Have you ever saved somebody`s life?

[C-Fan]

And I don`t mean like, sending money to starving children in Africa, though that`s also worthy. I mean, has anybody here saved somebody`s life physically, in their everyday life? I thought about this after reading Mosher`s blog. Mods, could you make this a yes/no poll? Thanks.

[Seath]

Well I got a story.

It wasn't really me who saved my life, or the lives of my family, I don't know who is to credit for that, but about 6 or 8 years ago my family and I were going to a restaraunt for a family meal. It was winter and there was a good 6 or 8 cm's on the ground. It just started to snow, nothing trecherous, but enough to be cautious about it.

We were waiting at an empty intersection at a red light. We were waiting to turn left. The red light changed to green and my dad didn't do anything. Didn't even move his head, or his whole body for that matter. My mom looked at him, said "it's green" nothing, "go... Michael, it's green, go!" I was like wtf my dad is retarded. My mom pushed him on the shoulder and just as she did a car came SCREAMING through the intersection from our right directly through the intersection and spun off the road and into the ditch. The car nailed the far end of the ditch and crushed the front end of the car. If my dad would have went at the light that car would have creamed us, Im estimating it was going like 60 -70 kpm's judging by the crumpled up engine.

So we stopped helped the guy out, he was fine, shaken up, he apoligized for almost killing us, we waited till the cops showed up and took off. Man that was weird.

My dad said he didn't know what happened, he just was in a daze, and my dad is a VERY cautious driver he doesn't just drift off like that. He said he remembered us telling him the light was green but he felt frozen sorta. I can say it was one of the most unusual situations I've been in and it makes me think alot sometimes.



Ok another story! agan not me (sorry). My mom tells me this so I can't be 100% sure if it's totally accurate but I'll mention it anyways. Ok so I'm like 2 years old and just in my walking phase. I'm upstairs sleeping, my mom just put me to bed, she goes downstairs to the kitchen to do mom stuff.

A while later she had a random feeling that i was in trouble, she said she hastily left the kitchen to check on me, she was really concerned, but for no reason, she said she was legitimately scared when she was going to check on me. When she did, she took the corner to the bottom of the stairs up to the second floor and caught me right in the act of climbing the stair baricade at the top just about to reach the top, she rushed up the stairs and grabbed me, she said I was just about to fall. Coulda saved my life, who knows!?

As far as me saving someones life? Nothing's coming to mind

[Muffinman]

One of my best friends says I probably saved her life. I guess she was all close to suicidal or something before I met her. That's not really very direct, though.

EDIT: Aren't you able to make a poll, Ken?
EDIT 2: Are you excited for Christmas?...

[lightningbolt]

There was a pretty bad car wreck by my house this summer. I was one of the first people to help. It was pretty bad a car was on fire and there was a couple of nasty injurys. I don't know if you would call this saving somebodys life but take it for what it is.

Also, this didn't happen to me but to a frined. A kid brought a knife to school and he was gonna use it on this kid he was pissed at. My frined told the teacher and she took it away. According to the kid he was gonna "Stab the fucking life" out of that kid.

[ShredPirate]

once as me and my family was leaving disneyland, i decided to drive instead of my dad, just cause i felt like it. well we're on the freeway, and a HUGE tire from a semi-truck is just rolling down the freeway, hits the 4x4 truck in front of us, then flys towards our windshield. i first swerved out of the tires way to the right, then immediately had to swerve out of the truck's way to the left, then hold the steering wheel steady to stop the minivan from fishtailing. i saw in slomo the truck in front of us spinning about 360 degrees every 2 seconds, while going about 75mph. it was as though i was playing a video game, and i just KNEW exactly what to do. i think video games can save your life, given the right situation.

oh, and once when i was like 4, my mom opened the bathroom door, only to see me in the bathtub with the water running, and i was holding a plugged in toaster in my arms, waiting to drop it... i don't know what i was thinking, maybe i saw it in a movie.

