Have you ever saved somebody's life?

In My Humble Opinion
1

One time, when I was on a school trip to a scenic countryside area, we were walking along a narrow ledge in a line. There was a steep drop on one side - maybe 30,40 feet to the bottom. Suddenly the kid in front of me loses his footing and starts to fall over the edge. Instinctively my hand shot out and I grabbed his clothing and pulled him back.

If I’d thought about it, I would have been too slow. I was only able to grab him because I just did it instinctively. Afterwards the kid reckoned he’d have gone over because his centre of balance had gone too far - beyond the critical point.

2

I pulled my son from the bottom of a pool.

3

The neighbors choking baby. She had been eating graham crackers and got a plug stuck in her throat.

I was having a very bad day, moving out of the house my girlfriend and I had shared for three years. The possibly dying baby put things in perspective.

4

Nicely done. Unconscious?

How’d you get it out?

5

Back in the bad old days of disposable diapers, they had a peel-off plastic covering over the adhesive. Somehow one got left in my daughter’s playpen and she stuck it in her mouth. It got to the back of her tongue and acted like a flap. Whenever she tried to breathe in, it flipped up and blocked her throat. I happened to look over at her and noticed the lovely blue color and the desparate struggles and was able to remove the tab by sticking my index and middle fingers into her throat.

I was in Prague, waiting for a tram to come along. I saw it approaching and noticed a local woman standing further down the curb and looking the opposite direction. I also noticed that the rear view mirror on the tram was on a collision course with her noggin. I jumped at her and pulled her back from the curb, scaring the shit out of her. I don’t speak Czech, so couldn’t explain what happened, and she was shouting at me, probably to keep my filthy fooking hands off her. It may not have killed her, but would have seriously ruined her day.

6

Heimlich manuever, three times. I don’t know that I actually “saved” anyone, but to this day, my ex-wife is absolutely convinced her father would have died if I hadn’t gotten the meat unstuck from his windpipe.

7

Not guaranteed that she would’ve died without me, but at the summer camp I worked at I was taking my campers swimming. As the other kids got out of the pool to change, one of my campers swam up behind me (it was the deep end) sputtering “Jessica, Jessica” and then “gurgle gurgle” as she went under. I reached down, caught her by her armpit, and popped her back up. She looked sheepish and said, “I would’ve been on the bottom of the pool if you weren’t there.” I suppose after a long hour’s swim, she was just too tired and sank like a rock.

8

When I was twelve going on thirteen I was sent to a church camp for a week in the summer. The counselors were overly-permissive enough to let five of us macho boys attempt to free climb a 70-foot cliff. I was pretty mature for my age - just enough to realize, as I was about ten feet off the ground, that this was damn dumb. I let the four others go ahead, but instead of climbing back down immediately, I thought I should hang behind them just in case. Sure enough, maybe twenty five to thirty feet off the ground, a kid looses his grip and starts to slide/fall down the face of the rock. I managed to get an arm around him and another around a skinny tree growing out of the cliff. I caught eyes with a counselor whose look clearly communicated oh, thank you. Then they called us down.

9

I donated a kidney. A year later, I pulled my son out of a river when he jumped into cold water and was too stunned to surface.

10

I’ve helped do it a lot, but mostly at work when I was a floor RN in a large, high-risk birthing unit…but once I was going to lunch with my friends and B stepped a little too far off the sidewalk, right in front of a car and I pulled her oblivious @ss back onto it…she said she could feel the metal of the car through her clothes.
Cyn, RN

11

I was a crisis intervention counselor for a few years, and talked a lot of people out of suicide, domestic violence and other lethal situations . . . hopefully. Most of the time we never knew what ultimately happened.

12

I have a friend whose RN training has saved two members of her family so far.

The first was her daughter, who was stung by a bee in their yard but brushed it off and went back out to play. Within a minute or two, she was itching and complaining about her throat. Another minute and her airway was closing. Mom got her to the ER in record time- it was severe anaphylactic shock and she could have died.

The second time was her husband. He found a small lump on his neck while shaving, and would have ignored it if he was less gregarious. But instead, he mentioned to Lisa, who took one look, got a sitter for the kids and drove him to ER. It was thyroid cancer, and the surgery was the next day. He was only 30 at the time.

She says that the training and degree were 100% worth it, even if she never practices professional nursing again.

13

None that I (or any other blood donor) can point to directly - but it’s nice to think that at least one of those pints might have done some good.

14

I was in Tahoe last fall, having dinner in a steak house that was part of a hotel/casino. The tables had those round, glass candle holders. As I was waiting for my check, I smelled smoke. The group at the table next to me had just left, and one of them must have tossed his napkin on the table without paying much attention. I pulled it off the candle holder; I think the candle had gone out but the napkin was burning in a perfect circle. The second good puff put it out; if that hadn’t worked, I was going to grab my water glass. They didn’t even comp me.

