That’s the important part you learn about yourself. I’ve seen people freeze or want to run away, I’d like to think it’s part of character. I think it goes to a deeper level, where you are operating on instinct.
Pulled a drowning scuba diver out of Lake Superior many years ago. Luckily my four lifeguarding stints at Ironman Wisconsin have kept me dry on the boat.
I claim six.
Two heart attack victims to whom I administered CPR.
Two potential drowning victims. Once while I was a day-camp counsellor at the local YMCA. Once was a kid who was caught in an undertow near Nags Head NC.
Two choking victims. One of whom suffered a cracked rib in my zeal to administer the Heimlich Maneuver
I could potentially ammend my number to seven… if you’re willing to include yanking my friend out of the way of a knife weilding drunkard that he pissed off.
I’ll claim one-and-a-half. My dad and I both routinely urge tourists out of riptides at the beach, since we’re locals and can recognize them much more easily. I’ve had to help someone get out of a riptide once when no lifeguard was on duty (that’s my “one”) and my dad and I took turns carrying a ten-year-old girl in.
The seas were so choppy that day that the lifeguards couldn’t see us in the troughs. Her parents let her swim alone in choppy five-foot waves and were <i>not even watching her</i>. That’s my half-a-save. Mommies and daddies: keep an eye on your kids, please.
Used to be a lifeguard. Saved the usual idiots in the deep end.
Once, however, a tiny little kid jumped in the shallow end and cracked his chin on the skull of another kid. Unfortunately, tiny kid happened to be holding his upper lip firmly between his teeth and the impact pretty much tore his tiny lip right off his tiny mouth. Ever seen a good lip wound on a wet, excited kid? The blood flows. Man does it flow. The pool was already turning red as I got to him. I dragged him out and bashed open the cheap-ass first aid kit (this was a pool at a run-down community housing dump and I was single-o amongst the drug dealers, underage hookers and the like, none of whom offered to help). I tore open a package of gauze and began applying pressure. Blood was pouring down my arms and dripping off my elbows. With every excited breath the kid blew a spray of droplets in my face. Anyway, I got him to the hospital and he got stitched up.
Did I save his life? I doubt it. Everyone in that project was a tough nut, even the little kids. But no one else was ever going to do anything to help him, that’s for sure. How much blood can a little kid lose before he slides away?
Pulled a kid off the bottom of the pool once. He was down for over a minute before I got to him and had stopped breathing. Of course, I wasn’t much more than a kid myself and had completely forgotten anything I knew about CPR. Luckily, he started breathing again on his own. The kid absolutely loved me after the accident. I got certified in CPR a few months after that incident. Thankfully, I haven’t needed that knowledge in the last 17 years.
I swam out to grab a girl who was getting caught in a rip tide before she got too far out. Pretty stupid in a way, since I didn’t have a float. I was on the swim team in high school, so I figured it wouldn’t be a problem. It wasn’t, but it wasn’t easy either. That wasn’t that close of a call, since I got to her before she got too far. The lifeguard didn’t see either of us until we were almost back, though, so she could have drowned. Not really the guy’s fault; she was in a spot with bad visibility from his station.
I got in between a guy with a gun and my sister. He was, shall we say, not the most stable of persons, but I’m not sure he would have shot her. Not sure he wouldn’t have either. I’m very glad none of us got hurt that day. Ironically, I would have killed the guy, if I’d had to, in order to protect my sister or keep myself from being killed. Talk about giving with one hand and taking away with another. . . It almost got that far, dammit. I occasionally get the proverbial heart-skipping-a-beat response when I remember how close that was.
I took a bad fall to protect a kid from being crushed (by me) in a weird-assed accident at school. I broke both wrists and my nose as a result of that, so it’s pretty safe to say that the kid would have been squished like a bug if I hadn’t made his safety my first priority. Every once in a while when my wrist doesn’t work right I’ll sigh and wish I’d found some other way to do things in those couple of seconds. I still wouldn’t have done anything that put him in danger.
I was in college before I really realized that there are people who think it’s odd to be willing to kill or die to save someone. I had a talk with one of my professors after a class where the question came up. I never thought it was remarkable, that it was pretty much a no-brainer to do the dive in front of a speeding car to tackle the idiot out of the way schtick. I’m kind of glad to know that that’s just kind of how I’m wired.
I’m not really glad I’ve had opportunities to find out the hard way, though.
I had no idea pools were so dangerous. I have never even been near a swimming pool accident.
Just a bit of a hijack… but I think that ‘deeper level’ is a person’s true character. Anybody can act any way they choose, but who they really are comes out when they have to act on instinct.
Someone who would instinctively run towards someone in trouble, rather than away… well, in my mind, that’s character.
