S/O Whats the most scared you have ever been?

[lolobeth802]

We were on our way back home from vacation and had stopped at hotel. The 5 of us were in the jacuzzi in the pool area. DS had gotten out and then DD1. DD2 was still in the jacuzzi, she was a little over one year. H and I started tending to the older 2, drying them off etc, sitting on the edge while DD2 stood on the step and held on to the side. She was a literally just a few inches away. Somehow, we both got distracted tending to the other too and both of us had turned our heads away. In a matter of seconds, DD lost her footing and started sinking towards the middle. There was NO sound, no splashing, nothing. It felt like forever before my body would react to my mind and move to get her. Seconds later we both dove in after her and it appeared she wasn't breathing, as soon as my H went to resuscitate her, she roused. This is when I truly felt outnumbered and to this day, I'm still get panicky and we do the "who's watching who" assignment. I still feel like there is some reason my baby didn't drown, someone watching over her maybe. The guilt we both felt/feel was insurmountable.

[Deleted]

When Gabriel fell off the dresser (changing pad was up there) and couldn't walk for a good bit. I thought he hit his head. The paramedics came and checked him out and it seems he just hit his foot (he was progressively starting to walk). But still, the image in my head of him taking 1 step and falling over crookedly is heart-stopping. I am so glad I called. And I am so fucking thankful it was just a stupid thing instead of a head thing.

Also, to a less-intense but longer-lasting extent, when Marcus's eye started twitching and drooping as a little babe (less than 6m old I think), I was really worried he had a tumor or some neurological issue. And since he was baby A and I pushed on him for 4hr straight and his head was all jacked up, I was really, really worried it was my stubbornnes to have a vaginal birth that did it to him. Thankfully it's just Marcus-Gunn jaw winking.

[iamgrace]

I was pg with Henry and was getting my GD test. H had to go into work, but we were going to meet back at our house and go out for brunch. I showed up, and waited for 3 hours. H was nowhere. I couldn't reach him anywhere and I was absolutely convinced he was dead and I was basically waiting for the cop car to show up.

[schitzengiggles]

#1 - my emergency c-sec with DD #1. Her heart rate started falling while I was in labor (about 8 hours after water broke on it's own at home). It happened once, but they got it back up by a change of position and giving me oxygen. Then it happened a second time, only this time nothing was helping. Then it was a blur...different medical staff all rushing in, unplugging things, etc. They made me get on my hands and knees for the ride to the OR,  and I was knocked out within a couple of minutes (hadn't had any meds up until then and there was no time for anything other than general anesthesia). They gave me a vertical incision and boom, she was born. Healthy! She was a peanut though, 6 lbs 4 oz (at 40 weeks, she was born around 1:00 am technically the day after my due date - yes my water had broken on it's own ON my due date), and her cord was "scant" which could have contributed to her smaller size as well as the heart rate issue they, but we will never know for sure.

#2 - DD #2 (about 2-3 years old at the time) was laying on our bedroom floor because we had been having a lot of problems and challenges with her behavior and routines including going to bed. I am talking 3 hour, exhausting knock-down drag out hysterics, every night, for months on end - not to mention other issues during the day and crazy night terrors in the middle of the night, most nights. Anyhow - she was "sleeping" (we thought) on a toddler mattress on our bedroom floor because honestly, it was the only way that particular night that any of us would have gotten any sleep and we were at the end of our ropes for at least a short term solution. It wasn't late - DH was sleeping in bed but I was downstairs doing some work on the computer. I hear a massive CRASH and it is obvious that something VERY large has fallen upstairs. I raced up the stairs, my heart was pounding out of it's chest and I felt sick. Then I heard DH saying "oh my god, oh my god". I run into our room to see a dresser tipped over and the (medium sized but very bulky and old) TV that had been on top, on the floor. I don't see DD #2 from where I am standing. DH is bent over trying to move some stuff. And out he pulls DD - the top of the dresser fell onto the end of the bed (it was a small room), and it created an empty space of sorts where DD ended up being after everything fell. She was totally fine, not a scratch on her. I grabbed her from DH and checked her over really well, as I bawled and shook like a leaf. I held her for about the next hour or so, still shaking the whole time. Even now I tear up thinking about what would have happened if that TV had fallen on her instead. She would not be here. I also have to note, the dresser WAS anchored to the wall, as was the TV itself. I have no idea what happened or how it happened. It left behind holes in the wall (and some big scratches all over the hardwood floors).

