Ever Save Someone's Life?

I spent about 5 hours getting a guy who was high and/or drunk to not suicide himself in our back of the house studio apartment. I talked him down through his front door first for a few hours. Then he opened the door completely naked except for athletic socks and a big kitchen knife in his hand. But I could tell he wasn't able to do much with it, so I talked him into letting me sit down in the foyer and he sat on the kitchen floor for an hour, then I got him to put down the knife and put on some pants. Then it took about an hour to get him out of the apartment and down two flights of stairs and then a long while to walk him over to a friend's house to take care of him. After that he was a little sheepish everytime w saw each other on the street again.

I had someone tied up in my basement for a week. but ultimately I let them go after 8 days and pushed them out of the van by a freeway outside town, so they could find a ride home.

So that’s saving someone’s life (?)

I saved my sister from drowning in a swimming pool in New Jersey when I was 14. I had been taking swimming and diving classes since I was 6. It was quite the laugh that I swam five times a week but didn't play football or baseball or basketball.

I saved my college roommate's girlfriend in the college swimming pool when I was 19. At that time I was on the swim team and the water polo team. I was in the men's locker room getting my stuff from my locker. My friends ran in to tell me that my roommate's girlfriend was pushed in the swimming pool and couldn't swim. Stupid people. So I ran out of the locker room and dove in and pulled her to the side of the pool. Such stupid reckless people.

Why can none of you people's friends manage to stay afloat?

I was in the KC Star for rescuing a small black child from the 20 ft diving pool in 1975. I was a lifeguard

While at the beach I saved a woman from drowning who was being pulled out into the ocean by currents who then sued me for more than I was worth because of her recovery costs.

West Hollywood....this story reads like a really bad movie script.

Some old guy who was having a stroke or heart attack across the street from me. Nobody else was around. I went to him. He was staggering as I tried to support him. A couple of cars went by and one stopped. Call 911, I said. The guy couldn't speak so I tried to pat his pocket to see if he had ID so I could tell his family in the neighborhood but he thought I was mugging him and pushed my hands away, so I stopped. By the time the ambulance came, I think he was flatlining. Felt so bad for him. I'm sure they would have got his ID at the hospital so I feel bad that this guy's last memory of life on Earth is of some guy trying to mug him while he was dying in Brooklyn.

A few weeks later I ran across another guy leaning over the trunk of car. This is in Brooklyn. I was doing my early morning walk and it was still dark. As I came towards him I just kept looking because he wasn't moving and just kind of propped up on this car. When I got to him I asked him if he was having a heart attack and he nodded his head yes. Again, no one around. Again, no phone on me. Finally someone comes by and they call 911. I think this guy might've lived. Hope so.

The kicker is that the reason I was walking so early in the morning was because the doctor told me I had to start exercising more after I had a heart attack.

And no, I don't live in a retirement community.

tl:dr Guy keeps running into guys having heart attacks after having a heart attack.

Lives in a retirement community in everything but name.

I talked my mother out of suicide not long ago. She has chronic health issues which show no sign of getting any better and is unable to work. She is also trapped in an unhappy marriage with my father who is very controlling and manipulative and who also has quite a nasty temper (especially at night when he has had a few drinks). One night, all of it got to be too much for her and she actually sent me a "goodbye" message on Facebook and told me she was going to go outside and take a bottle full of her pills. But I was able to convince her not to. I have never told anyone about it.

I believe my posts here have saved many lives.

And of course, my incomparable attachments - -

Total fluke thing, was home early for xmas break by a week, she should have been alone but I heard my mothers dog going crazy, she was taking a bath so I called in to her, no answer, repeat several times bc you cant hear well in a tub, but I still got no response, decided to go into her bathroom to find her having a seizure in the tub, head was under water. I pulled the plug to the water and called 911, was a terrifying sight for multiple reasons but that's as close as I've come to 'saving ' anyone.

[quote] The surviving lover was swimming with us when I noticed he was down at the bottom of the pool and had been there for a while. No one had noticed. I dove down, pulled him out and pumped the water out of him by the side of the pool.

He showed up--splashin' around!

I did, but he was a Vietnam vet, and he was really messed.