[Spadrick]

i saw in slomo the truck in front of us spinning about 360 degrees every 2 seconds, while going about 75mph. it was as though i was playing a video game, and i just KNEW exactly what to do. i think video games can save your life, given the right situation.

WORD!

I think that I have been a direct influence on saving someones life only once. One of my friends was on the verge of comitting suicide, I found out from a mutual friend that he may not be okay. I called a buddy of mine with a car and got to his place in like, 2 minutes. He wouldn't open the door, so we broke it down and he was sitting there bleeding. We toweled him up and took him to the hospital. He's fine.

Another question to add in might be, have you ever stopped to think about how often you may save peoples lives every day? Just by walking somewhere, stopping to talk to someone, stepping in a store or bank, driving in a certain lane? Im sure it's not an everyday ocourance, but im sure that it happens often enough to be surprised.

Interesting topic.

[KronoKicker]

My story was funny at the time that it happened but it could have ended very badly. Way back when mining companies used to dig these quarrys for minerals or what not, they'd always hit some sort of underground well and then pull out to a new location. So no we have these nice pits of water to go swimming at and jump of the cliff edges in to the water. One day my friend john, myself, and 2 of my cousins are swimming at the pits and jumping of the rocks and stuff. Me and John decide to jump off a kind of new ledge near the path that leads out of the water back to the top of the cliffs. Were standing and tlking and he's about to jump in, but then begins to loose his balance. He's waving his arms frantically trying to get his balance (he could easily just throw his momentum forward and clear the rocks directly in front of the cliffs edge and make it to the water) instead I slowly reach out and grab his shoulder and pull him back a little. He sighs in relief and squeezes the shit out of me, and thanks me. It very comical to my cousins were watching from the water, they started laughing and i thought it was pretty funny to the way it all happened. Eventually we all laughed about it, but eventually I realized what would have happened if he fell 25 feet to the nice rocks below us. I'm glad i grabbed him then let him chance a jump for the water.

[millenniumtree]

Just a note for anyone trying to "save" someone's life who has just been in a car accident.

When an airbag goes off, it throws out HUGE amounts of white smoke. It's packed with gunpowder. The car is most likely not on fire, and the person in the car should probably stay where they are if they're injured or in shock. Sitting comfortably in a car, or lying on the street, which would you choose?

If the car IS on fire, or you smell gas leaking, get them the hell out, but if it's airbag smoke, don't panic.

I've been in one car accident (which I drove away from, even though the car was totaled (cost more to fix than it was worth)) and I've witnessed another accident which I helped out at, but I wasn't much help because of the above airbag issue. :P

As far as saving someone's life, probably not. I saved my fish's life once when it jumped out of the tank onto the floor... :P

[FlexThis]

[carl winslow]

cool topic, i never really saved anyones life or really had any near death experiences, except if video games count.
cause i saved princess peach from bowser like over a million times

[blackcrown]

I remember this time when I was little (like 6 or 7 years old) I was at my elementary school (school was out for summer) playing on the monkey bars while my dad shot some hoops. We were walking back home when I saw a lump shaking in a corner of the parameter fence. We went over to the lump and it turned out to be some guy having a seizure. My dad told me to run home and the "paramedics" while he stayed with the dude. So I ran home but I couldn't remember the word "paramedics" because I had never heard that word before (my dad should have said "firemen" or something) but I guess my grandmother figured out that somebody needed help and called 911. The paramedics came and helped the guy out. The end.

Eric

[ashleyd]

i have a story, i dont think i saved my brothers life but whatever.
i was in Canada on vaction with all my family( like 20+ people) its was mad fun, we were very up north, and rented out all the cottages on the lake. We had bonfires and everything. The nearist hospital was like 1 hour away or something. This was summer of 2001, i was 12.

