of traffic before he got clipped
* GETTING clipped by traffic
* receiving a suicide-note SMS from an out of town friend and calling her uni’s campus security to find her
* a series of you-wouldn’t-believe-it-if-you-read-it unfortunate events and 000 call-centre fuckups that led a myself and federal police into believing a fraudster that I may have had a hit put out on me (it’s a really long story)
* accidentally overdosing on painkillers while delirious with pain and waiting on tests in the hospital to see if I was going to die an incredibly painful death from liver poisoning with nothing they could do to stop it
* feeling weird (dizzy, view zooming in and our, heart-racing) after an electric shock, wondering if I was going to die
and, uh…
* walking into the office break room to see four of the coworkers I’d either been involved with or was currently casually involved with, talking to each other and staring at me. Oh god. *shudders*
Man, it is a miracle I’m not dead yet.
Most interesting man on Kotaku.
hmmm after reading all that, I’m pretty sure he is now just a head in a jar, futurama style
Hang on, hang on – “four of the coworkers I’d either been involved with or was currently casually involved with” – who are you, David Duchovny?
“Trust No One” (…that’d you’ve had ‘relations’ with)
It’s not that unusual! It was a decently-sized building – easily a couple hundred people in it. And I had foolishly decided not to take the advice ‘don’t shit where you eat’ for a year or so. And it’s not like I was seeing all of them at once… or together.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Damn you and your abundant life experience TM. Also, judging by what you said your scariest experience was and these, physical safety isn’t high on your priority list
I went outside.
I dived into a shark tank (willingly).
Although I wasn’t scared at all, some people might find that terrifying.
Plot twist, you’re actually a WhitePointer…..
Skydiving. I was literally nearly in tears when I got pushed out of the plane, and my throat made an inhumane attempt at a scream when I felt the initial force of gravity.
Having said that I’d love to do it again without an instructor stuck to my back!
Buying Hotline Miami 2 off of Steam.
Getting divorced and now having to start legal proceedings to get more time with my son 🙁
Did a one-man protest on behalf of East Timor in Jakarta in front of Aus & Indo politicians and press 20 years back. Got whisked away and deported by ASIO. Was shitscared the whole time, believe you me.
Holy crap, that would be scary.
Holy crap, that would have been as scary as shit getting dragged to the airport and deported. East Timor is a great country though, lived there for a little while and I’m sure the people would he have been very grateful!
Went on a ‘mission’ one moonlit night as a bunch of teenagers out to an active army base/training camp to infiltrate the WW2 tunnel complex, search for relics and generally get up to mischief. We mistimed our exit along the coast as the tide came in and had to make our way back past the barracks as the clouds came over. The guard dogs went off, the lights went on, there was yelling and footsteps and then suddenly a searchlight. It was a very very tense moment. We got away into the bush and laid low. Saw some army guys scouting around with torches. They were very close but eventually gave up, must of figured it was possums.
Pants were shat. I guess you could call this ‘ Almost got caught trespassing’
Shooting range to the left of the barracks(top centre), tunnel entrances in a couple of places to the right, the easy ones to find are under the tiny circular gun emplacements to the far right of the big grassy area.
https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Army+Bay,+Whangaparaoa,+New+Zealand/@-36.6014714,174.8257575,3199m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x6d0d2ebd3db7a353:0x500ef6143a2c240
I used to be a platform diver. I was learning to move one of my dives (back one-and-a-half somersaults, one-and-a-half twists) from the 3 meter springboard to the seven meter platform.
A few months earlier I got “lost” in the air with this dive and wiped out; that moment in the air, that moment of eternity where I knew I was out of control but hadn’t painfully hit the water yet was one of the worst moments of my life. As I stood on the seven meter with my back to the water, psyching myself up, all I could think about was how much longer that horrifying moment would last with an extra four meters to experience it in.
It was utterly terrifying.
When I lived in Glasgow my girlfriend moved to a really shitty suburb meaning I had the pleasure of risking my life getting the bus to and from her house. Needless to say I broke up with her not long after and moved to Australia. Was not worth the hassle.
White water rafting, swimming with sharks and doing my Honours presentation had nothing on that.
I’m not fearless, but I can’t think of anything I’ve done that I would describe as terrifying. All the stuff that scares me is weird, but even then it’s not so much fear as just discomfort. My fear of commitment influences pretty much every part of my life but it’s not really fear as much as just an idea my brain refuses to process. I’m not actually scared of relationships or filling out forms, it’s way less rational than simply being afraid of those specific things.