 But TV's are banned from all bedrooms of our house now and all dressers double anchored even if we need to be creative and make extra holes in things to accomplish it.

ETA: One more that sticks out in my mind - my planned c-sec with DD #2. When the doc was putting me back together, the meds started wearing off and I was beginning to feel it way more than I should have been. I started panicking and my heart rate was going too high, they kept pumping me with various meds to calm me down but it wasn't working and they almost decided to knock me out. Luckily I managed to hold on long enough - but I remember being pretty terrified because it was getting worse every minute.

[karmasabiotch]

When my Mom was missing a few weeks before she died. She left to go to a Dr. apt without anyone knowing and got lost in her car for hours. The police found her in a ditch on the side of the road. I didn't think I was ever going to see her again. Due to her dementia we never really found out what happened.

[starbuck]

My second labor was scary. Liv had stopped moving and flunked every test they gave her in utero. I was induced and opted for an epidural. My BP crashed to 74/50 and they couldn't get it back up with adrenaline in the IV. The anesthesiologist sprinted into my room and hit me with an enormous dose right in my thigh.

Also, the time I was driving down a two lane highway at 60 mph. A car overtook me doing 80 clipped the jersey barrier and flipped 8 times down the road. I was a paler shade of white let me tell you.

[Ohhmm(bligo)]

When I was being induced with Cambria, her heart stopped a few times.  Doctors and nurses came pouring in and stuck their hands up to my belly button and slapped oxygen on me and held me down and injected me with things, and I nearly had an emergency c-section. Then, when she was born, the nurses had her on the table, and kept looking up at each other and shaking her heads, and trying something again.
Finally, they brought her over and one pulled down my gown while one put her on me, and they told me she was in respiratory distress and they couldn't get her heart rate or temperature up, so they were going to try skin-to-skin.
And I just laid there, staring at her, as she made the grunting noise (see MrsAggie's post from last night), and they told me the sound was from her distress. And time froze, and I stared at my baby in panic forever.
And finally, one of the nurses checked her again, said, "Good job, mama! She's stable now!"

And I thought she was just being nice until a few weeks later, when H read a story about how skin to skin can bring a baby out of distress.

[zozo]

After getting a call from the hospital about DD, the ride to the hospital and waiting around in the PICCU lounge for half an hour before being told what her condition was. Then seeing her in the hospital bed hooked up to every machine imaginable. I can still get worked into an anxiety attack if I think about it too much.

[survivor626]

I had high blood pressure issues and was induced on November 18, 2010.  I don't remember anything past leaving my house - I woke 9 days later from a coma and had tubes everywhere, couldn't talk or remember anything....SCARED TO DEATH.  My son had gone home, I had died several times during childbirth, had emergency c-section, CPR, my husband saw it and scared the bejezzus out of him, family told I would be a vegetable and brain dead, etc....  I was so confused, had no idea what was going on, and it was days before people told me that I had heart failure and what had happened to me, to avoid stressing me out.  My heart was at 11% function, so I was in a beyond-fragile state.  Scared shitless pretty much all the time for months afterward.  I had pregnancy-induced heart failure (PPCM) and had never heard of it before...the symptoms are the same as pregnancy....my heart was so enlarged when I went to push, it gave out and just stopped....a few times.

Thankfully, I'm fully recovered today and in great health, but the effects from it are lasting.  I can't remember the things I thought I'd never forget (my labor, my son's birth, etc...), I can't have another child myself and my DH has PTSD from it, nightmares, flashbacks and anxiety up the wazoo and is still in counseling.

[Deleted]

Ombiglio, I drilled into Jake's head "SKIN TO SKIN! SKIN TO SKIN!" With two, I was really worried that I'd only be able to deal with one, or that if I had a c-section I couldn't deal w either, and I knew all the benefits. I told him if anything was wrong to remember to ask about skin to skin. I first heard about it from here (you? Frkls? Textbook?) and am very thankful!

