Sometimes people just know when a feeling is the right feeling. These are stories of when that feeling saved someone's life.
Trusting Her Instinct Has Made Her A Better Nurse
“I’m an ICU nurse, so I’d say I have those gut feelings pretty often. I’ve walked into a patient’s room before and looked at their monitor and you just get a bad vibe. Sometimes they don’t even look all that different than they were a few hours ago. But you almost always know when it’s time to grab the crash cart. Sometimes I’ll even put the cart outside the room and say it’s to ward off evil spirits because the vibe coming off of them is so bad.
Patients sometimes know they’re going to die, too. They’ll say creepy things like, ‘It’s my time,’ and then sure enough, two hours later they code. When your patient has that sense of impending doom, you listen because 8 times out of 10, they are right!
I had one patient in particular who had overdosed on Imodium trying to get high and she threw herself into complete heart failure then coded in the ER. And she was unresponsive post-cardiac arrest so she was being cooled by this machine called the Arctic Sun. Halfway through my shift, I looked at her and was like, ‘Yeah, time for the pads.’ So I put the defibrillator pads on her under the Arctic Sun pads. Three hours later, we had to code her. If we’d had to fiddle with getting the defibrillator pads on her underneath the Arctic Sun pads, she would not have had nearly as good of an outcome. But because she was all ready to go, we only had to do two minutes of CPR and give her one shock and she was back up and running.”
Fun And Games Turned Dangerous
“Back in high school, some young female students were trying the ride down the side of the stairs on their stomachs. The stairs went several floors up in a spiral and it was a straight drop to the bottom in the middle. I was at the bottom of the stairs with some other students heading to one of our final lessons before we sat our exams.
None of us actually heard them because we were busy chatting amongst ourselves, but I just froze on the spot for a couple of seconds filled with absolute dread about something above me. I looked up, and there’s a young student hanging upside down half way up and quickly losing her grip. Her backpack was weighing down on her neck, which definitely didn’t help.
She lost her grip before I reached her. I caught her by holding on to her leg and the bag. Then I dragged her back over. Her two friends had backed up to the wall the second she slipped over and had been standing there in a quiet shock the whole time. The people I was with quickly left the second they saw me running to her. I’ve suffered from back problems ever since, but it is absolutely worth it knowing she’s still alive today because I was there.”
Their Family Could Have Lost Their Most Precious Member
“My ex-husband saved our daughter’s life. She was a baby then, only about a year old. I was not home and she found a tiny claw barrette. He thought it was for her hair and clipped it on her hair. As she was lying down for a nap, she had pulled it out and inhaled it. He had decided to nap too while she was, but something kept nagging him to check on her. He walked into her room and she was already turning blue.
He tried to get it out by baby CPR, but couldn’t. He ended up having to put his hand all the way into her mouth and pull that claw barrette out of her trachea with his two first fingers. It ended up lacerating her trachea and she was in ICU for three days. But, if he hadn’t checked on her, she would have died, and almost did. Bless him for checking. Bless him for saving our girl. She’s almost 12 years old now.”
Her “Irrational” Fear Became Reality
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“My husband, my 8-year-old daughter, my father-in-law, and I all lived together in this great little house that has been in my family for years. We had lived there for about five years at this point and every now and then, I would have this gut/paranoid feeling about a fire in/around the house. So much so, that I made my husband bring home several household fire extinguishers to place in the kitchen, laundry area, etc. It was an old farmhouse and I am prone to anxiety. So at the time, I just chalked up my ‘feelings’ to that. I even went around and checked the carbon monoxide/fire alarms in the house. Everything was fine.
Until one night. It was Sunday going into Monday morning. My husband was supposed to leave for an out of town meeting that night in order to be there bright and early Monday morning. It was just a little over an hour away but his company was paying for gas, food and a hotel room. This was our argument that night when I begged him to stay home just this one night and get up early and drive to the meeting. I claimed I missed him, and I did. But, more than anything, I just felt uneasy and have no idea, to this day, why I felt that way. I felt vulnerable and unsafe. He was my personal security blanket. I asked him to please stay the night at home. I am SO glad I did that.
I’ll preface this by saying, he had been having some back trouble so he took one of his muscle relaxers before bed and conked out. I stayed up an hour or so longer watching a movie in bed. I am a HEAVY sleeper, tornadoes, wind, and hail will not wake me. This night, however, I awoke suddenly to a dark room. I don’t know what woke me up. Everyone asks and I have NO answers. It was dark and I awoke in full panic, although it was quiet and in my room and everything seemed fine. I decided I needed to get up. I walked into the hallway and the only light on is the hall light…but we NEVER leave that on. The power was out, except for the hall light. The light is what made me realize the entire house except for my room in the back was thick with smoke and suddenly I couldn’t breathe.
My house was on fire. I ran back into my room and shoved my sleeping husband off the bed yelling to get outside now. He says he only woke when he hit the floor. Thank you, medication.
