Have you ever saved someone's life? How did it happen?
I don’t know if this really fits.
I needed a kidney.
My cousin volunteered.
During their testing of her they found a small mass they thought was just fat.
It turned out to be cancer.
Most kidney cancer apparently is not caught until it’s too late because your other kidney takes on the work and you don’t get symptoms.
She was able to get it all removed and is now cancer free (didn’t even need chemo, just surgery).
Anyway, she claims I saved her life.
I claim she saved her own by being willing to donate.
I had a good friend who was going through some very stressful times in his life.
He began experiencing symptoms of severe anxiety; tension headaches, feelings of dizziness, and lethargy.
He went to the doctors, who prescribed him benzos.
He wasn’t doing good and I went over several times to his house and he seemed like he was losing it.
I would call him periodically to check in from time to time to see how he was doing and try to calm him.
One day I had felt like I had a need to call him right then and there.
I called him and he answered crying.
I asked how he was
doing and he said “not good”.
I went and picked him up, noticed an empty fifth of whiskey on his dresser.
He had always been a heavy drinker and at that moment I realized that benzos and alcohol don’t mix.
I took him to the ER and he was admitted.
He has a BAC of .36, indicating he was an alcoholic or he would be dead.
From there we convinced him to take his SSRIs and go to rehab.
On my way to drop him off at rehab he told me, “hey man, you’re a great friend.
I just want you to know that if you hadn’t showed up today, I was going to kill myself.”
That hit me hard.
I am a doctor.
Even then I can count the number of times I can say I've saved someone's life on one hand with fingers left over.
I was working at an athletics event.
After a long distance running event that was open entry, a person collapsed and stopped breathing.
I worked with my team to stabilise them and transfer them to hospital.
They needed support for their airway to keep breathing.
Had they not had it they would have asphyxiated and died.
I met them with their spouse and 8yo child a few months later - actually on this day a few years ago.
That was the biggest
reward for me.
The best feeling.
I’m a Peds nurse and I got a post-op patient.
She was 9 years old and was having a second revision surgery to her cleft palate repair.
A year prior a different ENT had tried to take tissue from her throat and add it to her palate, to prevent as much air flow as possible.
This was considered cosmetic because the air flow was causing the patient to have a high “Minnie Mouse” voice.
That surgery did not work as the graft failed.
No other ENT would try it again, but a new ENT moved to town and agreed to try.
She was stable when they brought her to my floor, obviously in pain, drooling, but stable.
She used a board to write and told her dad she was hungry.
I had not even finished checking her
into the computer (<10min) when I heard what I assumed was phlegm in her throat.
This can be common after surgery because of intubation, especially when your throat has just been operated on.
Her dad and I encouraged her to gently cough and spit out the mucus, as it was getting harder for her to breathe.
She gently coughed, gave me an absolute look of panic, passed out and a pool of blood came out of her mouth so quickly, it made a continuous stream of blood onto the floor.
I called a code, immediately repositioned her, and suctioned her throat so she could breathe.
The suction canister began to fill with blood and I knew she was dying.
I called another code for Blood Bank so
they could send me 6 units stat.
At this point the blood was copious and after she stopped breathing, I began to bag her (manually ventilate) and her blood sprayed everywhere in a fine mist.
That night I washed my face and found tiny blood droplets stuck to my eyelashes.
It was on the ceiling of her room.
Trying to ventilate a hemorrhaging surgical site is not something anyone is prepared for.
My team and I worked to stabilize her, provided CPR for 20 minutes and transfused her all the way down to OR where her surgeon had rushed to meet us.
He cauterized the bleeders and at the debriefing admitted she had bled a lot in the OR and had used 3X the normal amount of
Lidocaine to get it to finally stop.
Those Lidocaine doses all wore off right when I got her on the floor, so it was no surprise she bled.
Our hospital changed its policy to only allow palate repairs or any oral/airway post op risk surgery patient to remain in PICU overnight with an oral airway at bedside in case of code.
My patient survived, took a big neuro hit, but finally could qualify for rehab, went for months and now can ride a bike, ski and is almost caught up in school.
I thank god every day I was in her room when it happened or she wouldn’t be here.
During the mayhem, her mother fainted in the corner of the room and her dad stood across her bed, screaming in my face “She’s
dying!
Do something!” Over and over.
I could feel his breath blowing my hair back, but my vision had narrowed and I blocked him out in order to focus on what I needed to quickly do for my patient.
Very stressful.
One day in college, I was on my way to grab dinner with some friends and ran into another friend in the parking lot.
I invited him to come with me and join us, and we proceeded to have a totally unremarkable dinner in the caf.
Years later, post-graduation, we were hanging out one night getting a bit drunk and stoned and he confessed to me that he was on his way to kill himself that night when I ran into him.
I told my father he has to go see a doctor or i would force him.
He was super tired all the time...
Turns out he had cancer and his liver was about to fail.
Was in the middle of a neighborhood pool and watched a toddler at the side of the pool (10ft end) take his floats off and then jump in the water.
He curled up like a ball and began to sink quickly.
I was able to reach him before he reached the bottom.
He was scared but screaming.
The babysitter was on her phone.
I heard a faint domestic fire alarm one night that wouldn't quit so I walked down the street to idenitfy where the alarm was coming from.
I knocked on the door but there no answer.
I couldn't smell smoke or feel heat off the door but decided to call the fire brigade just in case.
They arrived pretty quickly and I pointed out which unit the alarm was coming from.
They walked up to the door then ran back to the truck to grab a door-banging-opening thingo and the hose reels.
Next thing all this smoke is pouring out the front door and they're carrying an old lady down the stairs.
