The first life I “saved” was when I was about 7. It was a passive thing: I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
I was walking thru the public swimming pool about waist deep when suddenly something grabbed round my legs and wouldnt let go. I reached down to check it out and it was a little KID! :eek: Gasping for air! Then his mom ran over in tears and took him from me. It made such an impression on me that I became interested in health care.
Actually you were lucky he didnt have a cervical fracture. Tilting his head could have compromised his spinal cord in this situation, as you know Im sure. The chin lift is the preferred maneuver if spinal cord injury is a possibility. Good thing it turned out ok tho! I applaud your bravery.
I once grabbed a friend by the shoulders and yanked him back as he started to step out in front of a car. For some reason he was looking to the right and didn’t look left. He turned white as a sheet when he realized how close he came to being splattered.
A few dozen over the decades, but it is in my job description. Not so often since I stopped working in ERs.
Yes, when recalling this event I thought that too. But not at that moment, I didn’t consider neck injury. Besides, he was not breathing so if we didn’t do anything he would’ve died. I’m very glad we got him breathing again.
Back then the Red Cross CPR classes taught the head tilt, and that later was changed to chin lift.
Yep! good thing it turned out ok. Wasnt criticizing just clarifying! Ya done good.
Possibly my mother, when I was about 16.
We were on a family holiday in Costa Rica, on a jungle walk in one of the national parks. We were out by ourselves, as we had a map from the hotel, and it was a clearly marked good path, for the most part, though at one point, there was a tree fallen over part of the track.
My mother went to scramble over the tree, and I suddenly noticed an eyelash viper (bright yellow!), right under her hand, just where she was going to lean… They’re not aggressive, unless provoked, but squishing one with your hand definitely counts as provoking, and they are potentially deadly, plus we were two hours walk from the nearest road, and probably at least 6 hours from the nearest medical facility. I’m not sure what I screamed, but she automatically stopped and turned to see what was the matter without putting her hand down.
I was way more freaked out by the incident than she was, though I’d completely forgotten about it until she reminded me this Christmas.
Thank you, that’s very kind of you to say.
I hemmed and hawed about posting this, but decided to go ahead - sort of, maybe.
When I was 14 or 15, I was babysitting for this couple. They were my “regular” babysitting gig, a biker and his wife - they liked to go out on the weekends, and it was good money for me. Plus, I admit, hella cool when he picked me up on his motorcycle. The mom even let me borrow her leather clothes for concerts in stuff - I thought the best job ever! They had two kids, and adorable two year old that slept in his bedroom in the basement and a sweet eight month old baby who had a nursery across from his parents room.
Anyway, this one night they were out, kids were fed and put to bed. It was really late and I dozed off on the couch in front of the TV. To this day I don’t know what woke me up, but I went from sleeping to bolt upright. About five minutes later, I heard a car pull up - weird - they had left on the bike. I opened the front door and the wife was just running up the steps. I could hear the bike roar up in front. She pushed past me, but not before I noticed the left side of her face was swollen and puffy and her lip was bleeding.
“Did you get in a fight?” I asked. I was young and didn’t make the connection.
She went right for the phone – still a corded one, sitting on the table. He came flying past me now, grabbed the phone receiver out of her hand and hit her with it on the side of the head. She crashed into the wall behind her, blood splattered up the wall. They were screaming at each other, but I don’t remember everything they said. H threw her through the air and she hit the crib in the nursery. The baby woke up and started crying. I didn’t know what else to do, I went in and pick up the baby, holding him away from what was happening. She was on the ground now and he was beating her with a long leather boot. He threw the boot away and started choking her. I realized I may be about to watch someone get murdered in front of me. I prayed that the two year old would stay downstairs. All of a sudden, he looked at me and snapped out of it and rolled off of her. She was laying there, bleeding and gasping. I walked to the couch, holding the baby, who was calming and dozing off.
It seemed like all at once, the room was full of bikers and their girlfriends. I put the sleeping baby back in his crib and went back to the couch. I couldn’t even process everything that was happening. The phone was in pieces, and I had no cell phone.
She crawled over to me and pleaded, “When you go, take my babies, take care of my babies…”
I was only 14.
The decision was made that she needed to go to the hospital. One guy and his girlfriend bundled her up to go. The hubby turned to me “If you babysit until tomorrow, I’ll give you a hundred bucks.”
She screamed out, “If you stay, he’ll probably rape you!”
I answered, “I just want to go home.” One of the other women said she’d stay with the kids.
He said, “I’ll drive you.”
I can’t explain why I got into that car, considering now, I was the only witness, but I was in such shock, I wasn’t even thinking. We got to my street and he drove past. He said, “I need to talk. I’m so jacked up, I can’t go home to my kids right now.” He took me to an all-night coffee shop and spent the next few hours unloading on me. Drugs, violence and the fact that he “couldn’t go back to prison”, I just kept making supportive noises, thinking of those kids, sleeping at home.
He finally took me home when the sun was coming up. He paid me 50 bucks.
I went in and sat on the foot of my parent’s bed. I woke my mom up and said “He tried to kill her tonight in front of me.” She got up right away, but what could she really say? I slept for a few hours, when I woke up later, there was a cop car out front.