That probably doesn’t count, does it?

15

No it totally counts.

This thread is inevitably going to be somewhat self-congratulatory. It’s a thread for people with a superhero power - the ability to save a life. So we’re all going to congratulate each other on our deft moves in the moment of crisis.

It may have been a minor table fire but it could have got nasty if not for your quick thinking.

16

I think about this all the time. We all probably have saved a ton of lives and never knew it. Every time you put off going to the store for another 5 minutes, it could mean someone is still alive.

Directly, though, I’ve talked some people out of suicide. That, and the time in Iraq when I was an auxilliary medic and basically moved stuff around during a mass casualty event. If I hadn’t saved them, someone else would have. But that’s not what you asked…I did it.

17

Just yesterday, maybe.

I went to St. Anthony’s Kitchen for lunch and when I came back outside there was this long-haired guy sitting all kind of slumped over in a wheelchair who I mistook for an old acquaintance, so I went over and said “Gordie! Hey bro, how ya doin’?”

No reply, so I gently shook him and asked “Dude, are you okay?”

He raised up his head (and turned out to be a total stranger BTW) and I saw he was all pale and sweaty; then he said “Gurrallllph!” at me and puked a bit. Adding up the visual cues of pale + sweaty+ barfing, I came up with “this guy might’ve overdosed”, so I hailed one of the St Anthony’s volunteers,: “Hey, ‘scuse me, ma’am, this guy over here doesn’t look like he’s doin’ real good.”

She took a good look at him and apparently came to a similar conclusion as me, because pretty quick she was on her walky talky to the other volunteers and her cell phone to 911 pretty. It was in better hands than mine by then, so I went about my biz.

18

Kayaking during a thunderstorm on the Green River during spring melt, my gf went broadside and dumped. I made it back upriver to get to her; she was out of her boat, boat upside down, mid-river in very cold water and heavy wind & rain. I towed/guided her and her boat to relative safety. Then we got her boat righted, I pumped it out, and we made it further downriver to eventual safety.

I’ve had my life saved on 2 seperate occasions by my buddy Blue Elk.

I used to do a lot of really risky activities by myself. Now I do less risky activities and always with other people.

19

Last summer, but I honestly am not sure if anyone would have died if I had not intervened. Downtown in the small town I live in is a bookstore next to a coffee shop on the main road. Next to the bookstore on the corner is a one way street that people sometimes whip down from any of the three directions at the four way. I was outside the coffee shop and the baby of the owner of the bookstore’s son’s girlfriend (took me a second to figure that one out) was left outside in the stroller with a five year old brother. I have no idea why. The family is a bit kooky and you see the older kids (five, seven, and maybe eight) running around alone often. The stroller went from right in front of the bookstore, where the mother was inside, and rolled down the slight downslope directly into the middle of the one way street. I dropped my coffee and sprinted to grab the stroller and brought it back. As soon as I got back the lady came out of the bookstore and said something to me, not sure what, but it wasn’t thankful… was something along the lines of “oh, there he is, glad, oh very glad…” in an very aloof and not caring way. (She’s of Asian decent and doesn’t speak English well)

No car was coming, though, but a friend I was with was talking to me afterwords telling me it was fine and everything was ok and it was nothing to worry about… I was just shocked that anyone would leave a kid like that. A minute later a car just zoomed around the corner obviously without looking. I just was shocked that anyone would leave a kid in a stroller outside a store and was more stunned that who knows, maybe, that could’ve been really bad.

20

When I was working night securiy on campus, I found a lady in a car with the motor running at 4:00 am or so. She didn’t respond, so I called it in and dispatch had a police officer and an ambulance come. After the officer failed to jimmy the locked door, and just before he was going to break the window in, I discovered that the passenger side door was open. When we pulled her from the car, a whole bunch of pills came spilling out. She had been taking them until she passed out.

It was at the loading doors to the bookstore, where her husband was one of the managers. Found out later that he had asked for a divorce, and she had tried to kill herself in the location where he would be the person to find her.

She had left her kids sleeping at home. Sad.

They were able to save her, but you never know how these things turn out.

Another time, I postponed a death for a couple of hours. :frowning:

I heard a thump and looked up to see a car had hit a little girl. She was breathing, but deeply unconscious when I checked her out. During the time I was making sure that an ambulance and the police had been called, she had turned blue. I pulled her tounge back from where it was blocking her airway and she pinked up again.

About then her poor mother came. She was understandably shook up, and I tried to help calm her, all while holding the tounge in place.

The ambulance came and took her to the hospital, but the brain damage was too much and she passed away a few hours later.

It was in the middle of a busy intersection in Tokyo, with scores of people around, but I was the only one who came to her aid. Good old boy scount training, I guess.

While the girl wasn’t able to survice, I’d like to think that it meant something to the mother to not to have to see her daughter die on the pavement.