Anyways, one day myself, my brother Brian ( 17rs old i think), and cousin Chris were going out in the boat. I was gonna fish, and they were gonna go swimming. The boat was a shit small one, like alluminum. well we got to the complete other side of the lake, where Brian and Chris wanted to swim, and i said i would fish. So we stopped and put the ancor down, and they jumped off without there life vests. Thats mistake #1. We were about 50-100 ft from the edge.
The only reason why they wanted to go to the other side was cause they wanted to jump of this platform thing. So they swam to the other side and had fun or whatever. I was fishing. After about 20 min they got cold and wanted to come back to the boat. That problem #1. We hadent thought of getting back, and i didnt know how to start the boat. I pulled up the ancor and tried to follow the directions that Chris was shouting. Didnt work. So Brian (my brother) started to swim, and the boat started to drift. Mistake #2.
I kept drifting, he kept swimming, and he gets tired. After like 5 min, i start to worry and try to use the ores to get back, but it wasnt working. I really dont know how to explain it but there must have been some type of current or something that kept me going farther from him. My arms were burning, and i started to get scared. So i rowed harder.

My brothers pretty strong, he could "take" the average guy, but not hes not superman. He floated on his back to keep himselft up, but by this time we were very far out. i dont know exactly. slowly the gap started to close and i tried to throw a life jacket, he couldnt get it on, he just hung on to it. it slipped from his hands and his head went down. i cant explain what went through my head, at that moment. but thank god, he grabed onto it again when his head was under, and pulled himself up. with one armhung onto the life jacket, he managed his way to the boat. he told me that while i was rowing, his head went down a couple of times.
Probaly the most dramatice part about that is what happened next. He just hung on for about 5 min, and tried to get him on but couldnt. i was so afraid the boat would tip. trying to regian some strength he gasped ," Ashley, im gonna die." he said that really thinking he wouldnt get on, and he would drowned in this lake. you cant imagin how i felt. i would never wish that feeling on my worst enemy.
Proably life changing for me. but i just reasured him and with all my strength i pulled him (around 200lbs) up. managing not to tip the boat.

when he was on, i just wept. it might not sound dramatic, but was. I dont think i saved his life, i kinda felt guilty, but im over that. maybe i could have rowed faster or something, or if i knew how to start the boat it wouldnt have happened in the first place, but it did. My mom almost had a hearattack when she heard. but its all good, he is fine.
i really dont think i saved his life by pullin him up.

[PIMP-C]

hmm, well I guess this is just another car accident story, and I really havent told but like 5 people this.
this happened at the beggining of this summer 04

Anyway - it was like 2:30 AM and i was smashed (all fucked up) - and I had just gotten my firebird and was drunk trying to drive a stick home from this badass beach party with all these kegs in Galveston (which I live like 20 min from) and I was pretty close to my house. There wasnt anybody on the road at all so i was speeding and shit and swangin all over the lanes like a m.fucker, So i come up to this 4-way intersection where Im gonna turn right and this bitch is coming up the road on my
left like 50 mph in a little ford ranger and hits the fucking pole like 10 feet in front of me sooo hard and scared the fuck out my drunk ass. I didnt know what to do, cuz I live in the country kinda, so nobody was gonna come down that road for a while, but i knew the 5-O was gonna be there eventually - I didnt really feel like goin to jail that night, but i got out of my car anyway and stumbled up to the car and was like "WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU!!" so i come up to the door and the car turns back on and peels out backwards right when i reached for the door handle. Then, it brakes real hard and peels out back into the pole - This might be kinda hard to believe, but the ranger did this shit like 6 more times - each time i was like within 10 feet scared for my life thinkin this bitch is gonna hit me or worst my new car, so the whole time she keeps on slamming into the traffic light pole (the big steel ones) there was so much smoke pouring out of the car I couldnt really see a whole lot by then but I grew the balls and ran up to the truck and jumped in and saw this girls face in the smoke - she was all bloody and reeeaaal drunk -alot worse then me, I tried to talk to her settle her down, but she was beligerent. I pulled the keys out of her ignition and went around to the driver's side and pulled her out and onto the ground. Then this trucker shows up and stops. Im like call the cops or whatever I gotta go! then a cop shows up right after I said that (motherfucker!) It turns out she was driving all crazy way down the road and almost wrecked into the trucker like 5 mins prior to the accident. And he already called the cops and the cop was lookin for her. anyway like 5 more cops showed up and questioned me a bunch and then let me go. Well - i havent really gotten drunk and driven since that night


don't drink and drive motherfuckas!