Bungee jumping the Nevis in NZ – 134m of freeeee-fallin.
Then White water body-boarding the very next day – good times.
Cuz i’m freeeeeeeeeeeeee
You’d think it’d be something from skydiving, but even cutaways or night jumps aren’t really that scary IMO.
The most scared I’ve ever been in terms of physical danger would probably have been on the motorcycle, had the tail spin up and step out on me at a nontrivial speed while riding like an asswipe on the Great Ocean Road, and it was like bullet time in The Matrix. Everything just slowed down, and I remember feeling my heartrate increase rapidly, and I kinda had an “Obi Wan’s voice in the Death Star trench run” moment where I remembered being told how to handle that, and forcing myself to just pin the throttle and get my weight forward. It stepped back into place and regained traction, I pulled over and just laid down for a few minutes.
As a woman by myself getting into a literal stranger’s car in New Orleans because I was horribly lost.
I actually remember thinking “I’ve seen this episode of Law & Order.”
Abseiling with a harness that I had assembled myself from a single length of strap 10 minutes beforehand.
Hanging off a ship mast at night in a heavy storm whilst trying to furl a sail.
I think the most terrifying experience of my life would have to be being first on scene at a high speed car crash outside my house a few years back. We used to live in a house that backed onto a highway, right where it changed from a large stretch of 100kmph straightaway to a sharp left, and in the 15 or so years we lived there we must’ve seen 4 or 5 high speed crashes.The last one was the worst though.
Spoiler tags for those who don’t want to read about dead people.
Woke up at about 3am to a thunderous crash, threw on some pants and a shirt and jumped the back fence to find what was left of a Soarer after it had hit a tree at at least 200kmph. The driver hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt, so he was flung clear on impact and was lying in the street. He was most likely dead before he hit the ground, as his neck had clearly broken on his way out of the car, and his head was hanging half-off at a right-angle.The passenger in the front-seat had been wearing a seat-belt, and was still in the car when I got there, but he was so critically injured that no amount of first-aid I could give was going to help. He just had this terrified look on his face like he knew he was going to die, and I’m guessing so did I. The guy bled out long before the paramedics made it to the scene, but to be honest there’s nothing they could have done anyway.
That’s so awful. Tough thing to live with.
At the end of the day, it sucked, but I can take solace in knowing that I did all I could. I’m not a doctor, but even if I had been there was simply no saving these guys.
It does stick with you though. If anything it’s given me a much deeper respect for emergency service workers who deal with this kind of thing on a daily basis.
All I can ask is that if there’s anyone reading this who thinks it’s hilarious to drive around at high speed that you please, PLEASE reconsider. It isn’t worth it.
Holy shit. Yeah, that’ll do it.
The bottom spoiler is probably one of my worst fears, seeing someone who knows that they aren’t going to make it. You’re a good man/woman for getting along to help.
I have been skydiving and done stunt runs in a red bull stunt plane but you know they are going to be hair raising and adrenaline pumping so your sort of prepared.
The most scared I have been was getting stuck head first when caving. I crawled halfway into a smallish tunnel to see if it would widen up and once the shoulders went through I was stuck. Its the only time i have felt real claustrophobia and completely helpless. Everything I tried just made it worse and in the end I had to be pulled out by my feet by my mates.
Exploring the abandoned hospital in Mt Gambier. That was a pretty freaky experience. My girlfriend and I decided to go have a look one day and even though it was broad daylight it was no less scary.
I remember walking down this long hallway with only a door at either end and as we were about half way down something tall and dark moved quickly past the door in front of us. We were literally clinging on to each other at that point and freaking out about how we were going to get back out then he came back and called out to us.
Turned out he was an American photographer that loved abandoned buildings.
The morgue was still there and intact too. You could see it in the basement from these windows on the ground level. Near the ambulance bay.
Haha yeah.
My wife and I used to live in the apartment building next door, so I can definitely agree on the creepy factor.
It seemed to be a bit of a hotspot for people that liked exploring old abandoned buildings too, so I’m not surprised you ran into someone. Kind of sad to see it gone, even if it was an eyesore.
It was pretty awesome. The way that the vegetation in the area had started to overgrow the building looked amazing.
I remember their being some really impressive graffiti in there.