She didn’t proceed with charges. They kept her in the hospital for a few days and suspected a skull fracture. I received a letter from her months later. Sometimes I think about those kids. They were so sweet.
^^ Wow thats really something for a 14 y/o to witness!
I saved my daughter from choking by performing the Heimlich on her.
My gf died a few weeks ago. She was a home dialysis patient for nearly 4 years. So although I didn’t “save” her life I gave her life-extending treatment for 4 years.
But where do u draw the line as to giving a person life saving treatment? If I convince some1 to quit smoking and they live for 30 years beyond that have I given them life saving treatment? If I feed a baby have I given them life saving treatment?
Four times (possibly).
First was a suicidal boyfriend when I was a teenager. He was going through a terrible crisis and I left my house during a snow storm to go be with him. Months later he told me he would have killed himself if I hadn’t been there.
Second…My Mom called me one day to say she was sick and had vertigo and asked me to drive her to the doctor. When I got to her house she was going into shock and I called 911. She had been bleeding internally and vomiting blood. The doctor said she had lost half her blood volume. If I hadn’t gotten there when I did I hate to think what could have happened. The doctor also said that because she had lost so much blood she wasn’t thinking properly and wasn’t aware how serious her condition was.
Third…When my youngest was 2 weeks old she was hospitalized for a week with RSV. After she was released from hospital I was noticing she stilled ‘paused’ her breathing at times. I was told this was normal. When she was 6 weeks old my husband said he was going to bed and I said that I was just going to stay up and watch the baby because I didn’t like how she was breathing. We talked for a few minutes about her little ‘pauses’ then hubby went to bed. Half an hour or so later she took a ‘pause’ in her breathing and didn’t start again. I started calling her name and jiggling her legs and she started again. Then she paused again. I called my husband. We got her to start breathing again and called 911. Every time she stopped breathing we had to try harder to get her to start again and the pauses were getting longer and the breaths in between got fewer. The ambulance transported us to the nearest hospital but they weren’t equipped to deal with her so she was helicoptered to the nearest major city hospital. I am so thankful I didn’t put her in her crib that night.
The 4th was a very complicated story and after writing it out I realized it is way too private to my son to share. It is the story of how my son joined our family when he was 15 years old. He is 18 now and I am thankful for him.
Yes - with some regularity. But I’m an ER doctor. The dying patient today was actually saved by the paramedics since he was intubated before he got to me.
You did good. Even if he DID have a cervical fracture, you did the right thing. Ems folks move peoples heads with cervical spine damage all the time and would do so without a second thought if it would restore a compromised airway. Nobody ever has the forethought to crash in way to make extrication easy.
I want one of you in my house with me at all times!
I’m so sorry about your girlfriend. Extending her life… yes, that was a valuable and lovely thing to do.
A few years ago, my (now ex) boyfriend came in from mowing the lawn and said he had this weird sensation in the middle of his chest, and he made a “fist squeezing” gesture. I gave him three aspirin to chew and suggested we drive to the fire station that was only a block away. I knew if I wanted to call 911 or drive him to the ER, he would protest. I figured a bunch of burly, macho firemen telling him to go to the ER would have more impact than his girlfriend saying it and him stressing himself out by arguing with me (which this particular guy was sure to do). And if need be, they could transport him. As it was, they firmly but gently convinced him that the ER was the place to be. I did drive him, and the ER treated him and released him and told him to see a cardiologist asap. He had quad bypass a week later.
Yesterday a very young (maybe 2 years old) little girl was running after the birds while waiting at the bus terminal while her mother was texting and paying no attention to her whatsoever. She ran into the road and I sawa bus coming round the corner. I grabbed the child, pulled her onto the sidewalk, and told the mother to stop texting and watch her.
Yes. CPR is wonderful.
While walking back from class one morning at college I heard some loud bangs and saw some smoke coming from nearby bushes on the other side of a fence. Figuring it was someone setting off firecrackers I walked to the nearest gate through the fence and saw someone kneeling down under the bushes. I nodded to her and she nodded back at me. That was when I saw the rifle in her hand and realized she had been shooting people.
I charged the 20 feet or so as she raised the rifle at my chest. I grabbed it out of her hand by the barrel and she pulled out a hunting knife. After a few quick stabs she took a huge overhand swing that followed through too far and went into her own thigh. After that she was done. I removed the weapons, told someone to call the police and then came back and bandaged the leg (that was fountaining blood).
Once an off duty officer got there to watch her I ran across the open lawn that her sniper position was overlooking to the body on the ground. Unfortunately that person had a hole through the base of her throat and was already dead. Probably took the first shot of five the shooter fired.
One other person had been hit and the whole nursing department had flooded out of the adjacent building to help him. While I can’t be certain that I saved anyone’s life, it is pretty likely. The sniper had been reloading and apparently had plenty of ammunition left and a lot of immobile targets who were helping the other victim.
Turns out the only reason I didn’t have a nice new hole in me was that when I started charging her she forgot to close the bolt. She most likely had pulled the trigger with the gun leveled at me.
ETA: Now that I think of it, the one person who’s life I almost certainly saved was the shooter. She would probably have either taken her own life (as she said was her plan all along) or been shot by police.