Have you ever saved anyone's life under any circumstances?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Away from work: Many years ago, at the Haff-Way Chalet( for you yanks, near Alex. Bay in NY state) my wife and another couple were having supper, when I noticed a rather large gentleman across the room becoming what I thought was quite red in the face. Since all at our table were nurses, I asked for opinions. I was quickly dispatched by my wife to find out what was wrong.
By the time I reached the table, red had progressed to slightly blue and the gentleman was unable to tell me anything, just nod in answer to my question. I stood him up and tried to get my arms around him. Just made it! Not the proper grip I wanted but this was a LARGE man.
Anyway, after the third thrust, a piece of very rare steak came flying across the table. A piece I would have probably cut three times before attempting to eat it myself.
Got him settled and returned to our table. Minutes later, without as much as a by your leave, the whole table got up and left.
Now, no one does these things for a pat on the head but I felt slightly slighted for not at least a “Hey, Thanks”. However, on reconsideration, he was likely embarassed and wanted to get the hell out of there.
On the bright side, the manager comped our bill!

At work: Couple of stories, too long and complicated to tell here. (Psych Nurse)

22

Once, possibly twice.

When I was a little kid (about 8 or 9) I was walking around an unattended pool in Wisconsin Dells with a girl (also my age). She was walking on the inside edge of the pool when suddenly she slipped and fell straight into the deep end. At that time I couldn’t swim at all and neither could she, but without thinking, I knelt over the edge of the pool and managed to haul in her thrashing body without being pulled in myself. At no point did I really understand the gravity of the situation, because if I had been pulled in, I would’ve been screwed. There weren’t any adults nearby and, if we were not both killed, we both would definitely have been badly water-logged.

The second time was when I was 13 or so. My brother (6 at the time) was playing near an electrical outlet when he managed to touch a bad power strip or something and the sparks started flying. Once again, I did the stupid thing and lunged towards my brother and pulled him by the shirt which caused him to somehow yank the power strip out of the outlet. Somehow, I managed not to get shocked in the process. (Probably the circuit had already been broken.) At any rate, my brother required hospitalization for a rather nasty electrical burn he suffered on his hand.

23

I saved my baby brother.

I was six and he was one, and we were at an aunt’s house who was “babysitting” us, along with her own daughter, my cousin. She was an awful babysitter, who yelled, drank, spanked for no reason, and left us all unattended for most of the day. My cousin and I are the same age, so there was no one older than six years old watching my one year old brother. And we were busy playing.

The house was on a long dirt road, with no other houses nearby. The driveway was circular; you could drive in one side and out the other. My baby brother was sitting in the middle of the driveway, playing in the dirt. My cousin and I were playing on the front steps, though the steps were about 12 feet high. From way up there, however, I could see over some of the trees surrounding the driveway, and up the road for some distance. At one point, I just got a weird feeling, and I glanced up. Off in the distance, I could see dust clouds. There was a vehicle coming, and it was moving very fast. I asked my cousin who it was, and she started screeching that it was some old drunks who apparently came by often at night, and she was terrified of them. I looked down and saw my little brother, quietly playing in the middle of the driveway. I didn’t know if they’d swing into the driveway or drive on past, but even at six years old, I had an idea that if they were drunk, they might. I ran down the stairs as fast as I could, and ran to my brother. I jammed my little arms under his little arms and began pulling. He was HEAVY! I was a weakling. I could only move him a couple of inches at a time. But I tugged and I pulled and I hauled. He screamed and cried. My cousin remained at the top of the stairs, screaming for her mother.

The truck did barrel in to the driveway. I remember so clearly, even today, the brief glimpse of the face on the driver’s side - sneering, dirty, toothless. Driving away laughing. There was another man in the truck, but I didn’t see him at all. It could have been a woman for all I know, but I don’t think it was, somehow. I remember my face was contorted into an awful snarl as they drove past, which seemed to be what prompted the laughter. They never slowed even once. The driveway was narrow, with trees on one side, the house on the other. They couldn’t have moved the truck over any further without running into several trees.