Did you ever see those large holes that went all the way into the cavernous depths of the basement and then all the way up to the roof of the building about 1mx1m.
I’m assuming they were for a laundry chute, some sort of dumb waiter or ventilation system.
The 20 or so hours between realising this time the contractions were real and finally giving birth were the scariest I’ve experienced.
i leaned back on a wire bridge and went over backwards and landing on a sideways Tree Trunk that was underneath it – and what i vaguely recall beside the trunk it look like a deep dark hole
Jaws,An American werewolf in London and Stephen King’s IT novel all terrified me as a child.(I was way too young.10 or less)The scariest thing in my life was also the stupidest,and most fun.Joyriding in a stolen car through the newish Sydney harbour tunnel with me on the roof giving double fingers to the chasing police…Back then,if the chase speed reached 200km/hr the pusuit was called off.I became a somewhat upstanding citizen after that.I was 16 and a fool.
Great question! Does stuff I unwittingly/ unintentionally did count?
I got emotionally involved with a girl with some fairly major mental health issues. I cared (and still do of course) about her a lot and the most frightened I’ve ever been was for her health when she started listing ways she had attempted or thought about suicide as casually as someone might read a shopping list. In my head, because her mother had asked me to take care of her on that night in particular, I felt I was responsible for everything at that moment which scared the shit out of me, I thought at the time that whatever happened would have been my fault. Thankfully she’s doing better now than she was then.
I suppose the most frightening thing I’ve ever done was, as far as a contemplated action goes, telling my Dad I wanted to see a Psychologist. I came to realise that I had a few issues I needed to sort out when this same friend of mine told me she thought I should see someone. Best advice I ever received.
That’s probably one of the scariest feelings you can have, feeling responsible for somebody with a suicidal state of mind. I have been in a couple of situations like this, particularly as a teenager the feeling of trying to help someone through those feelings are a heavy cross to bare.
That’s awesome you sought out help too!
While being in a short holiday in Brisbane (by invitation of a friend of my family, I found myself bored and without much to do, so on a random suggestion I jumped on a ferry to North Stradbroke Island. It turned out to be a really beautiful place with awesome sights.
Anyway, I went walking around and I found this deeply forested ravine going down on a path carved by a stream through the millennia on the tall rocky cliffs of that side of the island’s coast. There was a wooden board-walk going down halfway through it up to a little platform from where you could see a wonderful tiny beach at the bottom of the ravine where the stream met the ocean. I wasn’t happy just looking at it from there so I got down into the actual ravine and pushed through the thick bush. It took me like 25 minutes but I finally made it to the little beach. It was wonderful. With the tide flow, little puddles were made and unmade among the big rocks dotting the beach, each puddle a little, fleeting ecosystem. I spent around two hours there, just looking at things and relaxing, all by myself.
When I finally decided I should go back, I couldn’t stomach the thought of climbing up the bush-covered slope of the gorge. It had been a pain on the way down and it promised to be twice as bad on the way up. The walls of the ravine kept going into the sea beyond the little beach and the tide furiously boiling and lashing at them made swimming around a losing proposition. However… one of the walls of the ravine itself seemed like an easy climb with lots of wide steps and platforms, sloping gently away going up.
Now this is where I probably should mention I had never gone rock climbing before, with nor without equipment. For those of you that do not know enough to be already wincing, I’ll just share this small truth I learned that day: a wall always looks much easier to climb from the bottom looking up than it actually is. Also, I’ve never been a very athletic person, not very outdoorsy, when it comes to it.
So there I was, filled with adrenaline, the sense of adventure and ridiculously naive confidence and I started to climb. Sure enough, the first 5 minutes went without a hitch, all the steps and platforms I saw from the bottom as wide and safe as expected, even at parts where I had to half hop and propel myself the rest of the way with my arms while scrambling my feet on and around. However, by the time I reached halfway through the wall, I found myself standing on a very narrow ledge with a worryingly rounded edge. I was much more exhausted than I expected to be by then and there was no way to sit down. Worse, the next ledge up the wall was a couple of meters above and the only helpful aids on the otherwise smooth and featureless rock face around there was a fist-sized protrusion of rock all the way up right beyond where I could reach it with my outstretched arm, and small dent on the rock near my waist.
