"I've Spent 2 Years Wearing A Mask To Protect The People Around Me": And 40 Other Life-Saving Stories By Bored Panda Community Members

Yes. My own. I hated myself for a long time but I got over it and in the end I didn't want to kill myself anymore.

I've given blood 85 times now. Going for 100!

Yes, my son's. I was driving down our highway in our local city. He started to make this terrible sound. Turned around and saw he was choking on something - I tried to pat his chest while driving! We were stopped at a red light, so I turned on my flashers and jumped out of the truck, got him out of his car seat and started to do the Heimlich on him. All the cars started to go and thankfully a lady behind me stopped traffic for me and called an ambulance. I thought I was going to hurt my son with how hard I was hitting his back. I started to do the scoop method and that got him to throw up, it was a quarter in his throat!!!! The longest and scariest few mins of my entire life. The paramedics got there, checked him out and he was fine! No scratches in his throat (I thought I had hurt him). Learning the Heimlich in CPR saved my son's life.

I've spent 2 years wearing a mask to protect the people around me, so yes I've saved quite a few!

In the UK most SCUBA instructors are unpaid volunteers and I’m one of them.
A few years ago I was assigned 2 students for a session doing the £10/$12 “Try Dive” thing (“Discover SCUBA” for the USA/PADI folk) in the local indoor pool. One of them wasn’t keen, the other was just a natural diver. The good diver wanted to come back the next week and do it again, 1:1, to have more time diving before committing to paying for club membership.
They didn’t turn up.
I asked to see their paperwork, got their phone number, and sent a message along the lines of “Hey, I missed you at the pool tonight! You did really well last week, best try-diver ever. Want to try again for next week?” and got a barrage of apologies and thanks back.
So I called them. We had a chat and a laugh about the antics of the other instructors, I told them about the other people they’d seen at the pool, places we dive, things we see, and agreed to try again the next week. Probably an hour on the phone before they said they were cold and needed to drive home.
A few weeks later they told me that they got my text message while walking across a bridge, and when I called, they were sat on the edge of the bridge ready to jump because nobody cared and they hated their life. Apparently I didn’t just save their life, I gave them a whole new one.
They ended up making a lot of good friends in the diving community, and they are doing ok now, back with family and a new career and still loving diving.

Twice... Once pulled an old guy out of an overturned van that then set itself on fire, and did CPR on my infant son to restart his heart and breathing after a seizure.

... zero stars. Do not recommend.

I foster cats and kittens that our group pulls from hi-kill shelters and help them find homes. So yeah, furry little someones.

According to my wife, I have saved her life at least twice now. The first time was when she was stuck living out of a hallway in rural Texas, and I helped her move up to Oregon to live with me. The second was when she came out as transgender, and I was supportive and her best ally. She returned the favor and saved mine when she reciprocated my feelings and helped me remember that I am also transgender.

Just the plain, ordinary being there for a friend when he's suicidal. But the great part about that is literally any of you can do the same to save a life.

When I was eight, I impersonated an adult on a poodle forum and ended up giving someone a piece of advice that saved their poodle's life.

Yes, my mum's, she had a bad mental breakdown and locked herself in the bathroom with a bunch of pills (I still wonder where I found the strength to do this considering I’m disabled) but I shoulder barged that door, broke the lock and got to her before she could take the pills. That helped her to realize she was wanted and she’s doing great now.

Yes. But let me explain something first. I am not a proud person, but a constantly logically thinking person as to why things happen, so losing my son to SIDS f****d me up hard core.
That being said... I saved a woman in a bathroom overdosed in Washington state, USA. She was passed out with a needle stuck in her arm. She was damn near cold. I administered her Narcan via nasal spray twice and started CPR. I stayed on her till help arrived and they used an AED to restart her heart. I worked on this woman for 50 minutes and was taken over at the hospital we went to by a trauma nurse. They brought her back. She is now one of my closest friends.