They had missed my baby brother’s little feet by maybe two inches. If I hadn’t moved him back as far as I had, there is no way the truck would have missed him. I hauled him up on the steps and we both had a good, long cry. I’ve been a little over-protective of him since that day.

My aunt never did come out. I told my parents that night what had happened, and we never went back there again. Apparently, they never knew it was so bad there, because I’d never said a word until that day.

24

I used to be a crisis intervention counselor, and I talked several people through their desire to commit suicide, toward getting the kind of help they needed.

25

Your post almost made *me * cry. I felt like I was there.

26

A girl at a church group bonfire walked backwards into the fire pit wall. Her momentum carried her backwards and she was starting to sit/fall down, which would have taken her into the fire on her back.

I had one of those moments when everything moves in slow motion. It doesn’t seem in my memory that it was anything to mention, but logically I must have immediately thrust out my hand and grabbed a handful of shirt on her collar. She’s only about 110 pounds, and I yanked her back to a standing position.

Life saving is probably pushing it, and she was wearing a coat, but I prefer not to find out how badly she would have been burned. I thought for about ten minutes that another girl had grabbed her with me, but everyone said it was just me. Yay me.

27

Having been in the Coast Guard the past 14 years, I’ve been a part of countless rescues of varying degrees. However, one will always stand out for me as the most memorable.

In 1997, I was stationed aboard a 110 foot patrol boat in Miami. My first trip aboard that cutter was a 5 week patrol off of Puerto Rico and Haiti. On the last day of the trip, we fueled up for the 26 hour, full speed trip home; we were anxious to get back. As we sped home in the afternoon, we were off the Northeast coast of Cuba when we received a message from the district operations center that we were to divert for SAR. Dreaded words for a homeward bound cutter.

It seemed that the district office was picking up intermittent EPIRB signals from an area not far away from us. A responding CG helicopter found nothing in the area. We were tasked with executing search patterns all night, and we were convinced that this was yet another false alarm. It’s always a false alarm. But we always have to go, so we go. We searched a grid pattern all night in seas that were becoming very uncomfortable, and that made the crew - myself included - grumble even more. At 0330 the following morning, myself and the other Boatswain’s Mate, Glen, relieved the bridge watch. The searchlights were pointed out, in front of the cutter as we executed our second grid pattern. At about 0410, we sailed not 10 feet past a large object down the starboard side that caught both of our eyes. As Glen ran to the bridge wing to train the light on the object we passed, I grabbed the throttles and began to swing the cutter around for a better look. I neglected to turn off the auto-helm, which controlled the rudders. Glen started screaming that there were people in the water!

The seas were running 4-6 feet, and I labored to get the cutter turned around as quickly as possible, while simultaneously reaching for the 1MC to alert the crew. Glen had the light trained on the object in the water, and absolutely could not, would not leave that position for fear of easily losing the contact. Having reached the 1MC microphone, I made what would be the loudest announcement I’ve ever made: “NOW ALL HANDS ON DECK!, ALL HANDS ON DECK! - POSSIBLE PEOPLE IN THE WATER! NOW - CAPTAIN TO THE BRIDGE!!!” The Captain, a notoriously deep sleeper, never heard the pipe. The crew responded from their dead sleeps in about 10 seconds, and the XO arrived on the bridge just as I had completed the turn, and was lining up on what turned out to be four men clinging desperately to a large life buoy. As I made my approach, the rudders were still trying to steer a course we’d departed from long ago. As we inched closer to the men, cargo nets hanging from the bow, steering with the twin engines, I made what had to smoothest live person shipboard pick up approach anyone had ever seen. The bow swung into perfect position - and the nets were touching the life buoy. This was undoubtedly due to that wayward auto-helm and the confused rudders, which I later noticed. Oh well, my secret was safe with me. :wink: Our crew plucked 3 of the 4 men out using the cargo nets, but the fourth required some help. One of our guys jumped in the water to push the last guy onto the net, and all were accounted for.

