I’ve been a blood platelet donor since 1981. In 1983 I received a call at work from the L.A. blood bank where I donated. They asked me to come in right away as my B+ platelets were needed for a specific patient who had some goofy medical condition. Only B+ blood products would be tolerated.
Way back then the patient disclosure protocols were different. After the donation I asked about the patient. They told me her name and where she was hospitalized. I stopped by on my way home and actually visited her, telling her she was going to be receiving my platelets.
On my way out one of the nursing staff told me I probably saved her life, as she was in need of several B+ units which were coming in from various far-flung locations. So mine was a sort of life extender. I never knew how the story ended, but I felt pretty special.
We were having people over a few years ago for a BBQ, and one of my friends started babbling incoherently and generally acting like he was drunk off his ass. We knew he was diabetic, but none of us had any idea that was what was going on. A couple of my friends had taken out his insulin kit and were talking about using it, when I intervened and basically said “Don’t do that! We don’t know how much to use, or if that will even help him!” So I called 911.
Turns out his problem was the opposite of whatever giving him more insulin would have done, and doing so would have killed him.
So I guess I saved him, if you call discouraging idiot friends from “helping” and calling 911 saving him.
BTW, what bad luck symptoms for having a diabetic episode - you basically behave like you’re shithouse drunk. Makes me wonder if I’ve passed people on the street in real distress that I wrote off as just being loaded.
Don’t be too sure. The spouse and I Heimliched a guy at a KFC a couple of years ago (he did the actual maneuver, but I told him to do it and told him what to do, because the guy was big and kind of back into a corner booth and I didn’t think I was strong enough to move him enough to get behind him).
Nobody else in the restaurant made a move to help the guy–not even the employees. They all just stared in shock.
Seconded. Only I was 17 and it remains the scariest thing I’ve ever done.
Picked up an unconscious guy with me and a driver(very unusual for our volunteer crew to run with just 2, we liked 3-man crews). I was a few months out of EMT school, and it was really my ‘first’ call, since the previous ones I was usually with other experienced techs. My driver had a bad back and didn’t even have a first aid course to his name. Halfway to the hospital, I decided the guy wasn’t breathing well enough and started to force breathe him with an oxygen bag. When we reached the hospital, a dozen doctors and nurses were waiting and they started tubing him even before I left. I don’t know what happened to him, or who he was, but I did what I could to keep him alive.
Mine, too, for a while. But the last time I cranked someone, my family was out in the mall doing some shopping and a guy keeled over right in front of us. No response, so I started CPR. Someone else dropped in after a while and we got him restarted. I don’t know if he made it in the long run; all I can say is that he was ticking when we turned him over to Houston EMS.
Ex-EMT who has provided initial first aid dozens of times since my departure from the biz.
Many many people are well meaning but painfully clueless, both bystanders and victims. Blend that with a healthy dose of liability paranoia and people are terrified to help.
Called 911 for my grandmother, who had a heart attack while she was babysitting me and my younger sister over Christmas break; she just kind of slumped in her chair and was unresponsive. I was 11. My dad was a part-time EMT and taught CPR classes, so I knew about 911. I sent my sister to the neighbors’ house to get her out of the way. Grandma survived, but mentally she was never the same. She lived another dozen years or so.
Worked as a lifeguard at Scout summer camp for five summers and helped a few kids who otherwise would probably have drowned. Also, with several others, performed CPR on a visiting, very overweight dad who had a heart attack at the camp. IIRC he died in the hospital not long afterwards.
One New Year’s Eve in London, was in a group that rushed up to a guy on the street who was beating up his girlfriend pretty bad. A police van arrived within seconds and took them away.
I was awakened in the middle of the night by a neighbor calling (weakly) for help. I roused my then-husband, who was a volunteer firefighter, to see what was going on. Neighbor had “accidentally” shot himself in the kidney with a shotgun (his wife had left and taken the kids a few days before). He lived because I’m a light sleeper, I guess.
Hey me too! But without the broken leg, thankfully.
We were on holiday in Malta, in a villa with an advertised “child-safe” pool. It turned out to be an un-fenced 2.5 meter deep plunge pool with virtually no shallow end. So we had strict rules about not letting the kids out unsupervised, locked doors etc.
