moseslmpg;272373 said:
Hmm, that's pretty cool. I'm always concerned that when something important like that happens I'll freeze up and not do what needs to be done. I almost saved a kid from drowning once, but my sister got to him before I could, alas. But I did teach my sister how to swim...so I think I got double credit on that
I've never understood why someone would jump in water to kill themselves. It would make more sense to jump from a building to me. I wonder what happened to Jim though.
I expected it would be a case of freezing up and not knowing what to do as well - after all, you generally don't get lessons in life of how to deal with situations like this. But it's all very automatic, almost like an instinct. You know if you don't do something, this person will die, and that is really all that is on your mind, aside from the things you must think about right away - like
how to save them. The first thing I thought about were the life rings of course, but then when that doesn't go to plan you just have to think quick. It's amazing how people will pull together in an emergency almost instinctively though, to help each other. People can be total a******s in ordinary situations but when someone's life's in danger, everyone tends to put it aside as if on impulse and just help.
There was another occasion when I was less knowledgeable about what to do in an emergency situation - I was staying in a rooming house for a few months and my boyfriend and I went out to the cinema, since the other people who I didn't really know in the house were throwing a (noisy) party. Anyway, we got back to my room and I there was a bit of shouting and noise. Everyone had left the party except my next-room neighbour and his friend, who was panicking and stumbling about apparently really drunk. I went into the next door guy's room and he was on the floor with both his wrists open. I just took it all in pretty much instantly and told my boyfriend to call an ambulance, while I got the guy up off the floor to keep his arms high and put something over the cuts and held it there tight ahead of the cloth to slow the blood flow down (like a tourniquet I suppose). From his eyes he's had a bit too much of something illegal by the look of it, probably coke. The guy's friend was a bit useless - couldn't even tell me how long he'd been lying there, and just kept calling the guy's name and telling him to 'snap out of it'. I found it easy to be completely calm and rational although I didn't really know how you're supposed to deal with finding someone who's tried to bleed themselves out in a sink.
Anyway, again, someone attempting to off themselves but probably not in the right mind at the time. He recovered all right in the hospital and came back to the house just as I was packing to leave. I don't think it was us exactly that saved him, I think he would have survived as one of the cuts wasn't that deep, and he had actually begun to stop bleeding as the blood had coagulated a bit. But apparently he'd sliced himself under a tap and lost enough blood to fall over (and OD'd/mixed/reacted/bad trip), but not enough to put him into a coma or death. I wouldn't have the first clue what to do with someone who overdosed though. There's not a lot you can do, is there? In that sense, he was probably lucky. I don't what they did to fix him up in the hospital, apart from sew his wrists back up.
I don't know... I always think, give people the benefit of the doubt first in this situation, if they really want to kill themselves, they'll do it again some time when nobody is around to help, or in a way that will get the job done properly. And that's their choice, nobody can stop them doing that then. But it's probably something of a selfish instinct to save people, you just don't really think about it. Just letting them die isn't an option in your mind normally, especially when they are helpless. It's the only time I've ever felt that sort of care about someone's life that strongly - and these were people I didn't even know. So when you think life really is in danger you tend to just act on your instincts, not your own thoughts. There seems no reason
not to save them?