Anyway, it turns out that these four sailors were the crew of a small island freighter that lost its rudder. Literally - it fell out. So the boat filled with water and sank like a stone. They had just enough time to grab the EPIRB. They bobbed helplessly in the ocean all day and all night watching the distant lights of helicopters and ships who didn’t even know if there was a real emergency. In our endless back and forth search pattern, we damn near killed them by almost sailing straight into them. As I said earlier, we missed them by about 10 feet in an endless ocean. As anyone who has sailed can tell you, we found the needle in the haystack.

It’s not the most dramatic rescue. It didn’t make any newspapers or anything but for some reason I’ll never forget that night. I’ll never forget just how lucky we get sometimes. And I never complained again about false alarms.

28

Former EMT/Paramedic who worked in a hospital ER. The few saves help balance those many more that we sent to pathology.

29

My friend Sarah and I were crossing the street in Philadelphia. We were in a crosswalk, and the Walking Man sign was lit up. As we started across I saw a cab barrelling down the street towards us. Sarah was walking a few feet in front of me, out of reach, and not paying attention. Everything happened in slow motion – she was too far away for me to grab her, so I scream “SARAH!” at the top of my lungs.

She froze, and turned around, and the cab zoomed past her an instant later and blew through the stoplight. If she’d taken another step or two forward, it would’ve run her over flat. I grabbed ahold of her and sobbed. I was shaking all over, she was too confused at first to understand what had happened. Visions of that cab hitting her kept flashing through my mind. She took me across the street to a park and we sat down till I could breathe again.

30

Truely cool, and thank you for being there for all of us! :cool:

Three times for me. Once, when I was in the Scouts- onemy fellows had polio, and a bad limp. We were walking along a trail about 2-3’ wide, dynamited out of a cliff. below was a steep long sheer drop. My freind began to slip and i caught him by the pack, and then grabbed a bush. My job had been 'covering" him, since he was so much slower than the rest, so no witnesses. For some reason, it seemed no big deal at the time. “Jest doing my duty”.

Next was in San Jose, right after the new Light Rail. Some mom was waiting outisde the federal building, likely waiting for her husband inside INS (this was when INS was downtown). Her child was playing on the tracks. Here came the train, clanging & horn blowing- but the Mom paid no attention. I yelled at her, but i guess she spke no English- the trains brakes started to squeal, and a yanked the kid off the tracks. Mom barely looked up.

Finally, one of my co-workers and I were walking to lunch. The light had just turned green, and chatting away with me, she walked into the crosswalk. Coming through the intersection at high speed was a VTA bus, running the red light (anyone who lives around here knows this is common)- I yanked her back onto the curb.

31

We were camping somewhere in the wilds of Central Ontario in the summer of 1972. Out for a swim at the lake, we were standing in knee-deep water. My brother, seven at the time, was walking backwards, and he stepped into a hole where the water was over his head. Unprepared, he began to flail. I rushed over and picked him right up out of the hole and held him up in the air until he got his bearings, then I set him down in the knee-deep water. He was fine.

32

Well, only sort of, and it was a team effort.

Some friends and I went whitewater rafting in WV after the spring melt. The water was high and the guide taking us through certain rapids pretty carefully to stay out of the worse parts. Another raft capsized in a bad place and one of the guys in it, a senior citizen, got swept through a really rough section. He was flailing and it looked bad. He had a life jacket, of course, but it was pretty rough water. Other boats were a lot closer, but they weren’t making much headway getting to him and he wasn’t catching lines they threw.

My friend and I were all amateur rafters, but they were pretty athletic people who had been handling the raft incredibly well (I was the weak link here, believe me). My guide sized things up and shouted “We’re going after that guy and we are going to get to him, but you have to listen to me, follow my instructions, and row HARD.” And we did. We went through some pretty tough water.

When we got to him and pulled him out of the water, I thought he was already dead. I didn’t know humans could be that grey, and I was pretty freaked. But the guide shouted at him and he started to recover and eventually pinked up.

Of course, he very well might have ended up okay even if we hadn’t got to him. But our guide told us later said he’d never seen a person go through that section of water before (except in a raft, of course) and thought things could have been awfully dicey.

33

My older son has saved my younger son twice already in their short lives - maybe three times.