Next, I dashed back down the hall and ran into my daughter’s room. I threw her over my shoulder whilst she was dead asleep and threw her blanket on top of her to keep the smoke off. I carried her outside barefoot in just my t-shirt and underwear. I sat her down and wrapped her in her blanket, then I realized my husband wasn’t behind me. I hollered for him to get outside now. Turns out he was trying to break down my father-in-law’s door. He should’ve been home and in bed as well. Finally, my husband came running outside screaming about his dad. I told him to throw me his phone so I could call 911. Then, I looked up at the driveway and noticed that my father-in-law’s truck was gone. He wasn’t home!! About five minutes after all three of us were out of the house, the roof caved in. Our room and my daughter’s bedroom were completely decimated. If I had stayed in bed any longer, we would’ve been goners. The kicker though, was the fire started from a shorted outlet in my father-in-law’s bedroom. I am so glad he decided he needed Waffle House breakfast in the middle of the night.”
She Trusted Her Gut And May Have Saved Herself and Her Friends
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“Me and two of my girlfriends were heading to my home one night after stopping at the store near my house for some mixers. We were all distracted and singing along to Bohemian Rhapsody but when I turned down my street, I had a bad feeling about the car behind us. I joked that we were being followed even though I hadn’t even been watching or noticed the car until that moment but as I started to pull into the driveway I decided to back out and keep driving.
He kept following us all throughout the neighborhood and even turned his headlights off at one point. I drove to a nearby shopping center that had high hedges and pulled in there while I called my dad because I didn’t know what to do. Then the guy found us, so I sped off to a busy street and drove to a nightclub that had a lot of people in the parking lot and parked the car there. My dad went to my house with a weapon and saw the guy slowly driving up and down the street. When he saw my dad, he took off. We didn’t get the license plate number, there wasn’t one on the front. Super scary.”
Saving Someone Gave Him A New Lease On Life
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“I’ll always remember it.
I was at the train station to go to high school, waiting for the train to come and I saw this girl. I looked at her and it was like hearing a voice screaming, ‘Do NOT stop looking at her.’ So I almost stared.
A train was coming at the same hour as it did every morning. She took a step forward. I knew she was going to jump.
I ran toward her, my mind went blank. When she was going to jump, I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to me. She started screaming and crying hysterically, yelling at me, ‘Why?! Why don’t you let me go?! Get off me! Let me go!’ She was in this state for five good minutes before grabbing my arms, putting her head against my chest and she told me, ‘Please, I can’t take it.’ She cried her eyes out.
Once she calmed down, we talked for half an hour and she asked me to call her mom and tell her I was a friend and ask her to come to pick her up because she was sick. I did.
I was deeply suicidal myself at this time. It could’ve been me. I could’ve been this girl. In a sense, she saved my life as much as I saved hers. Because she made me realize how much life could end in an instant. The smile she gave me before leaving made me see how the fact that I saved her was precious. I started to cherish life a little more.”
“I Don’t Know Why I Did That” But It Saved A Life
“I was back from university and had done a nearly all night bender of Skyrim the night before, so I was in sleep-till 3 p, mode. But, my dad gave me a call, waking me up at 10 am, and I answered it because dad never calls just to chat.
He asked me if I knew where mom was. I yelled for her and there was no answer. No big deal. She would sometimes run errands in the morning.
Our house had an unattached garage about fifty yards down the hill at the back of the property. I hit the garage door opener and saw her car was still in there. Weird, I told myself. I told my dad her car was still here.
I left that garage door open. I don’t know why I did that. For some reason, my brain told me not to close the door, even though I knew it made more sense to do so. I went to look through mom’s office. I found a nearly filled steno pad, which constituted her suicide note. I didn’t finish it, but I took it with me because I thought it might help me figure out where to find her.
When I headed for the back door to grab my keys, I saw she was walking up from the garage. Weird, again. It was the same way she’d looked coming home from errands all my life. However, this time she’d gone to the garage, turned on the car with the doors shut and sat there to poison herself with the exhaust. If I had closed the garage door when I went back to search the house for clues, she probably would have been successful
I still don’t know what made me leave that door open. I’m glad I did though. It took her a while to find her purpose again, but she’s doing much better now.”
Their Sibling Bond Helped Save His Life
“My brother is 13 months younger than me but two grades below due to his birthday, so he was a sophomore (I’m a senior). He’s hypoglycemic (chronic low blood sugars) and most of my high school days were spent threatening him to eat lunch or I’d force it down his throat. I also kept glucose tabs in my backpack because he was in my locker bay more than his and would always know when he had a Low because he always flipped the lock on my locker and it’d be standing open.
So it was September (maybe October) and we’re at a football game. There were maybe five minutes left in the game and I was across the field with my friends from where he was with his friends. I stopped dead in my tracks and said I needed to go check on my brother.