I was a K9 handler for Search and Rescue for 10 years. So... Yes I have.

I once saved a girl from drowning in a very crowded public wave pool. She thanked me a lot saying she just ran out of energy to keep her on the surface. Nobody noticed except me.

My brother saved my life three times. He kept me from falling out of the landrover on the Pan American Highway over a thousand-foot drop when I was a baby. He called someone else to save me when I was drowning in a lake in Canada. I was around five years old. He pulled me from a fast-moving pond/creek in the wintertime when I was around 10 years old. He continues to give me support and love as we are in our fifth decade.

I saved a baby who was unattended outside in a wheel walker at the top of a hill. I was walking the dog coming up the hill when this little baby was plummeting down the street! I ran out and caught her just as a car came around the bend. It would have been devastating. Then the dog started barking and the baby started crying as I was pushing her up the hill and keeping the dog at distance. Her dad was washing the car, saw me, came out and took her. I was like she was in the street picking up speed down the hill, you should watch her, she was almost in a accident. I guess he was in shock because he took her without any preamble. It was very surreal, I hope they kept a better eye on her.

I was at a party with my family at a friend's house when I was a teenager. They had a pool and there were a bunch of people standing around talking and eating. I was sitting a good 20 feet from the pool and saw my 2-year-old niece standing by the deep end with a group of adults. A few seconds later I looked up and didn’t see her, but the people who were standing near her were still just standing around. I glanced around and still couldn’t find her, so I ran over to the pool, jumped in and pulled her up from the bottom. Luckily she was fine and boy did the adults get an earful from me.

Probably not the dramatic way you're expecting...but I saved a nice guy's life by marrying him. He worked at warehouses, doing hard work of loading & unloading trucks, these stingy employers offered part time work and no health benefits, it was taking months for his state health insurance application to process. Meantime, he's Type 1 diabetic, diagnosed age 12, rationing his food and insulin (that his mom bought in Mexico twice a year, she's not Mexican, but travelled there specifically for his meds because it's affordable there), rare doctor visits, getting A1C labs was a special annual treat.

So I started dating him, then I married him. I work in healthcare with good health insurance.

Now, he has regular doctor visits, lab work, all the insulin he needs, a glucose monitor, and an insulin pump. It took several years to get him used to new habits, like not rationing food or insulin, or that he can schedule to see a nutritionist to help plan a Type 1 diet, or that if he goes so hypogylcemic he's unconscious (it happens) I have a glucagon emergency injection ready for him and a trip to the E.D. if he needs it.

American Health System. Killing people, one at a time. Why should your health system be connected to your job?? Private monthly insurance with reasonable copays is $1500/month. He's never ever even made that much a month. He's unskilled labor, and there are jobs he can not actually do because he gets hypoglycemic so quickly. His glucose monitor starts beeping for urgent low blood sugar drops when he does chores, goes for walks, does manual labor at work. He's a perfectly good guy though.

Well, not anyone else, but someone saved me!
I don't remember much of it because I was really small, but I was in a swimming pool and my parents weren't paying attention to me. I wasn't a very good swimmer at the time and was having trouble keeping my head above water until I started to sink. I can't even describe the feeling of horror and fear that I felt when I realized I couldn't swim to the surface. When I started taking in water all of a sudden I had a feeling of peace come over me. A boy, about fourteen, maybe fifteen grabbed me and pulled me to shallow water. I got out of the water and looked around, but never found him. You can believe whatever you want, but I'm pretty sure he was my guardian angel. I can still feel him sometimes.

I was 14. My sister and I were in a public swimming pool. As we were playing I noticed a dark shadow at the bottom of the pool. It was a little boy. I dived, brought him back to the side and then the lifeguards took him and called an ambulance. They resuscitated him. He survived with no physical damage. Thank goodness.

I always wanted to write to the producer of Baywatch or to David Hasselhoff. I knew what to do because of this show.