Have you saved a life?

[Tuukka]

Short version:

#1 Possibly prevent my grandmother from going into heart failure
#2 Possibly talked a close friend out of suicide

Long version:

One being almost 8 years ago. My grandmother was in and out of the hospital with a heart condition. She had a massive heart attack at I think 46, lost two thirds of her heart. She went a good 14 years without problems. She underwent open heart surgery and was never the same. During the summer I'd stay with her. Half the reason behind her was I always believed someone should be with her constantly, the other being I could shoot my pellet rifles in the afternoon. One day she was acting a bit strange (falling asleep at her chair in the dining room, cold sweats, turning pale-ish). My older cousin who's autistic was staying with her on that day. He was watching TV in the other room while I was in the dining room watching the 12 o' clock news and eating lunch. I asked her a question and she was non-responsive. I started asking if she was okay, barely a response. I brought her a cold towel, small glass of water and stepped outside on the patio. I called my mom, explained as briefly as I could. Two minutes later the phone call was done, my mom was heading over ASAP. I decided it couldn't wait since my mom was a good 30 mins away, so I called 911. My grandmother wasn't aware that I was going to call, so I had my cousin try and talk to her. Within about 3 minutes EMTs/FFs/Police showed up. I was told if I didn't call, she'd have probably died. On sight, the female EMT explained to me simply yet informatively that she was entering stages of cardiac arrest.



The other time I suppose you could say I saved a life was January 16th, 2010. I remember the date pretty vividly as it was the same day that my grandmother (as mentioned above) was laid to rest. One of my friends at the time (no longer friends for varying reasons) was long done with his last girlfriend. They dated for a few months. Her and I had a few summer classes from June to August 09. We started to be 'texting' buddies and hung out a few times. As I got to know her, she started changing. Not changes like "I hate this song but I loved it yesterday" but changed morally. Things that'd she say to me sometimes made me seriously wonder her mental well being. After the reception for my grandmother, my immediate family decided to go to my uncle's house to reminisce. Since there was no smoking in the house, I stepped outside into the garage to have a cigarette and beer. As soon as I lit up the cigarette, I felt my BlackBerry vibrate. I had figured it was an email from Facebook or something or the likes, but it vibrated again so I checked it. It was my texting buddy calling to say that she was sick of the problems she had in life and was going to take her own. She said she appreciated everything I've done for her, and hung up. I tried calling her repeated times, no answer. She sent me another text saying it was the end and she was shutting her phone off. I called her again, no answer. So I called her ex to figure out what the hell was going on. He said they were talking earlier in the day and it turned into a full fledged argument. He was going on about how she supposedly cheated, etc to which I think I replied somewhere along the lines of STFU. Hung up on him, called her younger brother. He answered, I asked him if he knew where she was, said yes. He was in the car with his step dad, so I told him to get to her as quickly as he possibly can. I told him to call me back as soon as he knew something.

I got a call the next morning at 930. Her brother called saying she was alright, just really confused about some of her life decisions in both the present and future. He put her on and she apologized for everything that happened the previous night.

[norcalprep]

Back when I was 19 and scrawny, I was on the campus gym working out late one night. I was benchpressing all of 95lb at the time (aw yeah, fear me!) and really didn't have any upper or lower body strength. I was between sets just catching my breath and drinking water when I noticed the other guy in the room with me was on one of those bench press machines that keep the bar parallel to the floor (you can't just drop one side to the ground if one arm gets tired). He was trying to hook the bar onto the pegs to finish his set, but didn't have enough strength to hold it up. I was walking towards him to see if he needed help when he just dropped it down on himself, pinning him onto the bench by his collarbone. Somehow I was able to deadlift the 340lbs he had on there high enough for him to slide off the bench.

Saw him a month later and he was fine.

[man in black]

a few nights ago i went to a party and then one of my best friends started dropping hydrocodones (5 to be exact) unbeknwnst to me and then started and then finished a fifth of jaeger meister. he collapsed and i had to drive him to the hospital.

[bcvojak]

Many. . But then at the time I was paid to do so.

[books]

The short version:
I had just finished my EMT-B class/cert in college (I was a computer science student, but it was a fun class - I was a preper before I knew what prepping was). I was driving home on the interstate through the middle of BFE.

