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Original poster

Who has saved your life?

136 replies

Nevermay · 09/08/2023 18:25

Apart from all the usual vaccinations, water companies, sanitation, NHS, etc that give us a safe, risk free life, when most of us would die before 50 without this... can anyone point to someone or something and say "they saved my life"?

OP posts:
TakeMe2Insanity · 09/08/2023 18:27

The person that donated blood. I needed 2.5 litres of blood and I got a perfect match. I can never thank them so I thank any person that donates/ed blood.

Rainbowx90 · 09/08/2023 18:29

My husband. He noticed I was acting strange when in labour with our son (who passed away) it turns out I was going into septic shock and had become confused and was chatting rubbish, he alerted the nurses and they took it from there.
Without my husband raising the alarm I don't think I'd be here today.

MaureenSowerbuttts · 09/08/2023 18:40

My husband rang 999 when I was just feeling a bit unusual. I had a heart attack and was very lucky to have survived it!

FusionChefGeoff · 09/08/2023 18:40

The lady who took me to my first AA meeting

Strathyre · 09/08/2023 19:04

My work colleagues drove me to hospital when I needed a blood transfusion and emergency surgery. 999 said it wasn't an emergency and we'd have to wait for a call back - it was abdominal pains and abdominal pains + conscious + breathing = not an emergency per the algorithm they were using.

Original poster
Nevermay · 09/08/2023 19:04

I am finding this very interesting. I am trying to think if anyone has ever saved my life. The only thing I can think of was a story I have been told of when I was a baby my aunt moved my high chair to feed me in a different part of the room, and then part of the window and ceiling collapsed directly above the place where I normally sat. Maybe she saved my life then!

OP posts:
LadyWithLapdog · 09/08/2023 19:13

Doctors who gave me a blood transfusion, person who donated the blood.

Busubaba · 09/08/2023 19:15

Well he saved his own life too but years ago when I was young woman I was a passenger in my then boyfriends sports car and we were in a traffic jam/tail back on the motorway and had slowed down to stop behind vehicles when he suddenly sprang into action and drove up an embankment and a car behind us came hurtling up and ploughed into the car that was in front of us.

He had checked his rear mirrors and was not distracted by my chitter chatter.

The sports car would have offered us little to no protection and we would have been strawberry jam.

BlossomCloud · 09/08/2023 19:16

The optician who identified Myasthenia Gravis , just weeks before I got COVID which caused it to flare dangerously.

SensitiveB · 09/08/2023 19:20

Not me but a wonderful midwife (and now friend ) saved DS’ life when I had a cord prolapse. I am daily conscious of the enormity of this and can never thank her adequately really

x2boys · 09/08/2023 19:23

Not my life but I can never thank the paramedics ,A&E staff and staff on the critical unit enough who Saved my 16 year olds sons life when he sent I to DKA ,last February we didn't know he had diabetes and a neurotic pancreas

x2boys · 09/08/2023 19:24

Necrotic
!

bakewellbride · 09/08/2023 19:31

I suffered horrendously with asthma as a child so whoever the nurse was who got me a nebuliser in the 90s.

x2boys · 09/08/2023 19:32

Busubaba · 09/08/2023 19:15

Well he saved his own life too but years ago when I was young woman I was a passenger in my then boyfriends sports car and we were in a traffic jam/tail back on the motorway and had slowed down to stop behind vehicles when he suddenly sprang into action and drove up an embankment and a car behind us came hurtling up and ploughed into the car that was in front of us.

He had checked his rear mirrors and was not distracted by my chitter chatter.

The sports car would have offered us little to no protection and we would have been strawberry jam.

Wow what quick thinnking!.
By contrast when my sister was about 17 her then boyfriend decided. To take her out in his Dads car he had literally just passed his test the dsy before and stupidly was speeding brown a narrow winding road he lost cintrol.of the car and it flipped over three times and crashed into.two other cars ,miraculously. Although the car was a total.write off the pair of them escaped without a scratch or bruise on them they were incredibly lucky !

LemonLimeDivine · 09/08/2023 19:32

My wonderful Dad. When I was 19 i choked on food. Utterly terrifying. When he saw I was choking he was out of his armchair and across the room like a shot. Dislodged the food with the first abdominal thrust. He’d come home early from work that day. If he’d finished at his usual time, I wouldn’t be here today as it was just us in the house.