I was walking by a busy corner in the small Louisiana town where I moved after college, when an elderly lady collapsed. I managed to pad her head, get her positioned more comfortably, and monitored pulse and respirations during the time it took for the ambulance to arrive. She was diabetic, so we got a piece of hard candy to rub on her gums and tuck into her cheek., She was just beginning to rouse when they got there. The worst part was keeping her family calm and dealing with the crowd. This lady lived, but stayed in the hospital several days until her diabetes was better regulated.

The second time was on the job, when a custodian collapsed outside. A co-worker and I reached the man at the same time and began CPR. When the paramedics got there, they kept me continuing the chest compressions, since they thought I was doing a good job. I was damn tired by the time he was put in the ambulance. We found out later that this fellow had recurrent chest pains for several weeks and kept ignoring them. We did resuscitate him, but he died the next week in the hospital.

....

It's all in the mix.

[quote] I got him to put down the knife and put on some pants.

Was his cock unattractive?

You're a giver R2 - I hope that person sent you a thank you note.

You should help your mother get away from your father R11. I bet her life would improve immeasurably.

Can you really drown yourself in a pool like that? I thought the instinct to survive would make you come up for air. Now... wading out into the ocean I can see.

You guys are to be commended. I'm quite sure I'd be completely incompetent. One of those "Somebody help him" useless types.

When I came out a week after highschool my father was so ashamed he tried to kill himself. He took a kitchen knife and went into the back yard and slit his throat. He was in shock and the muscles in his hand had fused around the knife. He knew he hadn't severed the jugular because he was still alive. He was going in for another slash at his neck. It took all the strength I could muster to get that knife out of his hand. He survived. He's still alive. We don't talk about it. It took a long, long time for me to get over that.

I'm R15. I was an assistant apartment manager. I got a call that there was a naked man running around on the 7th floor. I went up there,, and Mario had taken a drug overdose, and had been vomiting all over the place. He was having trouble breathing so I asked him if he still wanted to live, and he said he did, so I had to get him to lay down long enough that I could administer mouth to mouth (despite all the vomit). I did, and was able to get him to sit up, quietly, while I called 911. I had to have my boyfriend stay in the lobby to let the ambulance guys in. I was so relieved when they took him away, but I eventually had to clean out his apartment, and it was like a scene from hell. He had grotesque cartoons drawn all over the walls, and apparently, his power had been off for a while, and his refrigerator was full of maggots. I had to try to get his apartment rent-worthy once he was gone, and that was especially difficult. But you'll be surprised what resources you have (or not) when someone is dying.

Blood donor. O negative. I was at the top of the Red Cross list in three countries. Also have a rare reagent(?), so my blood was shipped all over Southeast Asia to teach blood bank workers how to identify it.

Did my blood save anyone's life? I'd like to think so. But, in reality? *shrug*

I don't know if I actually saved two guys' lives, because I'm not sure how serious they were about killing themselves, but they sounded serious enough to me, so I wasn't taking any chances. One of them was a drama queen who liked attention, and he called me one night to tell me that he was going to end it all. There was really nothing terrible going on in his life that I knew about, except for the fact that he was only 20 years old and living with his mother, and his "boyfriend" was almost 40, but I listened to him for the better part of an hour, and then suddenly he said "Goodbye," and abruptly hung up. I called the cops. It took a while for him to "forgive" me for that.

The other guy I really felt sorry for from the first time I met him. He was intelligent, well spoken, witty, and had so much potential. Just 25 years old. He would go through periods of depression, because he had severe health problems and a girfriend who was a bitch from hell. I was his father confessor, and he would tell me how he felt about his life, and a lot of it was really negative. One night he called me and told me that he had bought a shotgun, and that he was going out into the countryside to some remote area, and he would kill himself. I started to feel like a suicide hotline at that point. He hung up abruptly, without even a goodbye. Again, I called the cops and convinced them that I was not some hysterical nutjob, and they went directly to his house. It took a long time before he would speak to me again, but I was in contact with his mother and she kept me posted. He moved out of the area, and I lost contact with him, but a couple of years ago, on New Years Eve, he called me, said "I love you," and hung up. There were no reports of his death, so I hope everything is okay with him now.

I was at a family reunion cookout last year when my cousin stood up, put her fist to her mouth as if trying to cough. Her face was beet red. A few family members saw her and started calling her name, but she was not replying. This is when time slowed as if in a movie. I went to her, asked her if she was choking, and she nodded. I put my arms around her and began doing the Heimlich maneuver.

