MrJWTK - Have you ever saved a life?

[Mr John]

Have you ever, by direct intervention, stopped a person from dying?
And I don't mean by deciding to slow down at the pedestrian crossing and not plough through the Von Trapp family.

I've pulled four people from the ocean before they went under for good. My sister and her friend on a beach in the west of Ireland when I was much younger and two older ladies struggling in with the undertow in Broome a few years ago.

How about you?

[BigTim]

Chucked a few kids stuck in a rip on the surfboard and swum them back in at Trigg. Clubbies probably would have got them if I didn't.

[filbert]

does first aid while waiting for an ambulance count?

i've done the CPR and EAR thing for a driver having a heart attack turned out to be an allergic reaction after a spider bite, i've done the first aid for a snake bite on a young child when everyone else was too panicked to do anything sensible.
i've also administered first aid at numerous serious vehicle accidents but a lot of them didn't make it so i guess i don't have the magic touch.

as far as saving a life not really, yes they would probably have died if i didn't intervene but they also would have died if i stopped intervening before the real life saver types got there.

[Roger Explosion]

Patched up the wrists of a teenager who had slashed herself quite badly on a train. I would like to think I said the right things while we waited for the ambulance. I found a common ground (I had also moved to Perth from Tasmania at a difficult age) and let her unload on me.

[Professor Redfern]

No but I do love this song.

[mekon]

Dragged some passed out kid off the traintracks near freo.

[=Stevo=]

was teaching a childrens sailing course on the river and some 10yo kid was being a real hassle and was trying to bully the other students and kept giving me grief.

The kids ended up nearly capsizing and this kid fell out into the water and was having a great laugh and not bothering to get back into the boat as the kids kept sailing off. Then he realised he was surrounded by Jellyfish and that the boat he was on was now sailing out of reach, he froze up and started screaming at me to get him out of the water and how the jellyfish are touching him. He is flailing wildily and in tears which I was loving, so I sat about 10m off him and just watched for a bit... but then he start panicking REALLY HARD and he somehow managed to slip halfway out of his lifejacket (which he had partially undone whilst sailing as part of his being a douchebag) and was really struggling, head below water and was pretty much the whole way out of the lifejacket after a few seconds so I gunned it over to him in the coach boat. I leant over the side of the tinny and managed to grab him about half a metre down (my whole head and shoulders were wet from leaning in) and when I pulled him out he was vomiting water, water was about 4m deep and visibility of about 1 foot there so he would have been in big trouble if he had sunk further.
In the end his mother took him to hospital/doctors for a check up and he had a very stern lecture from her about misbehaving, plus the whole class had seen him in tears and scared of the jellyfish... he never misbehaved for the next few classes, I highly recommend near-drowning to any misbehaving kids now.


So yeah, I probably saved his life... but I also probably had a large part to play in allowing the life threatening situation to happen. He didn't drown though and his mum was totally hot. Everybody wins.

[McGoo]

Yes. I was driving down south with my family when we were first on scene at a single vehicle rollover. Car was upside down, girl still strapped in at the driver's seat, not moving. I ran over to her, she had blood coming from what I thought was a boggy mass on her scalp, and she wasnt breathing effectively (if at all). Because she was upside down, her tongue was blocking her airway, and she was turning blue.

I couldnt release the seatbelt in case she pulped her exposed brain on the ceiling of the car, so I did a jaw thrust on her and opened her airway. She started breathing, she pinked up, and she regained conciousness a few minutes later. Some ambulances happened to be driving past a few minutes later, so I handed off to them and let them work. She was fully concious about ten minutes later, last I heard she was discharged a few hours later from hospital.

I didnt really think much about what had happened until someone told me that if I hadnt opened her airway, she wasnt going to miraculously do it herself, and she would have died.

[kennyboy]

I watched a guy plow through some bushes and disappear from site on the side of Tonkin highway, obviously ha fallen asleep and hit the median strip and woke up, yanked steering other way and came off the other side of the road. Noone else to be seen I stopped, jumped off the bike and raced through the tunnel he carved through the bushes to find a small 4 cylinder car with the engine now in the front seat after colliding with the only large tree for about 2kms down that stretch of highway.
If I hadn't of seen him do it, myself and everyone else would have drove past it all day and bloke would certainly be on another plane.

[Falcore]

While ago did a tourniquet for a guy who was losing a lot of blood. He was panicking an had loss sense of surroundings

[Jezzabelle]

I waded into the sea to pull a drowning dog to safety....I guess it sort of counts as he would have been swept away & perished had I not intervened!

[chief wiggum]

sort of helped save a life...participated in an underground rescue of 2 guys who were trapped. they would've died if we hadnt got em out, but as they were ininjured and surrounded by water, it would've taken a while

[Halo_2]

My younger brother

[Gothchick]

As well as the baby that I pulled off the highway, which most on here already know about, I had a guy (drunk) crash his car in front of me (almost took me out,too) the night of Ozy's last car cruze and had to try to save the passenger.

Don't know if he lived or not. As soon as someone who knew what they were doing arrived, I bailed. Purposely didn't watch the news or read the papers for a week after. Didn't want to know.

Still wake up sometimes hearing the sound he was making when I got to him.

[chew]

Surfing at Trigg in my younger days, winter, big swell, guy on a wave ski lost his ski and appeared to be struggling and trying to use his paddle to stay afloat? Went over and let him hang onto the board and swam him in. He was thanking me on the beach while throwing up water. He told me he had just bought the ski and I advised he should practise in the river first. Then he let slip he couldnt swim. I told him I should have let him drown and went back out.

[Stoneville]

Nope I tried real hard, but was never gonna save him, he suffered a massive heart attack, no amount of CPR etc. was going to do anything

[PBF]

Possibly, but I would hope the danger wasnt quite so serious.

There was a fire in the kitchen of a hall, where there was a kids holiday program running. A bunch of people were standing around watching when i came in and 1 lady was throwing water on it. Being an electrical fire, when she ignored my yelling at her to not use water, i eventually had to fairly roughly push her away from it, grab the extinguisher from a man just standing there holding it and put it out myself.

Was amazed to see just how quickly it grew, and being an old wooden building it could have got out of hand fast. Scariest thing is that the next day when they fire guys came to check it out, they said the storeroom next door full of paint was only seconds away from going up and if it did, there would have been a decent explosion.

[Old frt]

Saved my sons life many times when he was a teenager by using extraordinary powers of self restraint.

[Stoneville]

Saved my sons life many times when he was a teenager by using extraordinary powers of self restraint.

Yeh done that one as well

[dugy]

Every time I put on a franger.