[sugarbear]

I was in the OR for an emergency c-section. I had been vomiting and shaking uncontrollably for ~36 hours. My epidural wasn't working on one side, so they gave me a spinal.

Immediately after the resident injected the spinal, DH and I heard the attending doctor say, "You gave her 10? You should have only given her 7. Shit."

And then my chest went numb. I couldn't feel myself breathing. DH was watching the pulse-ox machine and trying to get me to calm down, but I was screaming and shaking and vomiting. I couldn't calm down.

Then my throat went numb, and my vocal chords. So I was screaming in my head, but making no noise. I was completely, totally freaking out. The doctors said they were going to intubate and pulled DH out of the OR. We didn't even know if they'd started the c-section yet.

The next thing I knew, DH was holding DS next to my head.

He has since told me that they kicked him out and gave me versed (I don't know how to spell it-- the amnesia drug). They decided NOT to intubate me, and carried on with the c-section. In the middle of the c-section, they remembered that DH was out in the hallway, freaking out, sobbing, and they brought him back in. A minute later, we had a baby.

It took two years for me to be able to tell this story without sobbing.

Eta: when I was pregnant with ds2, I had a subchorionic hemorrhage and bled huge clots three times over the course of eight weeks. Each time, the ER docs assured us that I was miscarrying, but I ended up having a healthy pregnancy.

[MixedBerryJam]

My husband had a craniotomy as part of being diagnosed with brain cancer. Now, don't get me wrong, there were maybe ten thousand times in the 14 days it took from MRI to diagnosis that I was more scared than I'd ever been before in my life, but when he woke up from his craniotomy he didn't know me, and thought it was 1986, and that he was in the hospital for something with his back. OMG until he fully came out of anaesthesia I was an effing wreck.

For comic relief, there was the time, right after college, when I got an apartment with my first male roommate and the doorbell happened to be broken. So a friend who came to visit the roommate climbed up the fire escape and literally came in through the bathroom window. I (just as literally) ran out into the street screaming for my life. The upside to that situation was that I was always afraid I'd freeze in fear of something, but I did not. I ran for my effing life, screaming bloody murder the whole time, which is in its own way a little reassuring.

[game blouses]

Any number of times involving DS and SIDS, definitely. Or when he fell asleep in the car and was so tired that he didn't wake up easily.

But, before DS came along, I was driving on the freeway in the rain and a truck hydroplaned in front of me. He skidded, did a 180, and was now heading right for me head on. Before I could even react, it skidded again and rolled over onto the side of the road. I called 911 and my hands were shaking so hard I could barely drive home.

[HiC]

9/11/01

[Jalapeñomel]

When I found out that my water did indeed break and that the baby would be preterm.

[Alyssa]

I was on vacation in SE Asia with my MIL and my husband back in Dec. '07.

We were bicycling through Cat Ba Island in Northern Vietnam and my MIL went down a long hill and crashed at the base.  She flew up onto the side of the hill and was severely injured.  We were on bicycles and she was picked up by a man on a scooter and taken away, I don't think she even knew where she was going.  No one spoke English so we had no idea where they took her or just how injured she really was.  We were simply left on the side of the road with some of the other people in our group....we were out in the middle of nowhere.  We rode on and looked for her and tracked her down in a small village where she was getting her arm stitched up.  She had a 4 inch long gash near her armpit.  The nurse told us in broken english that she had multiple broken bones and her breathing was labored, they proceeded to stitch her up and cover the wound with scotch tape.   She needed to get to a hospital ASAP.  I was scared of riding scooters and I had to get on the back of some guy's scooter and ride a couple miles out to the harbor where my husband and MIL were being loaded onto a small metal boat (like the kind you rent at a lake).  I was told the boat was weighted down and I would have to stay behind and take the junk boat over to another part of the island and meet up with them there.  That was scary being left behind, I had no idea where they were taking them.