I began the inward/upward thrusts several times but a piece of food didn’t fly out of her mouth as I always imagined would happen from my first aid classes through the years. I expected her to go unconscious and was ready to ease her down to the ground when she started waving her arm and sat back down in her chair. She spit a chunk of steak into her hand and then started sobbing. By this time, relatives had flocked to us and began asking if she was OK. She was.

After her husband put her into the car and left for the hospital to have her examined, everyone was speaking rapidly and a few came over to hug me. I was still on autopilot and felt like I was outside my own body as a spectator, listening to me thanking them, watching me hugging them back, etc. About 10 minutes later, my whole body was trembling, and tears started running down my cheeks, again surprising me more than anyone. My body was reacting to the adrenaline in my system. I wasn’t back to my normal self after an hour. That’s my guess anyway as the details are still fuzzy one year later.

^^ Correction.I meant to say I wasn’t back to my normal self until about an hour later, but whether it was that long or not is something I am fuzzy on.

I plucked a toddler out of a pool a few years ago. He slipped right in without a sound. Sank like a stone. Fortunately I was a few feet away and spotted him. His mother saw me and was slightly mortified that she hadn’t been paying attention and her kid almost drowned. For a couple of years after that, she would awkwardly bring it up. Hey, I’ve done some careless things that could have ended tragically, I’m not judging.

OMG R21. Frightening!!

[quote] This is when time slowed as if in a movie.

This has always fascinated me. When time goes into stop-motion or slow motion. I first noticed in it when I was about to have a car accident. I knew I couldn't avoid it. From that realization on, time did that stop-motion thing, like one frame at a time. Nobody was seriously hurt but I never forgot that sensation and wondered why it happened.

Here's an answer to the "time slowing down" question.

In the early 80s I was walking to Harvard Square to catch the T when I spotted a man on the steps in front of his house waving his arms to get my attention. It was wicked cold out so I put my coat over him and ran to the Holiday Inn on Mass Ave. which was a few blocks away. Luckily there was a cop inside, he called 911 then grabbed an oxygen tank and wheeled it to the guy. I'm guessing the guy was having a heart attack.

There are way too many drama queens faking suicide out there. Attention whores all of them. Just look at the OP's story of the guy who tried to kill himself after his partner died. During a party? Really? Drama Queen!

But I am not bitter, well maybe I am. My boss has attempted suicide 3 times while I was working for her. Pills usually. One time I caught her just before she "fainted" and hit the floor. She was a major, drama queen.

1) Several years ago while staying at a motel in Denver, I was walking near the courtyard pool when I saw an unattended toddler fall into the pool and sink straight to the bottom. I was able to slam down on my stomach and reach down to grab him and pull him out, so I didn't have to actually jump in. The kid commenced to howling, and after few moments his mom came out of her room to see what was going on. When I told her what had happened, she said something like, "well, maybe now he won't get so close to the edge again." No thank you at all.

2) I was waiting with a few other pedestrians to cross the street in downtown Santa Barbara. We were all poised to walk when a jacked-up pickup truck with huge wheels decided to ignore our right-of-way, so we paused—all except a young lady who was so busy texting that she wasn't aware of what was going on. She took one step forward, oblivious to the truck. II grabbed her harm and pulled her back, as if she had taken one more step she would have been squashed, thereby ruining everyone's lunch hour. She at least thanked me.

Several months ago, there was this guy who lived near my building. He was black. Two men attacked him with ski masks while yelling "this is maga country". They recognized him from the trashy tv show he is on. That guy? Jussie Smollett. I saved his life that day. You're welcome.

About a week before Gay Pride NYC I was standing behind a guy in a Chelsea deli waiting for a bagel. He had a seizure and went down like a bag of bricks and hit his head HARD on the slate floor. I opened his zipper billfold to get the name off his license and several thousand dollars worth of meth fell out.

The Asian workers kept trying to shove him out the door but I called 911 and I insisted they keep him still until the EMTs arrived.

Yea, I kept it because if he had it on him it was dealer time he would’ve gone to jail for.

R35, wow. That was really nice for you to do (the part about keeping the meth). As long as you didn't keep the meth to do it later.