The first time was when the baby was nine months old and his brother was about four and a half. I had put the baby on the floor with my car keys while I got the older boy ready to go out. Suddenly Big Bro shouts “HE’S GOT SOMETHING IN HIS MOUTH” I looked down to see the back off the car door zapper (it had been held on with a screw so I thought it was safe to give to the baby, but the back had cracked off around the screw which was still in place) and the button battery nowhere in sight. The baby burped very quietly, and if we hadn’t all been looking at him, we wouldn’t have known for a long time that he had swallowed the battery. I rushed off to the hospital with him where an x-ray showed the battery, and it was removed with the aid of a stomach camera. The ironic thing was that I was rushing to pick up the older boy from a friend who was babysitting him, and thanks to my rushing the kid had to stay with her an extra 24 hours while we were in the hospital…

The other time Big Bro came to the rescue was when they were about 2 and 6, and we were in the toddler pool at the local sports club. Little bro was sitting on a huge foam float and I was standing next to him. The lifeguard was a friend and came up for a chat. I didn’t notice that the float had drifted away out of reach (about 10 feet maybe) until it suddenly upended in water too deep for my little one. I did rush to grab him (and would have made it but he might have had time to breathe in some water) but Big Bro who was nearer, dived towards him and scooped him up in the blink of an eye.

Good boy!

34

I saved my mom’s life before I was born. No, seriously.

She was quite pregnant with me and was helping my dad rebuild an old log cabin they’d bought. They were standing on the joists in the attic, and at that point there were no floors–so they were looking straight down to the basement floor from three stories up.

At one point she slipped and would have fallen through the joists, only her stomach was too big. I’m sure it was awful then, especially having to worry if anything happened to me, but it’s a fun story now.

35

When I was 17 I was a SCUBA diver and on the high school swim team. It was spring break and my family was camping at a state park on the beach above Santa Barbara. Anyway one afternoon I went out for a walk on the beach and could see a sail from a small sailboat flapping in the breeze about 1/4 mile off shore. As I walked along the beach there was a ranger with binoculars who said there are two people in a swamped sailboat. There were no lifeguards, and the rangers had no boats.
I went back to camp, got my wetsuit top, diving vest, and jet fins. My dad asked what was up and I told him that there was a swamped sailboat out about a 1/4 mile. He responed So your going to go get them? Good idea. I went down to the beach threw on my wetsuit, vest and fins, and hit the water. I did a double kick butterfly out to the boat. (amazing how fast a butterfly is with jetfins on :slight_smile: )
When I got to the boat, I stopped a few feet away to assess the situtation. Here were two college students going into hypothermia from being in the ocean for over 30 minutes. Anyway I had them take the mast down and between the three of us it only took about 10 minutes to get back to outside the surf zone. I took the girl on my hip (just like they taught us in Red cross lifesaving) and we body surfed in. She was so weak she could not stand, my dad had to come hold her up while I went back for her date. I brought him in (he could still stand) and then I went back for the boat.
Anyway we tossed them into the showers at the camp (hot) and got them thawed out.
My dad told me later that the ranger was trying to find a boat that they could launch, and he kept telling him that don’t sweat it, Rick has it covered. :smiley:
Turned out they were college students from University of California at Santa Barbara and were out for an afternoon sail when they swamped their 8 foot sabot sailboat.
Anyway they took me out for pizza that evening and the guy drew on a napkin a little round kinda badge thing that said “I’m a real hero so treat me like one!”
Somewhere I still have that. Means a lot to me.

36

Mine aren’t very heroic.

I was at boyscout camp. I overheard one of the younger boys saying he’d swiped a .22 round from the rifle range, and had been trying to get the bullet out to get to the powder, but couldn’t. I asked him what he’d done with it. He said “I threw it in the [unlit] firepit.” I told him he was going to dig through the firepit until he found it or there wasn’t going to be a campfire that evening.
So I don’t know if I really saved a life, I may have just saved a tree from getting shot.

Another time I was out in the woods with folks. I heard one guy’s girlfriend yelling that he’d been injured. I figured maybe it was a broken arm or something, but when I got there it turned out he had fallen in the creek and wasn’t breathing. I did what I could. He died anyway.