We got there and I had to jump on the back of another scooter with some random guy and drive through the streets of Vietnam.....again, I have a huge fear of riding on motorcycles and scooters, so that alone panicked me.  We made our way through some neighborhoods and I was let off and forced to sign some sort of paperwork that was in French.  They wouldn't let me see her until I signed it.  After I did that I was led to a room where I saw my husband who was crying.  She was being cared for in some dilapidated school that had been turned into a clinic.  She was pale and grey and going into shock.  She broke her shoulder, collar bone, arm, hand, 4 ribs and had a collapsed lung.  They were busy drying x-rays with a hairdryer.

We were loaded up in back of a station wagon that had been turned into an ambulance.  It was a 4.5 hour drive to Hanoi in the back of a car that you had to hunch over because the roof was low.  They loaded us on a nuclear driven fairy at one point that normally doesn't run at night but it was an emergency situation.  Every bump in the road caused my MIL to wince or cry out in pain.

We made it back to Hanoi and it started a world wind 11 days of dealing with my MIL at the French Vietnamese hospital, L'Hôpital Français de Hanoi.  14 hours time difference from home, dealing with lack of communication between EVERYONE, trying to get her medivaced out, dealing with her insurance and not having travel insurance and the US consulate not being any help.

The scariest, most stressful time of my life.

[Smallstar]

About 20 minutes after my son was born, I thought that his color seemed off. I handed the baby to DH to bring him over to the nurse, who was thankfully still in my delivery room but was busy doing paperwork or something on the other side of the room. By the time DH took the 5 or 6 steps over to her, the baby was completely blue and not breathing. She resuscitated him and called the NICU and after a lot of monitoring they basically told me that "it happens sometimes" and he's fine. I still get weepy when I picture that moment because I was so afraid that he was gone.

[cst2cst]

Dd was born via emergency c-section at 27 weeks due to severe pre-e and HELLP. It came on overnight and I delivered 2 hours after dx. They could not control my BP and were worried I was about to have a stroke. They took DD as soon as the OR was prepped. I lost vision almost completely 2 days after birth and had a head CT to see if I did have a stroke (I hadn't). My vision gradually came back over 3 weeks to a functional level and returned to normal after 4 months.

[miesl]

When I felt DD's umbilical cord while I was in labor. I knew it was a prolapsed cord,, knew what it meant, and had no idea how long it had been that way, no idea if she was going to be ok. They called code in the hospital, and I had a c under general really quickly (and a fun ride on the gurney with a nurse holding DD's head off the cord). The last thing I remember was the OB telling them they needed to get me out FAST because she needed to start and thinking - "I don't care, get DD out and let her be ok."

[urbancowgirl]

I have two. I was on a plane that hit wind shear shortly after take-off. It felt like we were dropping out of the sky for 10 seconds. Twice. The girl next to me and I grabbed each other. I've hated flying ever since.

I was in my office on the seventh floor of a building during the DC earthquake a few years ago. I remember seeing a framed picture on my wall shaking and thinking, "This is real." The building was directly on top of a Metro station so I thought a bomb went off.

[urbancowgirl]

Also, I want to hug everyone in this post.

[ohgillian]

Saying to DH about DD, "Do you think she's going to live?" And DH replying, "I think she has at least a 50% chance. I don't know if it's any higher than that." DD was six weeks and this was the second time she had threatened to die on us.

[Deleted]

For myself the most scared was about 8 years ago my friend and I were driving back from trying on bridesmaid dresses in her little ford focus. I was the passenger and she was driving. It was snowing pretty hard and we came to a curve in the highway, the car started sliding and slid right into another car on the opposite shoulder. A policeman was on the opposite side of the highway talking to the drivers of the first car and told us to stay in the car. Ihad hit my head on the dashboard and could see blood trickling down, so I decided we were getting out. We did and crossed the road. As soon as we got to the other side another car came barreling into my friend's car, totaling it. If we had listened we would both be dead. There was less than 18" between the driver and passenger side doors inside the car when we looked at it after we stopped the next day to get her stuff out.

For my kids the most scared was waiting at the hospital while DD2 (3 at the time) had surgery to repair a heart defect. They had told us that it should take 4-5 hours, but we were paged to come to the OR after 2 hours. I was almost hysterical thinking she had died on the table. She was fine, when they opened her up they realized the repair would be much easier than they thought.