Then another firey emerged carrying the lady's cat.
Turns out she had turned on the stove to cook dinner but fell asleep.
The unit was filled with smoke and she would have asphyxiated, but both she and the kitty survived.
She wrote me a lovely note thanking me, which was noice.
Moral of the story is to pay attention to noises/things that are out of place, it's better to be safe than sorry, and look after each other.
\*\*\*One day at central station in Sydney, I noticed a drunk old bloke near the edge of the platform.
When I saw a train coming, my gut told me he was going to fall on the tracks so I walked up near him just in case.
Sure enough, he stumble a few steps and was about to fall on the tracks when I grabbed his shirt and pulled him back when the train was about 20 metres away.
Then I took a bite of my mars bar, trying to be all nonchalant, but my heart was beating a thousand miles an hour.
An old lady walked up to me and said "I think you saved that poor mans life".
I shrugged and and gave a self-effacing smile, but the voice inside my head was saying beep yeah I saved his life.
Make me a cape old lady while I put my underpants over my pants, because that's the most superhero beep you're gonna see all day".
When I was probably about 12 or 13 I saved my 4 yo brothers life.
We were in Oregon for spring break as a family and were watching the ocean waves on the beach.
Suddenly an enormous rogue wave came out of nowhere and it pushed us all the way up the beach and against the cliffs.
As the water rushed out I saw my brother tumbling in the surge so I lunged and grabbed him with one arm and held on for dear life to a big rock with the other.
My shoes, jacket and wallet along with other family members belongings were all swept out to sea, but I still have a brother!
A few friends and I saved a tourist family from drowning while surfing on the island of Oahu.
We had been surfing an outer reef on the south shore that was a good half mile or so off the coast when we noticed a family paddling out on a kayak.
A single person kayak with a dad, younger daughter maybe 8 and a son maybe 12 on the nose and tail, and with an older teenage son paddling behind on a boogie board.
They paddled directly into an area of the reef where 4/5 ft waves were crashing very fast and very powerfully on to pretty much
dry reef.
It took only seconds for us to see them go from paddling along in the kayak to seeing them all bobbing in the waves and the kayak 200 yards away, stuck on the reef.
We quickly paddled across the channel as fast as we could.
We then each gave on of the kids and the dad out boards and pulled them by our leashes far enough into the lagoon and they could walk.
About 100 yards of so.
I vividly remember the dad saying “I’m not panicking, I’m not panicking” over and over in a thick Russian accent and having to reassure him that he’d be ok but needs to focus on what we
were doing.
Just goes to show how dangerous the ocean is and how deadly it could’ve been for that family if we weren’t there.
A car was on the road infront of me one night, and driving pretty quickly (we were both going over 100MPH), and then I thought they were switching lanes, but they kept going...right into the guardrail and the engine flew from the car, the battery ended up somewhere in the woods (the first responders found it while surveying the damage) and they were lucky I was there.
Dude fell asleep at the wheel and his wife was in the passenger seat and their 16 y/o son was in the back.
This was at maybe 3AM on a deserted stretch of highway in Virginia.
He broke his leg and was bleeding pretty badly from his face and the bone poking through his calf...luckily, his brain wasn't mush and he
was aware enough to converse with, his wife's air bag didn't go off but somehow only banged her head, and I thought she died but thankfully she was only unconscious for a few moments and then she started to slur her speech and say what I think was "what's going on?"
(I never checked her pulse because I was focused on the driver.
The son was in the better condition between the 3 of them.
He was asleep in the back of the car and was perfectly fine.
All their phones had disappeared (I'm sure they were all thrown from the car...I never found themb).
Had I not been there to witness it, and had I not stopped, dude would have bled out, the
wife was is no condition to talk to anybody, and the son that was pretty much unscathed wouldn't have had a way to contact anybody to get help.
It was so deserted where we were at that it took the ambulance and cops over 20 minutes to find us.
I used my belt as a tourniquet on the dudes thigh, and the EMTs in the ambulance told me I did a good job doing this (I'm glad they taught us and I paid attention to some emergency first aid training in Navy boot camp...although I wish I had my Navy issued belt because I would have been able to do a better job of it.
I still think about this every thanksgiving, as it happened on the
Sunday night after Thanksgiving back in 2011.
I hope they are doing well.
Edit: Thank you anon redditor for the award.
Friend overdosed on heroin I administered cpr before the paramedics arrived.
They did not have to administer narcan when they arrived as she was breathing when they arrived.
SCUBA.
The zip tie that holds the mouthpiece onto the regulator broke and when the diver exhaled, the regulator popped out of the rubber mouthpiece and fell off to the side.
The diver didn't notice until they exhaled all their air and then tried to inhale.
They freaked and tried to bolt for the surface from about 120'.
I grabbed them with one hand and tried to shove my spare regulator into their mouth but they wouldn't spit out the useless rubber mouthpiece.
A fellow dive instructor grabbed me and anchored himself to the mooring line so we stopped ascending.
I free-flowed my spare regulator into the diver's rubber mouthpiece and that got him to snap out of it and register what
I was trying to do.
He spit his mouthpiece out, stuffed my regulator into his mouth, took a big breath, and tried to bolt for the surface again.
I stayed clamped to him and my partner stayed clamped to me and the mooring line.
Eventually the guy calmed down and got himself back under control, after which we made a controlled ascent.
We get a call for a an attempted suicide.
Dude slit his wrist bad.
When we got to him he was ghost white.
like a sheet of paper white.
Put pressure on the wound.
kept him conscious until medics arrived.
He survived.
Thanked us once he recovered.
This *needs* to get to hot
I saved a blind man from getting robbed.
May your day be filled with joy and happiness.
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