37

Postponed a death once.

I witnessed a car crashed once, here in Tokyo. A speeding truck driver hit a little girl, about 9 years old. The girl was deeply unconscious and not responsive, but breathing, when I checked her. Next, I made sure that an ambulance had been called, etc., and during the couple of minutes that took, she had stopped breathing, and had turned blue. Her tonge had fallen back and blocked her airway.

I had had first aid in scouts, and had heard about it, but this was the first time to see someone like this. I used my finger to move her tounge, and she gasped and started breathing again. Really pinked up well. It look the ambulance another 5 minutes to arrive, so it would have been too late.

They got her to the hospital, but unfortuntely, the brain damage was too great and she died that night. I shook me up a little, but at least she didn’t die on the street. The mother arrived before the ambulance, very, very shook up, and I think it would be that much more of a shock if the girl wasn’t breathing.

There were crowds of people around, but no one else offered any assistance.

38

A month ago, I rescued my kindergarten-aged son from drowning, but I’m more ashamed that I let him get in the situation in the first place. We were wading in a stream when he ran away from me, and the current washed him into a deep hole. He started to surface, and I remember thinking “ok, get those sandals off. He’s going to dog paddle to get his face out of the water”, when he didn’t. He just floated motionless about two inches under the surface. I left my sandals on, swam out and held his head and chest out of the water while trying to flutter kick with sandals on. After he was out, we talked about how he should never go swimming unless he is with an adult buddy who says that it’s ok, and we are taking swimming lessons this summer.

I also donated a kidney, but all I had to do was lay around for a while.

Actually, I’m more proud of a time that I may have saved someone’s eyesight. A student in one of my chemistry classes had splashed acid in her face. I picked her up and carried her to the eyewash station (actually, I was so keyed up that I started rinsing her in the emergency shower and didn’t see the eyewash that we were right next to until another student pointed it out.) Either the lab assistant didn’t know how to get an outside line and dial 911 or the phones would allow you to dial 9 to get an outside line and then dial 911, so I had another student call from a payphone on the ground floor, and then I sourced out another eyewash station when the first one ran out of water. I still regret not tearing a new jointly-owned asshole for that entire chemistry department for their not having established and practiced their safety drills.

I think that this happens a lot. I was the only person moving when that student got acid on her face, and my dad remembers almost drowning, and looking at fishermen standing, rods in hand, a few yards away on a jetty–no one thought to make a cast. I don’t think that it’s fair to ask people to think during an emergency and most people haven’t thought about what to do during one. I’d also guess some people just don’t think about saving a life.

39

My memory of this incident is a bit foggy, as it happend while I was just a youngster. Cub Scout age, perhaps a young Boy Scout.

My father and I were attending a Ham Radio swap meet at a disused airstrip. It was a hot day, above 90F with the standard New England 100% humidity. My father apparently hadn’t had enough liquids that day, and I noticed that he was turning red, and had stopped sweating, never a good thing.

From my scout training, I knew that I needed to get fluids into him, and get his body cooled down ASAP! I looked around quickly, but we were very far away from people, and the things that I needed. I also saw a depression (read steep valley) in the woods right near by, so we headed for that, knowing that there would likely be a stream at the bottom (fairly standard in New England woods). Thank god there was! We got his bare feet, and hands into the cool water, and I poured more over his head, that took care of issue #1, his temperature. After that, we got a few drinks of water into him, and I headed off to find something for him to drink. When I returned a few minutes later, he was looking much better, and the drink helped him out even more.

A quick stop at the aid station, he was proclaimed fine, with an admonishment to watch his fluid levels, and not to do anything else strenuous for the rest of the day.

The date still comes up in conversation once in a while, and he remains convinced that I saved his life. In retrospect, we should have headed directly for a vendor or the aid station, but we did what was easiest/closest, but I was glad that even at that young age, I was able to realize he was having an issue, and took an appropriate action.

-Butler

40

If I really did save three lives every time I’ve donated blood, then I’m somewhere around 150 or 160 lives saved.

All that, and I just got some cookies out of the deal.