Yeah, I did once.
I posted about it here but can’t seem to locate it.
Anyway, long story short. A guy in the apartment building next to mine woke me up screaming. Turns out he stuck his arm through a window and cut it really bad. I got into the apartment, warpped a half-assed tourniquet/pressure bandage around his arm until the paramedics arrived. One of the paramedics told me a day or two later (I ran into him in a 7-11) that the guy almost bled out and was in surgery for a long time while they put his arm back together.
Slee
As I wrote in this tread, I found a woman who was attempting suicide.
I thought that I had posted this next story before, but I couldn’t find it. Sorry if it’s a repeat.
I witnessed a traffic accident here in Tokyo a number of years ago. A speeding truck hit a young girl. I was across the street and went over to see if she was OK. She was deeply unconscious and unresponsive, but still breathing at that point. I looked up to make sure that someone was calling an ambulance and the police and then looked back down and she had turned blue. She was lying on her back, so I checked her airway and her tongue had blocked her airway. I used my index finger to move the tongue and she started breathing again. The girl’s mother showed up and was close to hysterical, and I’m glad that the girl was breathing. It seemed like forever become the ambulance came, but it was probably 10 minutes or so.
I had first-aid and CPR training back in the States, so I didn’t hesitate to help. Lots of people standing around, but no one offered any help.
Unfortunately, the girl had had serious brain damage and died shortly at the hospital. I wasn’t able to save her, but at least they were able to get to the hospital. I would have hated to have seen the mother with her child dying on the street. I went to the girl’s funeral and the mother really thanked me for helping her girl. The mother sent me a picture of the girl and a copy of a drawing the girl had made.
It was really a mixed feeling. It was so sad that she died and I wish that the girl would have made it, but I do think that it would have been harder for the mother and the family if the girl had died there on the spot.
Several.
When I was a teen heroin started getting popular with my friends. I don’t know how many OD’s I called in.
I’m not sure how many would have died if I didn’t call, but several of them did end up dying later from the same thing.
Since this is basically a poll, I’ll move it to IMHO for you.
Cajun Man
for the SDMB
Jeeez. One documented - the exeedingly rare Manual CPR save. She was completely gone when we got there and had a fairly decent sinus when the Paramedics showed up with a Defibrillator.
Aside from that? A bunch of probablys, where doing the EMT thing got someone very sick to the hospital in time, etc.
Yeah, I’ve run out into traffic a few times too. Not to save a life, but to get to someone hit by a car. Never think I’d get hit too. :eek:
Cartooniverrse
I’ll claim a half, if that’s possible.
One of my cabinmates (a large guy, circa 150lbs at age 11 ) at my camp was attacked by another one of my cabinmates (a much smaller kid) with a large steel pipe. I managed to dash out of my bunk, tackle him, and hold him to the ground until a counselor came. I’m not sure if the kid would have been killed, but the one I tackled was put on lithium and various other anti-psychotics at a later date, so it’s not impossible.
One swimming, and 4 in a hostage situation.
I’ve performed CPR scores of times over the years, and two actually survived. But I can’t count those, since it was a cooperative effort with the entire ambulance crew.
I have one definite save. I had been a full-time cop for about three months when I was dispatched to a car in the surf, during a howling storm. The car was actually floating when each wave came in. I got in and found the driver face down in the waist-deep water. I got him out and dragged him up the beach to the waiting ambulance.
I still see him around town. It’s been 17 years, and he has never thanked me.
Just the one - a not-very-old cousin was struggling to stay afloat in a swimming pool.
I think we are going to require further information on this one. 
I’ve never saved a life. The closest I’ve ever come is catching my little brother when he was falling out of his crib (he got stuck on the rail when he tried to climb out).
My parents have all kinds of stories, however. My mom, an RN, was visiting a park one day when a driver crashed his car into another parkgoer. The woman ended up losing her leg ( 
), but my mom kept her from bleeding out. I also remember reading a newspaper article about my dad, a paramedic and volunteer firefighter, jumping into a cesspool to save an elderly woman from drowning.
I have saved my son’s life as well, choking on a candy. I kept an anemic drunk man who lacerated his hand badly from going into shock while my wife called 911. We live out in the country and it took 14 minutes for the paramedics to arrive.
The guy was an emotional mess, and didn’t want us to call the ambulance, there was no way I was driving him anywhere he was too out of control. The paramedics told us after that they nearly lost him twice on the way to the hospital.
He came by about a week later and tried to guilt my wife into helping him pay the $600 ambulance bill (the real cost we found out later was $125) So no thanks and tried to rip us off as well. Had I been home I would have told him the next time he punches through a window he can bleed to death somewhere else.