[aprilsails]

I had been dating DH for about a year and he had gotten a new motorcycle which I thought was too big for him. I was driving through town with my Dad when he screamed "Is that Stuart!?!" as a motorcycle flipped over and the rider skidded on his back across the main intersection in our hometown.

It was him. He had highsided on the turn. I hated that motorcycle.

I also witnessed DH's scariest hours. He was visiting me at my university when I got a phone call from his Aunt. She had tracked me down to the restaurant where I worked to tell me 'Get DH. Put him in the car. Drive to the General Hospital. Immediately. I've already told your boss'. We were a two hour drive away. His father had been in a motorcycle accident with brain injuries and had been airlifted. He was in a coma for almost a week. He had a long and difficult but pretty full recovery. DH was petrified through that whole drive.

[Stingyshark]

Dec 11, 2013 14:36:43 GMT -5 Ohhmm(bligo) said:

When I was being induced with Cambria, her heart stopped a few times.  Doctors and nurses came pouring in and stuck their hands up to my belly button and slapped oxygen on me and held me down and injected me with things, and I nearly had an emergency c-section. Then, when she was born, the nurses had her on the table, and kept looking up at each other and shaking her heads, and trying something again.
Finally, they brought her over and one pulled down my gown while one put her on me, and they told me she was in respiratory distress and they couldn't get her heart rate or temperature up, so they were going to try skin-to-skin.
And I just laid there, staring at her, as she made the grunting noise (see MrsAggie's post from last night), and they told me the sound was from her distress. And time froze, and I stared at my baby in panic forever.
And finally, one of the nurses checked her again, said, "Good job, mama! She's stable now!"

And I thought she was just being nice until a few weeks later, when H read a story about how skin to skin can bring a baby out of distress.

oh gawd. this made me cry.

[mrsjuleshs]

When we lost DD for 30 mins last month. Ever since then I get panicky if I don't immediately see her. At the gym Saturday for the party she was no where to be seen. Of course she didn't have her cell. Turns out she & 2 of her team mates were hanging out behind mats taller than they were when sitting down.

[hilwithonelary]

When I was sheltering in a closet under my stairs with my dad, 2 year old DS, and 2.5 week old DD because a tornado was projected to head towards my house. The power went out and we heard the roar of the tornado. I thought we were going to die. PP hormones didn't help the situation.

It ended up missing my house by a half mile and was less destructive than anticipated, but we had no way of knowing that at the time.

[Norticprincess]

9/11. My aunt had a meeting that morning, it had been moved to a later time slot. there had been reports of a plane down near Camp David - my parents house is one mountain off. (Turned out to be off on the location) along with the stuff going on in DC. my dad worked down there at the time. He'd left work as soon as ny happened. He saw the reports of the first one. Called my mum, they watched the second one and he was out the door and on back roads home.

When my dad was in the ICU with pancreatitis and his numbers were the highest the docs had ever seen, and most of the time lost people who had numbers half of his. No one thought he was coming home. His other organs were shutting down.

The day DH's dad slipped into a coma. DH was FI at the time and was coming do to see me as I was going in for surgery. I got a phone call from him that his dad had just called him saying he was dying. (FIL had just started a last ditch clinical trial for relapsed lymphoma) DH hit two deer on the highway. Was so conflicted about where he needed to be. Didn't calm down until I got the call he was physically safe at the hospital his dad was in. He shouldn't have been driving. I really thought we would be planning two funerals.

The night after DH's first round of chemo. I've never seen a living person turn that shade of grey he looked dead. I sat on the floor for hours with the phone in my hand ready to call 911. With him every so often telling me not to, he'd be fine. The unknown leading up to his final dx had fear, but not to that level. It was more of the loss of the naivety and invisibility of youth.

The night my brother died.

The morning before I was dx. I swore I was bleeding to death. At the time I didn't realize how close that was to reality.

The near head on with the semi in my lane that I'm still not sure how I got off the road without hitting anything.

The day I went septic. I only remember bits and pieces of it.


