30 Things People Did “Just To Be Safe” That Ended Up Changing Their Lives For The Better

Not my a*s, but i was getting ready for school whilst mum was vomitting in the bathroom. She said it was just a stomach bug and to just go to school but mentioned her arm hurt.
Something didn’t sit right so i called the ambulance from downstairs.
They arrived and took her into the ambulance - she then proceeded to have 3 cardiac arrests and needed defibrillated each time. A double bypass later and she was up and about within a month.

Paramedics told me she would have died 5 mins after i left, if i hadn’t called.

Putting only one of my work shoes in the hotel safe along with my valuables. Literally has stopped me in my tracks from forgetting my wallet and passport in a different country.

I used to always carry a small high powered flashlight in my pocket. One day my wife had to go to the ER. She was having problems with her feminine bits. Her gyno was called, and during the exam, my wife began to bleed out. The ER was insufficiently equipped as far as portable light sources on hand, and on a whim, as her doctor stepped out of the room, looking panicked, I made a snap decision, pulled that flashlight from my pocket, and offered it to the doctor. I showed her how to operate it, and to make a long story short, that $5 flashlight saved my wife's life by making it possible for her doctor to find the bleed and stop it. It didn't save my a*s, but it saved the life of the woman I love more than life itself.

My friend and his wife were having their first child. They had gotten a big packet of information and paperwork to fillout before the due date to make things easier. There were also brochures for genetic testing and other thing that could be done, and one of the things was about saving the cord blood. My friend said that he looked at the front of the brochure and his wife asked if they should do it (it is not cheap, a couple thousand $ to save it and a few hundred a year after that), and my friend said "yes." Their daughter was born later that year. Three years after her birth, they had a boy, and he was born with an immune disorder (no white cells), and his big sisters cord blood and stem cells were used as a treatment.

Was watching my toddler nephew and he’d found a metal straw somewhere in the house and started playing with it. He was just tapping stuff and waving it around, but I’d *just* read a story on Reddit about a woman who got completely f****d up by a metal straw when she fell and it impaled her face, so I took the metal one from nephew and gave him a soft, squishy silicone one to play with instead.

I’m not exaggerating when I say less than five minutes later, he fell like toddlers do and I saw the silicone straw all smushed into his cheek.

I had to just sit for a while after that, lol.

Not me, bit a coworker. Was trying to separate some rail road ties with a crowbar as part of his yardwork for the day and when it popped a nail flew…

And embedded itself in one of the lenses of his safety glasses he threw on because he had them for work. He keeps them on his desk as reminder.

PPE is not just for the workplace folks!

Not my a*s, but my moms. She and I were home alone and I was getting ready to go to a party. I came upstairs and found her with the carbon monoxide detector in pieces on the coffee table. She said it was beeping, and apparently once years ago in our last house one was malfunctioning and giving a false alarm so I guess she just assumed it was happening again. I shrugged it off and continued getting ready. I was about to leave but something was nagging at me, she was insisting it was fine. After some arguing with her I said “No. we are calling the fire department.” So I did. They came, and the levels of carbon monoxide were so high in the basement they said anyone sleeping down there would be dead already. Our cats were vomiting from the poisoning and we didn’t realize. I guess the filter on the furnace was so clogged it was pumping out carbon monoxide. One of the fire fighters pulled me aside and said if I hadn’t called I likely would have come home to my mom dead in her bed.

I lock my doors habitually. Walk through a door, reach behind me, twist the lock. It's the way I was raised, and i honestly don't even think about it. I've actually gotten myself into trouble absent mindedly locking other people's doors (house, offices, shops ... I'm a menace).

This one night, I'm sitting and reading pretty late, and I suddenly think, "I need to check my front door to make sure it's locked." Lo and behold, it's actually unlocked. Shocked me a bit, but I locked the door and the dead bolt and slid the chain for good measure, then go get myself a glass of water.

As I'm walking with my glass of water from the kitchen back past my front door, I catch a movement out of the corner of my eye. I turn to the door and watch the doorknob slowly try to turn left and right. The mircomovements that a locked doorknob can be forced when twisted. I put on as deep of a voice as I can and forcefully stage project, "I have a gun, and I'm calling the cops!"