[HG]

AAAAAAAAiiight Dawg!

[Dr_inferno]

I think my count is up to about 20 or so lives saved. I have worked as a lifeguard for the last two years of my life so I have seen it all. It really puts how fragile life is into perspective.

[PIMP-C]

hell yea inferno - I got a friend that does that same shit and hes told me some stories. I wanted to be a lifegaurd until then.
and henry -I hope that wasn't sarcasm.....

[Moxie]

(I don't know this girl anymore and you would have no idea who she is or else I wouldn't tell this publicly)

1. I had just turned 16: My best friend and I were hanging out every day. I was working at the same place as she was and we went to the same school, so I was basically living with her for a while. She had problems with depression and a severe eating disorder. Anyway, one day she was just acting weird. I had seen her in one of her “states” before, but this was even worse than usual. I didn’t get exactly what the problems was, so when she was in the bathroom for more than 5 minutes I knew she was doing something bad. I knocked on the bathroom door and she yelled at me to go away. I said no and tried to open the door. It was locked. I told her she had to open it. She did, and walked right out. I looked inside and didn’t see anything, so I kind of felt like I had violated her space when she was already in a bad mood. But then I saw a full bottle of prescription pills in her hand that she was trying to hide. She went back in the bathroom. I opened the door to find her trying to swallow all of them. I grabbed the bottle from her and she fought me for it. The nice thing with wresting with a girl with an eating disorder like hers was that she was so malnourished that it wasn’t hard to get the bottle out of her weak hands and flush the pills down the toilet. But she was still fighting with me and hitting me while I was doing it. Then she collapsed crying (because I had taken away her pills). A few minutes later she got scared because apparently she had already taken one bottle of pills and she didn’t know what they were or what they were supposed to be taken for (and she was scared that she was going to die). So we ended up going to the hospital and getting her stomach pumped.

[Moxie]

2. When I was 19 or 20: It was 2 am and I was driving and slowing down for the stoplight at the entrance to my neighborhood. A drunk driver was driving the opposite way as I was. Out of nowhere he swerved and hit the control box for the traffic lights that we were both coming to. Then he swerved two more times at the same time as his bumper slid (fast) across the intersection (from the impact of the box) towards my car. So I swerved out of the way. When I looked back to see where his car went (cell phone in hands already calling 911) I couldn’t see his car. I turned my car around and saw that he came within 7 or so feet of hitting the back of my car as he went through the metal guard rail that was on my side of the street. So I got out of my car and someone else who was driving by did too. (This all took less than 45 seconds or so… it was all SO fast) I was talking to the 911 woman on the phone and she said not to move him, but his car was smoking so we were running towards the car to get him out and to a safe distance. Two other people who were driving by got out to help. It was good because the one person and I wouldn’t have been able to get this big guy out of the passenger side (his door was jammed and wouldn’t open so I told them to take him out of the other side). This guy was so drunk and tired. I had taken a First Aid & CPR class at my community college the semester before and he showed the symptoms of being in shock. He was completely disoriented and had no idea what he had just done, and that he almost killed me as well as himself. He didn’t want to sit and wait for the ambulance, he wanted to drive home (though his car was totaled and at an angle handing off of the road). The two guys had to support his weight because he had no balance, but still wouldn’t sit down. So I held his hand and started to talk to him. I sat down which kind of pulled him down too. The two guys who helped left (because they had been drinking and driving also and didn’t want to get caught) so I waited with this guy, and then got yelled at by the cop for being so nice to a drunk driver. (Then I told the cop that a nice drunk would be way easier for me and him to deal with. I said he almost killed me and I hope that legally he gets what’s coming to him, but I wasn’t going to yell at a man that wasn’t in his right mind. The cop liked that I said that and he let me go home.)