I was out with Son; we were walking back in. He’s a step behind me and I hear the splash. Look down to see he’s head down, with the water just covering his feet. I reach down into the water (he’s sinking now) and grab him out by his ankle. Bend him over my knee and slap his back while he coughs up some water. He stands up, smiles and walks indoors. I follow him, thinking “Phew”. Didn’t really think anything of it - he fell in, I pulled him out, no big deal.
At 1 a.m. I sit bolt upright in bed thinking “Holy Fu-uck” and have a mild panic attack.
Which reminds me, I was swimming off the North Carolina coast a few years ago with two of my sons (ages 11 and 8 at the time) and we got caught in a very strong current or riptide. I took their hands and swam parallel to shore, pulling them along, until we could make our way into land. It was a close call - very scary. I really think we came close to drowning that day.
It seems like a totally fake story, even to me, but I swear this actually happened; years ago I was pulling up to my ex’s house (not my ex at the time, obviously) who lived across the street from some busy train tracks and noticed there was a car stuck on them. Not an uncommon situation, because of the way the road turned there, and somebody seemed to be walking down to help the woman move it, so whatever. And then the signals came on. (It was a bit of a blind curve; no way the train was going to see the car until maybe fifty feet? or so before impact.)
So somehow I managed to run down the hill, grab my ex and his friends, run at the train waving my coat while they almost failed to move the car out of the way in time. They kept slipping in the gravel. Train stopped maybe ten feet from the damned car and the woman never got out. Like, good lord, that’s a hell of a lot of faith to have in the frat guy who was helping her in the first place and my three overly mustached friends!
Maybe the train would have seen her and stopped in time without us making such a fuss, but there’s no way that one guy could have gotten the car unstuck. The whole thing was like a weird dream.
ETA - it was also dark out and this area is quite poorly lit. I really don’t think much of the train’s chances at spotting her in time.
A few years ago I was at one of the local malls when I saw a toddler running far away from his mother and into oncoming traffic. She was extremely overweight (she was also carrying bags) and simply could not get up enough speed to catch him. Fortunately, I am only moderately overweight, and despite a bit of a limp (I almost always have a cane with me if I go on a long jaunt), I was able to catch up to the little tyke and grab him. I carried him over to her and she thanked me. Oddly enough, he didn’t seem afraid of me (a strange, long-haired bearded man) at all, so I wound up carrying him to his mom’s car while she carried the shopping bags.
It wasn’t really that dramatic, but some of the cars were driving a bit fast, and you know how people get distracted when they are driving while on their cell phones, so there was a definite danger of the little guy not being noticed and getting flattened.
When my daughter was six, we walked out to the barn before her bedtime so she could give her pony some hay. She was in her jammies and slippers. She ran ahead and had already thrown the hay down and was coming out of the stall when I entered the barn.
Looking down the aisle, I saw one of the biggest copperheads I’ve ever seen pressed along the stall wall in front of her. She had just turned to shut the stall door, putting her foot about 8" from the copperhead’s mouth.
Time slowed waaaay down. I remember thinking that a bite would kill her because she was a tiny little thing (still is). I didn’t want to yell “SNAKE” and make her jump. So I told her in my sternest mom-voice to back up slowly. It was all I could think to do until I could reach her.
She took a slow step backwards and I was able to grab her arm and jerk her away from the snake.
I still have a vivid image of her tiny ankle so close to that copperhead, and it still gives me the shivers.
I have not (as far as I know), but it is on my bucket list. I applaud those posting here who have actually done this!
Years ago a colleague of mine disappeared for a couple weeks unannounced. When he got back he told of what happened to him. He was driving down the freeway on his way home from work, when he felt some numbness in his hands and arms and pain in his chest, took the very next exit, pulled into the first parking lot with people, rolled down his window, handed a woman his phone and said “I think I am having a heart attack” then passed-out.
He wanted to thank that woman for calling 911 and telling them where he was, thus saving his life. I suggested that he really saved his own life - by making the right decisions and asking for help when he could (as opposed to just continuing to drive). There is a lesson in there about always putting yourself in position to win (as well as not being a bystander when help is needed).