PollyCreo · 09/08/2023 19:35

A&E staff and a surgeon saved my life in May - I had a ruptured appendix and peritonitis.

A different surgeon saved my life two weeks ago, cut away cancer from my chest ❤️

Anotherillnes · 09/08/2023 19:43

My mother, luckily a doctor. I had serious surgery which was very successful. However the doctor was not monitoring properly - was doing his best, the most junior doctors are often on overnight. My mother ended up calling the anaesthetist that did the surgery who stopped the treatment immediately. I would have died because as she did it I apparently became unconscious.

TheDogsMother · 09/08/2023 19:43

An amazing Spanish man who sadly I didn't get to thank properly. I was 18 and got caught in a current off a beach in Menorca. I couldn't make it back, struggled and struggled, breathed my last and got a strange kind of peace as I went under. Suddenly this guy dragged me up from under the water, lifesave swum me back to the shore and pumped my back to get the water out of my lungs. I owe my subsequent 40 years to him.

Effingmagicfairy · 09/08/2023 19:48

My late brother who noticed me on the bottom of a swimming pool, private house, back in early 70’s, we’d been for a family walk, I can remember running back to go in the pool, I jumped in a large rubber ring and went straight through the hole, I can remember the bubbles on the way down, my brother looked for me wandering where I was.

itsgettingweird · 09/08/2023 19:48

FusionChefGeoff · 09/08/2023 18:40

The lady who took me to my first AA meeting

That's a lovely one.

And well done for turning your life around.

Breaking addiction is not easy Flowers

Winnipeggy · 09/08/2023 19:51

Air ambulance crew. Got me out of a car crash and to hospital before I bled out and would certainly have died without them. Charity funded organisation unbelievably.

FrillyGoatFluff · 09/08/2023 19:58

Locum GP who finally took me seriously after I had had half a retained placenta in place for three months after giving birth. Previous doctors had written my symptoms off as grief (the birth wasn't a happy outcome) but she sent me straight for a emergency scan and I was in surgery next day.

Unrelated antibiotics had held sepsis at bay up to that point apparently, but they had no idea how.

ToughFuss · 09/08/2023 19:59

My mum. I had a rash which I figured was some kind of eczema, or something, and ignored for a day or two, but it started to spread very quickly, turning purple and swelling massively. She kept checking in and pushing me to seek help. Took two days to get an ‘emergency’ appointment with my doctor by which time I was starting to feel very unwell. Turned out to be cellulitis, antibiotics would solve it all apparently.
Went home, next day felt worse, headaches, shaking, the rash had spread more and was tracking down my body. I was messaging my mum and she just had a feeling she needed to be with me despite me saying not to worry so she left work early, drove two hours to me and didn’t let me slope off to bed when I started feeling very sick, she forced me to go to a&e, where I started vomiting over and over, acting flat out drunk (delirious and slurring my speech, very confused) and passing out. Turns out I had sepsis, and the doctor said that if I hadn’t gone that night, if I’d just gone to bed to ‘sleep it off’ as had been my plan, I may well not have made it until the morning. I’m only 30, with a nearly 2 year old child, so I have to say, that properly shook me up.

Celticdawn5 · 09/08/2023 20:03

I wouldn’t be here if a GP hadn’t recognised I had meningitis as a baby over 60 years ago and 13 years later another GP realised I had peritonitis and the surgeon who operated on me.
As a teenager, having had too much to drink on a night out , tripped and fell on the barrow crossing of a local station. I thought it was a good idea just to close my eyes for a little bit and slipped into a drunken sleep . My older brother had left the pub after me and by chance decided to take the same short cut and came across me in a heap in the middle of the crossing and hoiked me over to safety.

Tribblesarelovely · 09/08/2023 20:12

A chap who was working at my house. It was complex work , very involved, needing lots of different ideas and conversations. My husband had died about eight months before, and I’d really come to the end of the road. Grief is incredibly tiring and I just didn’t have the strength to go on any longer. After a few months I developed a huge crush on this man, even though he was twenty years younger than me, fortunately he felt the same. A mad affair ensued, me waiting for text messages, listening to Amy Whinehouse at all hours, it was mad and fabulous. The sex was mind blowing. He literally saved my life, no doubt. It all petered out of course, but we’re still friends. I’ve since learned about ‘Widows Fire’, and that was me at the time.
Happily, I later met a gorgeous man of my own age , but I’ll never forget the one that saved me.