The day my sister fell through the ice. My cousin went in after her. My sister was 3. (She's 27 and fine now)

[Gato]

My flight to Hawaii had just taken off 5 minutes ago. H and I were beginning our honeymoon. There was the sound of an explosion and I could see out the window that one wing was on fire. The plane began to pitch dramatically downward. I really thought for a few seconds that I was going to die on my honeymoon.

Then some automatic steering thingy kicked in, and the fire also died out pretty quickly. We had to turn back to O'Hare, which was a bummer, although when we landed I think most of us were very happy to be back on solid ground.

On the way back, the flight attendant passed out free drinks with shaky hands. The woman next to us was really nice and really freaked out, which happily resulted in her giving us all sorts of yummy goodies she had purchased in Chicago.

[WOT?*]

When I was driving cross-country in December with a 2 year old and two cats. I had an accident in Iowa when we slid on black ice and ended up kissing the front end of the car behind me. That was followed up by six hours on the freeway because there was a major accident in Des Moines, me freaking out the next morning thinking it would happen again. A day of visiting with a friend then driving on at night through Kansas at 3 degrees at 2:00 a.m. with no hotel in sight that would take pets, then a drive through Wyoming only to get caught in a whiteout in Montana that was so bad I couldn't see my windshield wipers (let alone anything past the hood). Caught up with a convoy and sat it out until we could make it to a small town where I found a hotel. Pulled out the next morning only to have a flat tire that needed to be repaired. Got through to Butte but couldn't make it through the pass due to ice. Pulled into a hotel and stayed overnight, to load up the next morning at MINUS 27 degrees (without wind factor) - so cold the cats and kiddo couldn't breathe between the back door and tailgate just feet away and couldn't even cry or meow.

Out of all of that, however, the worst part was the whiteout. I was (literally) praying that I was on the right side of the road, that I wouldn't get hit head-on, that I was staying on the road and wouldn't drive into a ravine, that the kiddo and I would make it somewhere alive and not freeze to death and so many more prayers I can't recall them all. All I recall is being terrified that I would die in my car with the kid and the cats and they'd find our frozen bodies in the thaw.

#2 - when DD2 (the girls' mom) was at the playground with our babysitter and her sister. They'd been taking the girls all summer, with the "no merry-go-round" caveat. For some reason, they put her on the merry-go-round that day, with sister holding her. She went flying off and fractured her skull in three places.  She came screaming and crying into our house, mom carrying DD2, with her teeth pushed to the roof of her mouth. No cell phone to call XH (this was back in the '80s), who happened to pull into the driveway seconds later, only to turn around and get her to the hospital. I was so scared that by the time I had gotten off the phone to the hospital (where they courteously told me they triage when the patient gets there so they'd take a look at her then) they had authorization for XH to drive straight through the gates (military base) without a pass-check and a doctor, nurse and PA at the door of the emergency room with a stretcher.

#3 - when DD1 was floating in the pool and a kid jumped on her and made her slide through under the water.  I was 7 months pregnant and watching her float from the side of the pool while taking care of DD2.  Probably the fastest a 7 month pregnant woman has ever moved.  I still see her arm wrapped around the float and her looking up through the ring at me.

#4 -  When I had pancreatitis and was hospitalized, drugged for the first four days.  I was scared only after the fact because there was a higher probability of my death than normal.  My bloodwork numbers were c.r.a.z.y off-the-charts.  They released me after three weeks, AMA, only if I promised to stick to a very strict BRAT diet.  They'd gone through all the veins in my arms and were starting on my feet for IVs and blood draws.  Believe me, I agreed to the diet rather than risk another thirty days on IV-only, which was their recommendation.

ETA:  When the XH had his first seizures.  He'd regressed to being about two years old, calling for mommy, not feeling well, not recognizing his surroundings.  He had his first seizure when he was on the phone with his mom.  I started freaking to MIL on the phone "What do I do?"  "Call 911" "But I CAN'T call 911.  I'm on the phone with you!" "Hang up and call 911."  He had multiple before the ambulance got there and spent the next months on the hospital while they tried to figure out how to stabilize him.  Two subsequent suicide attempts were not exactly relaxing either.