My brother was sick with the flu one time. When my parents were at the market, he ran to the bathroom and started getting sick. He threw up so much that he passed out. He hit his head on the bathtub on the way down and stopped breathing. I gave him mouth-to-mouth and CPR, though I hadn't taken any lessons. He was ice blue at one point and the air I breathed into him came right back out like a deflating balloon. At one point he made a huge [air intake sound] and sat up with a wild look in his eyes. I cried for about 20 minutes.

A fat Puerto Rican woman And three small kids plus a terrier drifted out to see in one of those rubber dinghys. Only reason I knew was her gorgeous 15-year-old son was on the beach and he suddenly jumped up dived into the water and began to swim out but he began to falter. I had swum out and caught him before he went under and had to drag him out to the dinghy have him hold on and then use the rope from the dinghy to hail the whole fucking lot back into shore. If I’d had the opportunity I’ve emptied the kids and the dog out of the boat and pushed the fat bitch back out to see where hopefully the sharks would’ve had a feast. Stupid people.

R27 Some might appreciate that heroic effort.

Of course, you may find that gratitude is, well.....lacking in others.

Not singlehandedly. That's not how it works.

1) Assisted an old lady who'd been walking in the hot sun when she keeled over from heat exertion. Her attendant did not know how to do anything for her. Made her comfortable in the shade and monitored her breathing and pulse till ambulance arrived.

2) An intoxicated to the point of incapacitated young woman was being led out of a bar by two guys. (We were sitting at a window table). She collapsed on the sidewalk, one of the guys who took her outside was trying to lift her. I went out to see what was going on. The guy trying to get her to leave with him was a stranger to her who'd just met her at the bar. (The other guy was a bouncer, he called 911). I checked her purse and she had some prescription pills that could have reacted badly with alcohol. Or, she could have been roofied by the guy who wanted her to go with him (he had an big disgusting dried rivulet of blood all down his forearm to his wrist).. He kept trying while I sat on the sidewalk with her and tried to find out where she lived. (Her ID was from another city). I finally shouted at him that the passed out woman was not going with him. When the EMT & police came, the guy was still lurking and I told the police about how creepy he was toward the woman even while she was passing in & out. The ambulance took her away.The police talked to bloody arm guy and nothing happened, he just left. We went back to the bar. I figure I helped save her from a rapist at best, murderer at worst.

R1 You sound like a lovely man. Thank you for sharing.

I was coming home from the clubs on a Saturday night and stopped in for munchies at a 7-11 when I saw a very obese teenage girl start reaching for a last package of Hostess Cupcakes on the shelf but I swiped and checked them out first. I just felt instinctively that I had saved her from sinking her teeth into them and going over the edge into cardiac arrest.

I was going to say you guys are good, kind, thoughtful, resourceful people. I was thinking I wouldn't know what to do in some of these scenarios.

Then I realized I saved my father's life when I was 25. When my parents divorced, I'd visit my father once or twice a week because I lived near him. Dad was a heavy smoker and one night I went to get some of my stuff at his house and he was sort of slumped over at the kitchen table. His ankles were bloated and enormous. He said he was feeling fine but he couldn't walk. I told him I was taking him to a hospital and he screamed at me and punched at me, Then my dad told me I'm trying to take over as head of the family and I'm a disrespectful son. My sister and brother are better children.

Then Dad sort of fell down. I pounded his heart and dragged him to my car and drove to the hospital. The doctors later told me, he was experiencing congestive heart failure and he would have died. Too much fluid had built up in his lungs and legs. He was released from the hospital a week later. And surprise! After his recovery, my father said I was the best child, so respectful, so loving and brave.

Do animals count? I saved a bird from getting hit by a car. I also saved a stuck stray cat. No people though

I got pneumonia last year and it was so dreadful I couldn't stand. That in and of itself wasn't so horrible. It was the nausea that was so dreadful and that I wasn't expecting that made me weakly grab the phone next to my bed and call 911. So the above post made me think would I have gotten so sick I would have attempted to go into the bathroom to vomit? The next day in the hospital I wanted to go home as I was feeling fine and had the roommate from hell(nice to me but a horror to everyone else.) I was told my white blood cell count was so low(or so high?) that if I had gone home I would have gotten the flu as well and died. I thought well fine it's alright with me but if the nausea returned with its terrible wickedness I would again have called 911 and not only have felt like the biggest idiot but felt terrible for horribly inconveniencing the ambulance corps that had better things to do than help an unhappy fool. This year I'm stocking up with anti nausea medication.

