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The original was posted on /r/highstrangeness by /u/Jaxstraw1313 on 2025-11-09 02:19:33+00:00.

When I was 19 years old I suffered a rough injury playing rugby. A 270 pounder landed sitting down on the back of my head. Ground frozen. Crunch. Got up to spit my teeth out as they felt loose laying on my tongue. One of the guys playing was a paramedic and asked me to open my mouth

“We got to go the hospital. Now.” My lower jaw was broken way out of whack.

At the ER I was a bloody mess. A nurse handed me tissue and told me to blow my nose. I blew my eyeball out. She instinctively popped it back in. Eye socket was shattered (it’s all wire today). Broken jaw (to be wired shut for 7 freaking weeks), deviated septum…a mess. I had to sit up in a hospital bed 3 days til the swelling went down enough to proceed with maxiofacial surgery.

A couple days before surgery my Uncle visited with a book: The Brand-X Anthology of Fiction. I cherish it to this day. We were both literary kinda guys. I could see he was shook up at my condition. My Dad told me later that when my uncle was in law school he suffered a similar injury including a fractured skull.

The night before surgery I had a dream. I was in our family home floating by the ceiling room to room til I came to the kitchen where my four sisters sat at the table crying. One of my sisters was deceased at this point and had a newspaper open. Found myself floating to her shoulder to see what news she was bawling over. It was the obituary page. My name was there.

I shot awake screaming I was gonna die. They had to put something in the IV to calm me down.

The next day my girlfriend came to visit (my wife of 40 years now) and I told her I had a dream and I knew I was going to die in surgery.

“Don’t be silly. They flew this surgeon in because he’s the best in the country. You’re in good hands, you’ll be fine…”

I told her I loved her and gave her messages for my sisters, brother and Dad.

When they wheeled me out of recovery and back to my room my Dad was waiting for me and he was looking worse for the wear. He informed me the night before my surgery my Uncle had passed away in his sleep. Said he didn’t want to tell me before surgery so as not to upset me. He was my Dad’s identical twin. I was named after him…