The guy in the canal was a drunk who was drinking a bottle a whiskey on the side of the canal. trying to get the dregs out of the bottle he leaned back too far and the gobshite fell in. I initially found this hilarious and walked across to the canal to see him floundering around in the water. What I saw was him floating face down in the water :eek:. Myself and another guy jumped in and pulled him out gave him a bit of a slap and brought him back to this world. He then told us to fuck off and walked away.
The 2nd was a poor unfortunate who was hit by a car. When I got there he had already been surrounded by group of people. I am a trained first aider so got beside him and found no breathing or pulse. Started CPR and hoped that a ambulance would arrive very quickly. It’s a very tiring thing to do and once you start you don’t stop unless you get them back. When the ambulance arrived the guy had a weak pulse. I phoned later but was told that only family could get info. Don’t know how the guy got on but I wouldn’t have given him a high chance of survival
Pity I don’t believe in Karma
I lifeguarded full time for six summers, and still do on the weekends. Plenty of oppurtunities there. As for saving lives while off-duty, I haven’t had the chance.
When I was maybe nine or so I was spending the night at Grandma’s house, and my aunt was sleeping upstairs. My grandmother is very old (at the time she was 90 or so), and physically not in the best shape. So, I was dozing in her room in the extra bed, when I was woken up by what I thought was a mini-earthquake.
Of course, it was not an earthquake…it was my grandmother falling to the ground out of bed. She hadn’t just fallen, she had kind of lurched out of bed because of some complicated thing going awry internally (I don’t know what). It took me a while to figure out that she needed help, but when I did I ran to my aunt, told her, and immediately called 911.
She survived, but her fall had caused her enourmous internal bleeding and other complications I was not informed of at the time. So, she’s still okay now, but if I hadn’t been there that night, I don’t know what could have happened.
One of my coworkers told me that I saved her life by forcing her to walk away from the World Trade Center. She was paralyzed with fear and staring up at 1WTC burning. I grabbed her and we started walking away. While we were walking, 2WTC was hit. I have no idea where I found her. No idea whatsoever.
Possibly.
I used to man the crisis line at the psych hospital that I worked at. I talked one lady down one night who was planning to kill herself and her kids because she was addicted to crack and didnt want her kids to be a problem for someone else. I got her calmed down, and then got our intervention guys over there to get her help. That was the most dramatic, but I talked to a lot of suicidal people.
When I worked apartment security, I chased off a guy who was trying to kick his ex-wifes door in with a butcher knife in his hand. He saw me coming from accross the courtyard and ran, the cops caught him down the street.
vix, I don’t know what to say about your post but “Thank God”. And I am an Atheist. I am glad you made it and hope you didn’t lose anyone.
I forgot one incident. I went to my Grandmas house and found her in a really whacked out state. She was talking to me like it was 1957 or so and thought I was her Husband. I thought she had a stroke. I got her in the car and took her to the ER. Due to her state we got a Doc right away. It turned out that Grandma, who was slightly diabetic, took too much medicine and her blood sugar was really low. IIRC, her blood sugar was 1/4th of what it should have been. Anyway, after a couple of hours she was back on her feet after a big dose of sugar via IVs.
I have a few times. I was a life guard at a lake that had an inordinate number of people attempt to drown. Then there was Viet Nam - at least once there.
As a newspaper man, I have gotten to places before emergency teams and had to step in on occasion. Probably a few more than a handful there.
My best friend when I was 16 called one night saying she had taken a bunch of pills in order to commit suicide. I could not get her to tell me what she had taken, so I called 911. They got over there and took her to the hospital to pump out her stomache, and she was okay. Her parents called me the next day and promptly cussed me out because what she had taken (I do not remember what it was) was not fatal and now they had a huge hospital bill. Assholes. vix :eek: OMG!
My best friend when I was 16 called one night saying she had taken a bunch of pills in order to commit suicide. I could not get her to tell me what she had taken, so I called 911. They got over there and took her to the hospital to pump out her stomache, and she was okay. Her parents called me the next day and promptly cussed me out because what she had taken (I do not remember what it was) was not fatal and now they had a huge hospital bill. Assholes. vix :eek: OMG! TV Time I don’t care what other people say. You served in Viet Nam? Then I say “Thank You.”
Fascinating stories. But almost all from people who have saved lives. I don’t think that is a representative sample. No, I have never saved a life, but my mother did. It was about 50 years ago. My brother was in the hospital, having his appendix out (that was an interesting story too, about a famous surgeon with too much ego). There was a girl about six months old in the same ward who was just fading. You probably know what a normal six month old is like. Eating, sleeping, excreting and screaming. Also learning to sit, to crawl, smile, coo. This girl was doing very little of that, just lying in the crib and being blue. In color, not mood. She had a heart valve defect and nothing was being done. The parents didn’t have a clue, the nurses were helpless and no one in the hospital was lifting a finger (a major university teaching hospital, incidentally). (Penn, why should I protect them?) My mother started making phone calls and somehow found the right charitable organization that would fund the surgery. It was done, the girl survived and for about ten years we received an xmas card from the family, accompanied by a picture of the girl. I wonder what she is doing today. More, I wonder what would have happened to her if my brother hadn’t chosen that day to have a nearly ruptured appendix.
My brother and I were sitting a Subway one day eating meatball subs. We were just talking about random BS when all of a sudden he got this terrified look on his face. Luckily I had been takeing a health class in junior high at the time and they had taught us the how to know when someone was chokeing and how to save them. I stood him up and performed the hymlic(SP?) on him. In the process I accidently banged his head on a light that was hanging over the table. After I performed the hymlic he coughed up the meatball and was fine with the exception of the bump on his head from the light. I was awfully proud of myself.
