I had a terrifying experience fairly recently - I very nearly swallowed some broken glass that lunchtime which had been in a meal served at the Belcourt restaurant on Rivington Street (don't go there). Anyway, I didn't swallow any, but was consumed that evening by the sudden thought that I *might* actually have swallowed a shard which was slicing me up internally; I went into a phenomenal panic, found a short story online about a "young man reflecting upon his wasted life as he slowly dies after accidentally swallowing glass" which really didn't help, and before too long convinced myself that this was going to be my last evening on Earth...

The panic made my heart go mad and caused a massive adrenaline rush, which I then assumed to be the result of this massive internal bleeding, so you can imagine the feedback effect this caused: I seriously thought I was dying, and wrote a number of letters to various people, with shivering fingers and chattering teeth, all the time thinking "shit - I'm so young, and here I am, dying alone in a grotty little flat where I probably won't be found for weeks". It sounds funny now, but it was without a doubt the darkest night of my life!

It turns out that I'd gone into "delayed shock" which can sometimes actually cause heart attacks even among relatively young people, so I was pretty lucky not to have collapsed or blacked out that night! Since I woke up on Friday morning and realised I was actually OK (it took until yesterday until everything properly got back to normal) I've been thinking that a) I can't really whine about being old at only 25 - if I was old then the possibility of death wouldn't have seemed so scary, b) I want to not be single at least *once* before I actually do die, c) we humans, for all our bravado, are actually a pretty fragile bunch; we need to look after one another more, and d) I might be turning into a hippie!

All in all it was a really weird experience, and I don't think I've come across anyone who has had anything similar. It wasn't purely psychological, because my heart was under a lot of strain and my left arm was positively numb (it still scares me thinking about how that happened actually). How about the List? Anyone got to the point where they were so sure they were dying that they very nearly actually did?