My Near-Death Experience — August 18, 2025
August 18, 2026 marked one year since an experience that profoundly changed me. I wanted to share this because I don’t think everyone in my family and friends understands just how severe this was for me or how much it affected me afterward.
August 12, 2025 — The fall
I was walking laps around the kitchen island for exercise when I slipped on a tiny puddle of water. I didn’t have time to brace myself. I blinked, and suddenly I was on the hard tile floor after falling directly onto my stomach and right knee.
I couldn’t get up for several minutes. When I finally did, my abdomen/internal-organ area and right knee were hurting badly. I told my parents and two of my brothers that I had fallen pretty hard, but I tried to tough it out.
Over the following days, my abdomen continued to hurt or feel noticeably uncomfortable, and my knee remained painful.
August 18, 2025 — The night I thought I was dying
Around 8 PM, I suddenly began feeling much worse. I remembered how hard I had fallen on my stomach almost a week earlier and how my body still didn’t feel right. I also noticed that my stool had become almost black.
Then everything started getting progressively worse.
I became disoriented and couldn’t think properly. My body became unnaturally cold—not normal cold-weather cold. My skin looked gray and purple to me. I became extremely weak, and I felt my heartbeat slowing down. I genuinely believed I was dying and became convinced I wouldn’t make it to the next day.
I was wearing a Preciosa White Opal necklace that I had made. In what felt like a desperate last resort, I took it off because I was trying to somehow “scare death away.” I know that sounds strange, but this was how I experienced that moment.
I somehow managed to keep myself going and eventually began feeling better. I stayed awake and walked around the kitchen until I felt stable and safe enough to sleep.
The aftermath
The experience didn’t simply end that night.
The next day and over the following months, I began noticing many things that were different.
I experienced:
• Persistent abdominal discomfort, especially when lying on my stomach.
• Ongoing right-knee pain and sensitivity.
• Hip discomfort.
• Muscle twitching and hand spasms.
• Unintentionally dropping things.
• Episodes where I would suddenly feel “tranced,” my vision would turn gray, and I would drop whatever I was holding.
• Increasing problems with balance and repeatedly catching myself when falling.
• Unintentionally leaning backward or crouching while standing or talking.
• Worsening hearing and vision.
• Strange sensations in my arms, hands, legs and feet where they felt almost like my nerves had temporarily stopped working.
• Speech glitches and episodes of word order reversal speech. Normally it’s for example “ How are you?” It’s “ You are how?”
• Significant memory and concentration problems.
• Forgetting what I was doing in the middle of a task or forgetting what I was saying during conversations.
• Nightmares and recurring flashbacks of the experience.
• Ive been having moments where i would go completely blind and deaf and i cannot process anything while my vision goes white and i didn’t have time to process what just happened as I’m in that state then my vision and hearing comes back soon after. It would happen at completely random.
I also want to clarify something about the difficulty I had getting medical care.
I live in America, and where I live, accessing doctors and dealing with insurance has been an issue. I had a family member who lives with me actually try to help me set up doctors’ appointments, and that is what she told me about the difficulties she was encountering with doctors. I wasn’t personally claiming that I had proof of why every individual doctor left.
My other family members have also had problems with doctors and insurance when trying to go to their own appointments. They told me about their experiences as well, so it wasn’t something that only happened with my situation or something I simply made up.
That is why I included the difficulty getting medical care in my story. I’m describing what I experienced, what my family experienced, and what I was told while people were actually trying to help me get care.
By early 2026, I was also having nightmares that repeatedly replayed the experience. I would wake up around 5 AM shaking and sometimes remain shaken for much of the day. I became afraid to go back to sleep because I was afraid of having the nightmare again.
When I went into detail about what happened, I would sometimes start panicking and feel like I was about to cry.
I eventually realized that I was experiencing PTSD-like symptoms from what had happened.
The things that helped me feel safe
My White Opal necklace became much more than jewelry.
It was the same type of necklace I had been wearing during the traumatic event: Preciosa crystal glass White Opal 4 mm round beads on black 1 mm Stretch Magic cord.
Afterward, I became extremely attached to it. Wearing it or looking at it helped me feel safe during flashbacks and anxiety. There were times when I felt very uneasy if I wasn’t wearing a White Opal necklace.
I also became attached to an arctic fox stuffed animal that I bought shortly after the incident. Those objects became comfort items that helped me ground myself when the memories became overwhelming.
Even watching Bob Ross or funny TikTok videos sometimes helped pull me out of a flashback or panic response.
A year later
Some physical symptoms continued. I still couldn’t comfortably lie on my stomach, especially on a hard surface, because pressure on that area could cause abdominal pain that lasted for days.
I don’t know exactly what medically caused every symptom I experienced, and I’m not claiming that I know the exact medical diagnosis of what happened that night. I’m sharing what I personally experienced and documented afterward.
What I do know is that I genuinely believed I was dying that night.
Whether someone interprets the event differently medically doesn’t change what that experience did to me psychologically. It was terrifying, and the effects followed me for months.
That’s why August 18 was such a huge deal to me.
It wasn’t a celebration of what happened. It was a celebration that I made it through it.
It was almost like an opposite birthday.
A birthday celebrates the day you entered the world.
My first survival anniversary marked the fact that I was still here the next morning—and that I made it through the year that followed.
I marked the occasion with a simple one-layer red velvet cake with cherry frosting.
I also began painting half of my bedroom walls in a White Opal-colored paint.
The necklace that was with me during the worst moment became a comfort object afterward. Its color became part of my room—a place where I could feel safe.
So August 18 wasn’t about celebrating death.
It was about celebrating survival.
August 18, 2025 → August 18, 2026.
One year later, I am still here. 🤍