Well, once my best online friend was suicidal and had taken a bunch of medication, and my (now ex) boyfriend, the guy who tried to steal me from my boyfriend but my friend liked, the girl my boyfriend dated after we broke up, and I coordinated efforts to keep her on the phone, alert her parents, and call the police.
Oh, and once I braked just in time to not hit a rabbit.
I have a number of maybes–I’ve done a lot of white water canoeing, and helped people in trouble where I could–but only one I’m sure of. My father, brother, and I were canoeing on the Bogochitto River (in southern Mississippi) one spring. Normally it’s a pretty tame river–the only hazards are downed trees and a very few rocks. This time it was a monster; storms upstream had flooded it–the current was running a good 8 mph in the rough spots, and it was full of freshly downed trees. We could handle it, because we knew the river extremely well and are pretty good paddlers besides. The freakin’ church kids group should not have been on the river that day. Even the adults with them didn’t belong there, and certainly weren’t capable of taking care of the kids. We held back, just letting the current carry us–even backpaddling–so that we could keep an eye on them. We pulled them out of several more-comical-than-dangerous scrapes (like the kid who thought his canoe was about to tip and somehow jumped onto an overhanging tree). We tried to talk them into getting out, but the head what-ever-he-was wouldn’t hear of it.
The last accident of the day wasn’t comical. It happened in the roughest stretch on the river–a maze of shattered trees that had dumped us in the past. There was one safe path through it, and you had to be a strong paddler to follow it. The first church canoe had two teenage girls who’d never paddled before in it. They slammed straight into the first tree, got thrown out of the canoe, and sucked under by the current. One of them came out on the far side of the tree–the other one didn’t. For those of you who’ve never been in a log-choked river: Trees can be more dangerous than rocks. It’s easy to get snagged, or pinned under them by the current, and at 8 mph they’re not much softer than rock. My brother slammed our canoe sideways into another log and grabbed on to look for her. I spotted her pinned against the log, just under the water, and went a little crazy. It’s a strange thing: In a crisis, I sort of freeze inside, and just let my body do whatever it’s going to do–no fear or anger (or common sense)–and let the hysterics take me later. I jumped from the canoe onto our log and from there to the log the girl was pinned against, ran down it, and dropped down across the log beside her. I pulled her to the surface, but I couldn’t get her up onto the log–her lifejacket was snagged on something, and I couldn’t work it loose. I had to drop down into the water to unsnag it. Once it was loose, I pushed her up onto the log. Fortunately, she was still conscious enough to grab hold. By that time, I had been sucked far enough under the log that I had to let go and let the current carry me through…to where the other hysterical girl was waiting. The whole thing took less than a minute. Getting them back to land was another matter, since my dad and my brother couldn’t reach us with the canoes. I had to get them to walk along the logs to shore. The fact that I was starting to have my set of hysterics didn’t help either.
When we all got safely back to shore, I found my dad and brother telling the church whatever-he-was that he would walk the five miles to the nearest house and phone the canoe rental people for a pick-up…with their hands resting casually on their dive-knives. We all watched in silence as he marched off. Then I fell down.
-Night shift- no one around
-Making pharmacy run on floor
-Man grabs pregnant nurse and chokes her with her stethescope, wrapping the rubber tubing around her neck and making a fist into her throat
-Zette grabs man and tries to free nurse.
-nurse starts to fall to her knees from the lack of oxygen. Man is really Goddamned strong
-Zette gets burst of panic strength and pries mans fingers off stethescope
-Zette sits at Denny’s for 4 hours shaking afterward, unable to cope with how scary it was
-Nurse ends up fine, as was baby
-Man ends up in psych ward of neighboring hospital
Truly one of the top 5 scariest things I’ve ever been a part of. All the while he was choking her he was saying “I"m going to kill you AND your bastard child. Fucking kill you both!” It was like something out of a Stephen King movie.
These are ALL incredible stories, but I just have to say, Balance. Zette,Washte ,–stepping in and putting your LIVES on the line------AWESOME!!! You deserve a lot of respect for your courage.
May your good karma cup runneth over!!
I saved my now ex-best friends life and while he and I don’t talk to each other, I don’t regret saving his life.
I was at his house and he went to cut an Enteman’s (sp) cake with a steak knife. Instead of cutting the cake he cut his wrist on purpose. I took a towel and held it against his write until it stopped bleeding (He went across not down)
My story isn’t quite as exciting, but I saved a life, nonetheless. My ex was acting REALLY wierd one day. He couldn’t figure out how a can opener worked. He ate from the wrong side of the spoon, and then passed out snoring in the middle of meal, spilling food all over himself. He would stop in the middle of a sentence, start bawling, then stop and say, “FUCK YOU! I hate you!” and then start crying again.
I gave him a choice…either go to the hospital willingly with me, or I would let the EMT’s strap him down to a gurney.
It turns out that he was having a wickedly bad reaction to a combination of two medications. That night at the hospital, his heart stopped for a couple of minutes. He was in ICU for a week and a half.
Well, this is a big fat maybe. I participated in a rescue.
We were whitewater rafting and a guy in one of the other boats got knocked out of his raft. His raft couldn’t get him, so he ended up going through a part of the river that my guide said he’d never seen a “swimmer” go through before. It was really rough and even though this guy had a life jacket on, he took in a lot of water. And it was cold. And he was older. It looked bad. We weren’t close to him but my raft had the best rowers (I was the wuss of the group; there were some great athletes in my party) so my guide said we should go after him. I have never worked so hard in all my life as I did when we were trying to get to that guy. We did get to him and I have never seen a human being that color before. He was grey. Creepy. We got him aboard and revived him (he was breathing, but out of it). I didn’t do anything at that point, just sat there clutching my knees trying not to freak out while the cooler heads dealt with him. So I didn’t do anything, really, except help by rowing my ass off.