A motorcycle wiped out in front of me. He was the definition of walking wounded, but as soon as his adreneline wore off, it was obvious that he would be hating life. At this time, I didn't have a first aid kit, but luckily a lady with a baby stopped. I splinted his arm and stopped his bleeding with lots of diapers and lots of clean white t-shirts. He looked pretty silly, but it stopped the blood loss. I don't know if I actually saved his life, but I made the accident suck slightly less. (side note: we were so rural, it took the ambulance 45 minutes to get there)

[MarkyNark]

Several years ago-I'm 24 now-I was in a hotel pool that was up to 5 ft 6 in deep, not as tall as me. There was a 25-year old (or so) couple with their daughter (about 6) that also got in the pool. The couple started hugging and kissing. In their heated romance, they didn't notice that their daughter had swam off to the deep end. Soon, she stopped floating, and she was completely submerged. I noticed her arms flailing around. I swam to her, and held her up above the water, as a thick stream of water spewed from her mouth. Her parents took her and tended to. Does anyone have a similar story? Firefighters, LEOs, medics, and other life-saving personnel, feel free to add in your stories, and what you did to help.

john917v

When I was 15 our church group when to the local lake for an outing. My mom raised me to swim as I was put in the water before I could talk. At the time I had my lifeguard certification and was swimming in the lake's roped of section when I noticed a tired swimmer. He started going down so I swam over and gave him some help. he was near panic, but I was able to keep him from crossing over to that and I brought him to shore.

Later that year that same church group had a Christmas Caroling event. Some teenagers grouped up and went off caroling on their own - I was with them. We had nearly 10 kids my age in the van when the driver lost control and when down an embankment rolling the van at least 10 times we stoped when we hit a tree. I woke up and everyone else was out cold. I walked further down the the house whose back yard we landed in and knocked on the back door. I called for ambulances and help afterwards. I was the only one not hurt. Just lucky.

[Talon04]

When I was in 6th grade we had a major ice storm here. Like 10 inches of just ice, they canceled school and my sister and i decided to go sledding, with some of her friends. Nearest hill was a highway overpass that had a steel fence about 20 foot from the bottom of the slope we used the fence as a brake basically sliding down and hitting it with our feet. One of my younger sister's friends went down and hit a slight bump in the fence and then smacked her head on a fence post. I was at the top of the hill when i heard the others screaming. and I dove down the hill on my sled, got to the bottom and ran over and saw the snow around her head was bright red. Every one we screaming and i just kinda kicked into gear, sent the kids to get her dad. I stripped off my coat and then saw her stocking cap on the ground. I gently pressed it against were I saw the most red. Time seem to slow down the little girl was coming in and out of it and I was waiting for help when her dad pulled up and committed the cardinal sin and ran up and picked her up and took off running to his truck. I stood up and picked up my coat and watched them go. Later on the news they said he drove her to the hospital doors and the doors were frozen shut. My mom got a call later in the week from her mom thanking me for helping said the little girl needed her head stapled back in place.

[Trebor]

I pulled a 7 or 8 year old girl out of the path of a German Hetzer AFV at an airshow two years ago. The re-enactors were driving from the field back to their camp through the crowd that lined both sides of a small dirt trial. The girl was looking the other way and ran right by me and right in front of the oncoming vehicle. I had to take a couple steps and literally yank her off the path. I'm pretty sure she wouldn't have cleared it and that the vehicle wouldn't have stopped in time.

I wrote a nasty letter to the airshow organizers about the lack of crowd control and safety issues regarding the vehicle movements.

I've got a pic of the vehicle somewhere. I'll post it if I can find it. No picture of the girl though.

I found a couple pics. The first one shows the dirt road the vehicles were on. Note the lack of ground guides. The second picture is the German AFV (Hetzer?) that almost squished the girl. (I took that pic later in the event).



And the Hetzer (I think?)

[Neville]

I prevented a guy from accidentally killing himself. He was on his way to dumping a five gallon bucket of water on a 440v electrical fire. I got there just ahead of him with the CO2 fire extinguisher.

My life was saved once by a guy who grabbed my collar just as I was about to dash out of a church bus... there was a speeding car in the right lane (bus was in the left lane) and I would have darted out right in front of it. At the very least it would have maimed me for life, but I'm fairly sure it would have been a fatal mistake.

[Shadow13]

With my time as EMT, Fire Rescue, CO there have been some but its the ones that I didn't who stick out. CPR'd a lady and revived her long enough to ship to a trauma center after a bus accident then went to collect the pieces of a 6 yo girl for transport and ID. Kind of a hollow victory.

[lifeform69]

Pulled a guy out of a flipped, sinking car. He was unconscious. Could not believe a car could flip over and slide down into a canal, just from hitting a 4 inch curb!!!Poor RX7!! He had been drinking and fell asleep at the wheel while traveling at about 50 mph.

[BlakeS]

When I was 11 I was on a cruise ship and saw a man leaning over the edge of the railing to look down and the floor was wet and his shoes loss traction and he almost flipped over the rail but I tackled his legs at the last second almost took me with him.

[datsgor]

Don't know how many may be still alive, but I donated my sons organs to 4 different people. Hopefully all of them are still enjoying life, as they were all children at the time....16 years ago.

[dogbane]

Don't know how many may be still alive, but I donated my sons organs to 4 different people. Hopefully all of them are still enjoying life, as they were all children at the time....16 years ago.

This moved me. Thanks.

