Have you ever saved a human life?

[NewLifePending]

I did on Friday. Two in fact.

I’m still a little traumatised by the events but after debriefs, writing a long reflection and my first counselling session tomorrow, I’m starting to see the enormity of what I did in a more positive light.

Who else has saved a life and how did you feel about it at the time and then later on?

Yes my husband was properly choking - went purple, couldn’t breathe at all. Back slaps and heimlich later and the food flew across the kitchen! I was traumatised!

Yes, but only ever in my old working environment.
Horrible circumstances that all of us accepted was a hazard of the job, but at the same time never wanted to be faced with the reality of it. Sounds clichè, but your training really does kick in, you just get the job done and then the enormity of it hits you later on

Yes have saved lives myself and as part of a team in my past career as nurse & in my current job as an HCA in a hospital.

@PermanentTemporary I understand.
I have regrets especially over one patient who I feel I should have tried harder to get medical help for when there was still a possibility of saving her.

I was one of quite a few people who could have done something sooner on the day she died but it doesn't take away the guilt.

As for me, I've woken up in an ambulance from being unconscious a few times, once with a bad head injury, due to epilepsy.

So strange people took care of me & my bags & called an ambulance, and may have saved my life.

A complete stranger saved mine when I was a small child and choking on some food that had gone down the wrong way.

I have but in a far less dramatic way. I wrote a post about Sepsis online. It went viral. Two people contacted me to say that they ended up going straight to hospital afterwards and found out that they had severe sepsis. Obviously not traumatic in the sense of a life or death accident scene though.

Yes I saved a drowning toddler from the bottom of the pool. I thought it was a doll. She had wandered out from the indoor pool to the out door pool and fell in directly under a bridge that the life guard was stood on chatting to a girl. She was still breathing when I broke the surface bringing her back up.

I was 10

Many times in a work capacity. Having the equipment and training makes it feel like just part of the job although there were a couple of times where I used techniques which are often unsuccessful but they worked and that felt good.

I'm a blood donor so I hope so but no not in the direct kind of way. Well done. I hope you get through it x

A baby at work had a respiratory arrest then cardiac. Did CPR and she was wriggling around like nothing had happed by the time the Crash team arrived. Turned out she'd done it before and no one told us. My colleague was utterly useless and missed it completely.

I was in a very cold country late at night and saw a drunk man meandering towards an open manhole, the cover was missing. “Stop” is one of the few words I know in the language so I yelled that, ran up to him and pointed at the manhole. If he had fallen in and broken his leg, he’d have died of hypothermia, it gets down to minus 40 at night. He was very grateful but absolutely blootered.

My grandfather saved my life when I was about 6 and choking. I also “heimliched” myself on another occasion when I choked - as I also had a bad cough nobody realised and I had to whack my stomach over the top of a dining chair until the food came back out.