The moral of that story, is that people are really amazing when complete strangers will stop at 2 am when they don’t have to and will go into a smoking car to save a person that some people would think isn’t worth saving. That is the part that changed me for the better. It reaffirmed my faith in people (in bad situations. But maybe that’s just because I haven’t been held a gun point yet )

The only other thing I want to add to other people’s suggestions of how to help people who have been in car accidents and can't help themselves is: TURN THE CAR OFF. It’s so important if there’s a puncture in anything, or if there’s smoke. It takes one second and can save lives if there are people still in the car. The reason I wanted to take a First Aid & CPR class in the first place is that although this is knowledge that everyone could use, very few people have it. How would I feel if someone died in front of me and all I would have had to do to be able to help is spend one day in a class? Okay, no more preaching

[hacksterbator]

about 3 or so years ago, a close friend of mine was battling sever depression. her parents had just divorced, were in a vicious custody battle, her older brother had becom a raging alcoholic, and like most completely inocent people, felt like it was all her fault. she had mentioned in passing a few times that she wished she had never been born, wished she was dead, etc.
one night i gave her a call, and it just so happened i called shortly after the biggest fight/ screaming match her parents had ever been in. she picked up the phone but didn't say any thing. i was confused at first, but i could hear her sobbing. eventually she quickly told me about the fight, then said she had to go, because she had "something to do". what made me nervous was she said "Goodbye, Andrew. Take care." instead of "see you later" or what ever.
it really made me uneasy. i milled about my place for about 15 minutes befor i decided i had better go over and see if she was alright. i walked over to her place and her mom let me in and said she was downstairs in her room. i went down and knocked. no answer so i slowly opened the door. she wasn't there. i was about to go check the other room when the closet door moved.
i looked, and it moved again. i went over and slid the door open. there she was, blue in the face and unconcious, hanging in her closet. i grabbed her around her waist and lifted her up and with one had tried to loosen the belt that was around her neck. it was awkward to hold her because she had tied her feet together and then hand cuffed her hands to the rope behind her back. i screamed and yelled for her mother to come and help me. her mom came in and started freaking out. she ran over and untied her.
she wasn't breathing so i told her mom to call an ambulance, but she was freaking out and crying and yelling jiberish, so i called. i gave them the address and the basic info, explained that she wasn't breathing that we didn't know how long she had been out and that i was about to start resusitation and was handing the phone over to her mother. her heart was still beating so i quickly started mouth to mouth, and luckily she started breathing again. she didn't come to however. the ambulance took about 3 mintues (we live right by an ambulance station) and they got her on a gurney and took her and her mother to the hospital. a fire truck arrived just the ambulance did. the first response guys had to treat me to for shock, since i was super scared and my heart rate was way up there.
any way, she was lucky. she escaped with her life, but suffered some brain damage from the lack of oxygen. she was treated for her depression, and has been doing better since. we don't really see each other, or talk much any more, but evey christmas since then i get a christmas card from her mom telling me i'm an angel.

[King Monkey]

Wow Andrew, thats the most hectic story ive read in this thread. I couldnt believe it when i was reading it, it was like something out of a movie. I dont know what thing im supposed to say here... about how good it is that you did what you did.. congratulations is the wrong word... i dont know but yeh, you know what im sayin

This thread is pretty intense, its interesting reading about all these amazing things that people have done, that i might otherwise never have known...

I dont have one i dont think... closest would be when i was about, hmm 10 or 11 i guess, my friend and I were swimming in my pool and my friend was not a very good swimmer at all. He was just floating on a bodyboard thing and i was in the water, and he fell off and couldnt stay above water or anything, so i like i grabbed him and hes like gripping for dear life and panicky, and i got him out of the pool (somehow.. he was a big fella lol)
It didnt feel like i really saved him but he said a few times after that day that i had...