Has anyone saved your life...other than doctors?

[fritz katzenjammer]

I slipped on the sloping bottom of a pool when I was a kid. Slid down to the bottom of the deep end. I remember standing on the bottom quite helpless, then I remember coughing my guts out on the deck of the pool. Weird memory but the lifeguard definitely saved me that day.

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

Oh yeah, I've been saved by my parents several times.

Then there was the random older guy (I never knew who he was, but I can picture him now) at the Swimming pool who noticed I was drowning when I was about 7 (I'd got out of my depth and was just bobbing up and down on the Spot, swallowing water and coughing, trying to catch my breath, as I tried in vain to get back to a safe depth).
The scary thing was that the pool was packed and nobody else even seemed to give a crap.

It took me years to realise the full enormity of what had actually almost happened (drowning), although I was more careful about depth after that, I can tell you (learning to swim helped enormously too, of course! 😆).

 

[classic33]

Local undertaker

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

There was also the guy who pulled me out of the path of a car when I was very drunk many, many moons ago ☺️

 

[slowmotion]

A couple of people once pulled me out of a lonely Cornish sea after I had foolishly capsised a small dinghy in a Force Four. I had forgotten to put in the split pin that secured the rudder, so it drifted off at an alarming rate. I eventually recovered it only to find I was half a mile offshore, cold, and several hundred yards from the boat. I didn't feel scared but I did think that I might have pushed my luck a bit too far for the first time in my twenty-five years.
There were no other boats about but, out of nowhere, two grizzled locals in a fast boat grabbed me, got the dinghy, and took me back to the shore. I felt fine up until that point but started shivering uncontrollably.......and it wasn't from the cold.

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

Local undertaker

He realised that you were not dead after all, rather, that it is just your normal nature? 😆

 

[classic33]

He realised that you were not dead after all, rather, that it is just your normal nature? 😆

He knew basic first aid.
For his other job.

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

He knew basic first aid.
For his other job.

And what was that?

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

Also, talking of the blood donation thread, all the people who have ever given blood to aid me, either during surgery, during my Chemo days or in the form of other blood products, like platelets, etc.

 

[wafter]

Completely out of the blue - very messy divorce.....

Sorry to hear this - maybe not something to be discussed further but from your posts on here I think you'd be doing yourself a disservice to suggest you didn't see it coming.. as unpleasant as the reality of the outcome is.

Hope it pans out as painlessly as it can!

Someone who is now a very close friend. A guy I knew slightly and I started a regular commute by train to Edinburgh from Glasgow. Only to be polite, we started chatting and, after a few weeks, decided to go for a beer and curry.

The friendship developed - but what saved my life was realising that I really wanted the respect of this guy. Ex PT instructor in the Marines and still exceptionally fit in his 60s, putting himself through punishing schedules each day which would floor many half his age. I looked at myself and thought he’d “invite” me to a gym session and I was as unfit as anything - no exercise and very overweight. I started to take my health a lot more seriously, started regular exercise and lost a lot of weight. The cycling came later.

So - he didn’t do the Heimlich manoeuvre on me or anything like that, but trying to gain his respect has added years to my life and reduced my risk of heart attack, stroke etc.

Great and IMO pretty rare to find a role model like this in a friend. While I like and respect my mates, not many obviously make me want to change my attitude or behaviour to emulate theirs... although there are one or two; which with a pretty emotionally-absent father as a kid certainly helps to fill in a few holes, even if it's a bit bloody late!


While perhaps an unexciting cop-out I'd say my mother, my ex and mates.. probably in that order and without whose support I sincerely believe I'd be homeless, addicted and / or dead by now. While I'm hardly in a great place currently, arguably it could be so much worse.