I went over and he’s pale and irritable. I knew immediately what’s going on. I checked his blood sugar and it’s 34, which is dangerously low. If it had gotten much lower, he could have gone into a diabetic coma. I shoved glucose tabs and a soda down his throat and then promptly loaded him up in the car where I made him eat peanut butter the whole 15-minute drive home.”
“I Knew Something Was Really Wrong”
“After my mother had surgery, I had a bad vibe even though she was at a nice, newly remodeled hospital. I insisted on staying with her in the hospital room. I couldn’t sleep. I called out to my mom, who talks even in her sleep, and asked how she was feeling. She didn’t answer me. I got up turned on all the lights and kept talking to her, she just moaned. I knew something was really wrong at this point. I turned her call light on and started shouting her first name. She didn’t even open her eyes. I ran into the hall and started shouting for a nurse NOW! RIGHT NOW! One nurse cussed at me for shouting in the hall after midnight. Another nurse came running. I was practically hysterical by this point. She just asked me which room. I ran into my mom’s room. By now, six or seven nurses and aides were following me. I was screaming, ‘Something is wrong with my mom!’
They began vitals and the oxygen monitor was at 45%. The nurse said something was wrong with this machine and started out of the room with it. I yanked it out of her hand and put it on my finger, up to 99%. I was bawling and screaming that it’s not the machine. It’s my mom! They got the crash cart and started oxygen. Turns out the pain pump they hooked up a half hour before was set up incorrectly and gave my mom an entire bag of morphine instead of a metered dose. They gave her four doses of Narcan and took her to ICU as soon as her heart rate came back up. She spent three weeks in ICU and had severe pneumonia. I never left her alone in any hospital again. She spent an extra month at home on oxygen. She is better now and is even able to fly again. It was a near-death incident for sure. She tells me I am her angel.”
When A Kid Refuses Ice Cream, You Know Something Is Wrong
“When my son was 3 years old, he refused to eat an ice cream sundae after his lunch. He was fine and playing, no symptoms of any illness. I put him to bed that night and he was all smiles. I went to bed around 11 and I couldn’t sleep. I just had this nagging feeling something wasn’t right. Finally, I just decided to go check on him, he wasn’t breathing and had a softball sized lump in his throat.
Rushed him to the ER with an eventually happy outcome. It turned out to be a peritonsillar abscess combined with some kind of tonsillar staph infection. Turns out when he gets strep throat, it doesn’t stay confined to his tonsils and just goes nuts in there. Doctors said he would have died if he was not brought in when he was. I am so thankful he didn’t eat that ice cream that day. He’s 15 now and healthy.”
Being Scheduled At Work May Have Saved His Life
“I wanted to see one of the Batman movies during the midnight premiere. I’d asked for the days off and since I worked retail at the time and always had midweek days off, I figured I’d get them. The manager doing the schedules at the time hated me and denied me the days off. I decided it would be fine to just get around four hours of sleep for work and that I could go to the movie anyway. The day of the premiere came around and I was excited to go. But, as the day went on and on, I got a worse and worse feeling about it.
I ended up just going to bed, deciding I could see the movie the following week. The Aurora theater shooting happened that night. Three of my friends will never outgrow the trama. The manager that denied me the time was lucky to keep both of his sons. I was never happier that I skipped a movie and went to bed.”
“Suddenly, I Got This Strong Impending Sense Of Doom”
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“I have asthma, but in the past it hadn’t been life-threatening. Then, it was allergy season, and I caught a cold. I initially didn’t think it was ER worthy and thought I would be a waste of the doctor’s time. Suddenly, I got this strong impending sense of doom. I can’t describe it. It’s like this overwhelming knowledge that you are going to die, right now, unless you do something about it.
Almost robotically, I got up out of bed, grabbed my things and jacket, and headed out. By the time I made it to the ER, I couldn’t breathe at all and was turning blue. Out of nowhere, a hoard of doctors tackled me. Almost none of the treatments worked and they nearly intubated me, until they tried one more medication that did the trick. Later, the head doctor told me she originally wasn’t sure I was going to make it and that if I had I arrived just a couple of minutes later, I might not be here. Freaky stuff.”
If She Had Listened To The Doctor, A Patient Would Have Died
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“I’m a nurse on a step-down ICU and I had a patient three days in a row who had abdominal pain.
We couldn’t quite figure out what was causing it but it was a sweet old lady who was generally pretty alert and mobile. I came back on day three and her abdominal pain was so bad that she could hardly move and her stomach felt rigid and hard as a board.
I called the doc to come to take a look at the patient and he ordered some stronger pain meds and a CT scan that could ‘wait till morning.’
I had a feeling that something serious was wrong so I called radiology and got her in right away even though it was ordered STAT.
I got her back from CT and tried to make her comfortable. About 30 minutes later, while I’m eating my lunch, the doc came and was like, ‘I need you to draw all these labs and get her prepped for emergency surgery. She perforated her bowel’
A perforated bowel is a life-threatening situation and she could have died if I didn’t trust my gut and had instead listened to the doctor when he told me to take her down for the scan in the morning.”