[Finch]

warned a guy yak about a lowhead dam ahead (we were on the shore for portage he was paddling by ... if he would have died or not is debatable

[Timizlam]

I've saved my mother on a few occasions from dying from anaphylactic shock.

[The Different One]

I have stopped and helped at a few accidents, but I don't know if my involvment saved a life, but I have been there to help.

The only time I can truthfully make the claim that I saved a life is talking a woman back onto the right side of a bridge ledge at 0100 in a small town in Kentucky when I still drove a truck.

[ironvic52]

I saved far more lives as a fire department dispatcher than I ever did as an ambulance man in Los Angeles. If you use them right, the phone and the radio can be powerful life savers. In the ambulance, I had 2 righteous saves in 4 years. One was a scuba diver washed up on shore, a real save because he survived after vigorous CPR with no deficits, had 2 toddler kids and a young wife. I don't even remember his name, but I still think of him after 30 some years.

In dispatch, I was almost always the guy who had to talk mama through infant CPR after the child fell in the backyard pool (a lot of those in Los Angeles). It was stressful to the max, dealing with a rightfully hysterical mother with a drowned baby in her arms. Those saves were the best, the joy and emotional realease could be explosive afterward. I always gave it back to mom, telling her, "Ma'am, you just saved your child's life, congratulations. " Then you'd hear the sirens wailing as the engines and medics arrived, so delicious when it works out. The lost little ones, though, haunted my nightmares for many years.

[The Different One]

Don't know how many may be still alive, but I donated my sons organs to 4 different people. Hopefully all of them are still enjoying life, as they were all children at the time....16 years ago.

I...I don't know what to say.

That is a powerful statement, I think this thread can be closed now, as no one will be able to top this one.

[Prepared American]

Ummm...Yes.

[RickOShea]

I've been part of several "rescues", but none of them were in imminent threat of death.

Found a couple of kids lost in the woods when I was a cadet in the C.A.P.

Extricated several drunks that couldn't get out of their wrecked vehicles after they tried taking the "back roads" home from the bar and still managed to run into a power pole.

My partner and I used our high riding bucket truck to tow a couple of SUVs full of elderly people and kids out of a flood zone that had four feet of water over the road.

Another time we used the 30,000# winch on our digger derrick truck to pull a National Guard M35 full of rescuees out of a ditch after another hurricane induced flood. Trying to pull that one inch winch cable 50 yards through nipple-deep water was..... Interesting.

As far as saving a life goes, I ran over a shit-eating dog the other day..... So I might have saved Biggin's life.

Edit: Forgot about my neighbor's little two year old daughter back when I was in college. She swallowed a plasic Coke bottle cap. A couple of deliberate "slaps-on-the back" and a finger sweep later, and she was GTG.

[dukman]

I prevented a guy from accidentally killing himself. He was on his way to dumping a five gallon bucket of water on a 440v electrical fire. I got there just ahead of him with the CO2 fire extinguisher.

That reminds me of the one time I saved a co-workers life. Luckily I was so anal about how I threw cardboard into the baler, and reached in to flatten a box already in there to find the box was FULL of... drumroll please!... 1lb PROPANE bottles!!! I don't get why the hell there was a censored case of propane in the baler. Whoever threw it in there had to know it wasn't an empty box as it weighs about 20 pounds! I cannot be sure that the baler would of had enough pressure to cause them to explode, but I am glad we didn't have to find out

[zephir]

not a big deal, and probably doesn't qualify as "saving someone's life",
this one time I gave a stranded motorist a ride back to town. his car has broken down in some desolate stretch of road in the desert, he had no supplies and me not being a mechanic, couldn't really do anything to help. there was no cell reception for him or me, and he says i'm the first car he's seen in hours. I offered a ride to town, he accepted. Turns out "town" was about 50 miles away. (I was passing thru, I just picked a major city I knew of, which was Barstow. in retrospect, Victorville might of been closer). i might of saved his life, wouldn't know what might of happened to him if I didn't stop and see if he needed help.

[ninja-elbow]

I used to work at a summer private park, the kind of place your company has it's summer picnic at. I started out as a soda jerk, then a hot dog stand guy and finally I got to work my last 2 summers there as a part of the row-boat pond crew. The park patrons could "rent" a row-boat for 30 minutes and we'd get them the boat, get them life-jacketed up and help them in/out of the boat from the little pier.

During our breaks (we were all 15-17 years old) we'd go by the pool and look at chicks in bikinis or just take off our shirts and lay out a bit for some sun. I was on one of these breaks and at the pool. I was talking to the lifeguard when this little girl, about 4-5 years old, ran by and jumped into the deep end of the pool. Me and the lifeguard stood there for a second, watching. Bubbles came up but the girl did not. A few seconds later I went over to the edge and I saw her flapping about at the bottom of the pool (7 feet deep) so I went in real quick and brought her back up. Her Dad had got there as did the lifeguard and they helped get her out of the pool.

She was coughing and scared but that was about it.