Finally realising how terrible an idea it had been, I carefully turned around to figure my way back down; (cue more wincing.) Obviously, was laughably impossible to descend without slipping, the rocks and protrusions that so readily had served as handholds making extremely poor footholds, especially going backwards. That only served to drive home the reality of how far up I was and in how many parts each of my bones would shatter against the rocks at the bottom, should I slip.
After being paralysed with fear and regret for 20 minutes, the remnants of my adrenaline and energy quickly being used up just by trying to not slip from the ledge I was standing on, and no one in sight that could help, I realised I had to attempt to leave before I just collapsed from exhaustion. If I was going to die anyway, at least I should die trying! With a leap, I managed to grab the handhold above, quickly swinging my body around so I could get a foot on the edge of the dent and with the fraction-of-a-second purchase I earned on hand and foot, I managed to propel myself upwards and throw and arm and a hand onto the ledge above (which, thankfully was not too round-edged). Pulling the rest of my body up onto the ledge may be the single most difficult thing I’ve ever done. Up from there, the slop I had noticed from the bottom was more pronounced and the rest of the climb was relatively easier.
That scramble there was such an improbable and outlandish thing that I’m positive that in an infinite number of alternate realities, this is the only one where I survived that ordeal. Sometimes I close my eyes and I feel like if I open them, I will see those rocks at the bottom approaching at terminal speed, all my life ever since a feverish delusion made up by my brain in its last moments.
Having read all of the above, it is painfully obvious to me that I have lived an entirely sheltered life.
Spoilered for length:
The thing I have been most scared of, that I have forced upon myself was competing in an ultra endurance race in the states in 2012. The event was for 24 hours, physiologically you see folks who compete in Iron Man challenges, extreme orienteering events, etc. who break down physically and mentally during a race and I knew that at some point that would be me.As luck would have it, I was in a car crash the night before and stuffed my back and neck pretty good so I was coming into the event with a handicap. I was overseas competing as a means to raise money for the Future in Youth community engagement program in East Timor, and had raised close to $10,000 so to not compete would make me feel like a bit of a fraud.
I remember the point where I was about halfway through the course, at 11pm on a cold New Jersey night with frost coming off the water and my hands were cramping just before a wall. I willed myself upon the wall, my hands aching while I tried to climb this wall. I made it to the top, but fell down on my back from about three metres high onto a bark hill below me which was the death knell for my competing in the event. The pain was nothing like I’d felt, the fatigue and pain from the car accident the day before coupled with falling directly on it again was pretty hard to bare especially being overseas on my own.
Thankfully I’m back to being in good shape and haven’t done anything as uncomfortable as that in a while 😛
Become a father.
To be honest, having a baby was one of the scariest things I’ve ever been through. Even though we live in a country with excellent medical facilities and doctors, a couple of complications quickly reminds you that women sometimes die in childbirth, and that it’s not a trivial process.
None of this actually happened.
Patting a fully grown Sumatran Tiger.
Patting a fully grown Cheetah.
Both at Australia Zoo after paying for a private session with my girlfriend at the time. Though there were 3 keepers holding it’s chain, they had no weapons, so I remember thinking “if that thing wants to attack, a small chain won’t stop it”. As I knelt down and placed my hand on it’s side, either animal could have grabbed me in a split second. The scariest part was actually entering the enclosure which was about 5 acres of land and being told by the keeper that they had to “find” the Tiger/Cheetah (different occasions) I suddenly realised that I was walking through Tiger territory where there were numerous unrestrained, giant carnivores lurking around. Same applies to the Cheetah session. I’m glad I did it though, had photo’s taken and got a chance to see & touch two of the most amazing animals on Earth.
Also, having my intestines almost literally rupture a few years ago. I was on heavy opiate painkillers for an injury and got so “blocked up” that I was in even worse pain than ever before. The pain alone was making me vomit all over the floor and I was screaming for an ambulance. I seriously thought I was going to die and kept thinking “this is it, I’m done”. I have had broken limbs, toes, had deep cuts, painful needles, surgery etc and many other things…..But this pain was something else entirely – I can handle pain/fear, but man, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. I seriously thought I was facing a very painful death. Turns out, my colon was stretched to 10cm and the doctor said I may have to be flown to another hospital for surgery as I was living in a rural town at the time. It didn’t end up happening and I made a full recovery. Thank god. Definitely the most scared I’ve ever been.
Walking onto a critical care ward as a newly graduated RN and realizing ‘Sh*t I’m responsible for keeping these people alive!’, no-one died that shift.