[quote] He was ice blue at one point and the air I breathed into him came right back out like a deflating balloon. At one point he made a huge [air intake sound] and sat up with a wild look in his eyes. I cried for about 20 minutes.

He probably had a laryngospasm. I've woken up out of a deep sleep having laryngospasm because of GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disorder). And if you've ever vomited, you know that feeling of "I can't breathe." Your larynx goes into spasm --a glottis closure caused by reflex constriction of the intrinsic laryngeal muscles.

But it's possible he had epiglottis since you said he had the flu. Epiglottis is mostly caused by caused by Haemophilus influenzae. Its a medical emergency and sometimes requires intubation. Interesting fact - the incidence of epiglottis has gone down significantly in countries that offer the the flu vaccine.

I used to call this girl fat all the time in college. Now, she is thin with a cute little husband. I practically saved her from a sad spinster life. Bitch had the nerve to ignore me at our lady reunion.

Sorry, my spellcheck kept "correcting" epiglottitis into epiglottis.

R45 You're a hero as far as I'm concerned. My partner seems fated to rescue birds squatting in the middle of the road, stunned by heat.

I call it my "George Bailey Moment",,A few years ago, I was standing in a doorway on 42 and Madison drinking my coffee to avoid the November rain. A Maserati with driver pulled up and out hopped a 45 yo hot, German Daddy and his Twink son. If my husband had been there ,he would have followed the son and me the Daddy, then we'd get back to compare notes. It's a game we play.

Anyway, they split and I was still smiling thinking about my husband. A young woman, about 22, in a short, black dress, stepped in front of me, in the blind spot of the Maserati. She was hailing a cab, not expecting a car to back over her. I yelled but she didn't understand me. There was no time to yell again, so I grabbed her by her tiny waist and pulled her so hard in to my crotch, that if I hadn't been saving her life, it would have been a sex crime.

Sheepishly, she thanked me. I don't know that she would have died, but it would have been bad. Seriously, it was the closest I'd ever been to fucking a woman. I figured we were only separated by 3/8' of poly blend.

I lived in Paris at the time this happened. I was at a Metro stop and was waiting for the next train. A man and his very young son (3-4 years old) were in front of me, but an even longer line in front of them. When the train arrived, the crowd started to get on but we knew it was close to the doors closing. As we were rushing to get on the train, the boy slipped between the platform and train. I instinctively grabbed for him and caught his coat with one hand (it was winter) then grabbed an arm with my other hand and hauled him up and rushed on the train where the shocked father was standing. He froze when the kid went down, I reacted. My stop was only a couple away. The man was cradling his son the whole time, crying and saying merci to me over and over. I remember feeling like I was in a daze for a couple hours after this.

I saved two stupid tween girls' lives tonight when I slammed on my brakes as they darted in front of my car after I had gotten half way through a right hand turn. (They had been standing motionless on the corner, looking at a phone together, when I began the turn on a green light.) I blared the horn at them. They are too idiotic to be allowed out alone in the city and should be required to hold a parent's hand whenever crossing a street.

I was directly involved in saving a man's life while I was traveling in another country. He was stable and heading to an emergency room the last time I saw him. He will never know the whole story. Take CPR/first aid/AED class if you can. I am not in the medical field. If I can do it, you can do it.

I was at a party up in the mountains and it was late at night and we were all fucked up at that point. One girl there, who is the emotional crying drunk type, decided to grab the keys and head out the door to try and find her boyfriend who had stood her up. She and I started getting into a shouting match and I got her into a bear hug while a guy there grabbed her keys and we had to carry her back into the bedroom.

If we let her go out that night, who knows what could have happened. She could have gone off the side of the mountain, or possibly could've run into someone else. I have no patience for drunk drivers.

Dunno if I saved a life, but I did save someone from serious injury

Aged 12 I was traveling to the Uk from Dublin airport and had stepped on a long escalator. Suddenly half way up an old man fell and began to tumble. Instinctively I sprinted back down the stairs and hit the stop button. I don’t know what happened to the old guy but I can remember an American man saying “ smart kid that”.

It made my day!