The doorknob stopped turning. I slept in a closet that night.... just in case.

Might sound ridiculous, but many years ago when I did my mandatory community service (was a thing in Germany as a counterpart to mandatory military service), there was a particular day in a pretty harsh winter.

I usually went to 'work' with my bike, as the streets where cleared of snow and ice anyway. At this day, I didn't take my helmet off because when I arrived at the place I worked I immediately started to showel snow and didn't even walk inside first. My workplace was a huge and old 4-story hostel in the woods. The roof was packed with snow and there where massive icicles hanging from the gutters. When a coworker asked me why I decided to look like an idiot with my helmet on I jokingly replied it was for serious security reasons.

A few moments later an icicle block fell down and hit me on the head and the shoulders, the impact was so brutal that it made me fall down on my knees. Shoulders where bruised but my head was fine.

I really don't know what could have happened if I didn't wear my stupid bicycle helmet "for fun" that morning. Serious injury for sure.

My dad lost his glasses once. He was going to just use his old prescription but last minute decided to just go to the optometrist anyway in case something changed. Turns out he had a tear in his retina and was booked for surgery within 24 hours. It was bad enough they said he probably would have gone blind really soon had they not caught it when then did.

In college I was an RA. A girl wanted to hook up with me and I was going to but I ended up drinking and watching lord of the rings: two towers with some friends instead at their dorm.

Few days later I was fired from RA job for sexually harassing a student. I didn't in any way shape or form sexually harass anyone and the date/time given was when I was in middle of movie. I had 13 people to vouch for me.

Never found out this person who reported me but I'm fairly certain we can all guess who it was because after I and my friends all literally said I was watching movie (which I was and also I slept over at their dorm, nothing wrong with a 12 dude sleepover haha) I was rehired and case dismissed.

Had some weird achy symptoms and went to the doctor even though I figured I was probably overreacting. Turns out I had cancer.

Saved the GPS location of my vehicle on Google Maps before exploring a national forest with a road trip buddy.

We grabbed some fishing poles and head out towards the nearest water location on our map to hopefully catch a couple fish. Turns out it was a swamp not a lake and we got so incredibly turned around it could have ended very badly. We really didn't go that far in from where we parked but somehow ended up on the other side of the swamp without realizing it. Drizzling rain, mosquitos, bear tracks, and the sun started going down before we found the car.

Without the GPS coordinates saved it would have been a cold wet night in the woods at a minimum, and more than likely a "search and rescue required" situation.

Learned CPR and first aid. Had to give CPR to a family friend when she collapsed from a heart attack and thankfully she was brought back after being down for 15 minutes. She only had minor memory problems and mostly just couldn't remember that day. She still here and kicking years later.

Normally I'm pretty impressionable and cave to peer pressure, but this one time when I was younger I was hanging with my friends and a couple of "older" high school guys I'd only met that day. The girls were all fawning over them but I could tell they were idiots. When they all wanted to go for a drive with the guys, I thought 'nah, I don't trust these guys and I think it's best I just call my parents and go home'.

I got a call the next morning from one of the girls who was passenger. One of the high school boys was driving, they'd had a serious crash and one of the girls wasn't wearing her seatbelt and hit her head on the dash and was in a coma for six months. She was in intensive care and rehabilitation for years.

Still can't believe of all the days I decided not to go with the flow, it probably saved my life. Terribly sad about my friend. We were really close but she never came 'right' and her personality changed. I still wonder how successful she might have been and if we'd still be friends if that hadn't happened to her. Really sad.

My stomach had some issues and my doctor sent me for a colonoscopy just to get things checked out. They found 1 polyp, no big deal, not related to the current problem, and told me to come back in 5 years just in case. I put a google reminder and forgot about it.

5 years later, I went for the colonoscopy and they found a lot more and said I would have ended up with cancer in 5-20 years for sure had I not gone. Instead, they removed all polyps and now I’m regularly going to colonoscopies due to having a syndrome they identified.

I’m far away from the age where you normally get a colonoscopy so I would definitely have got cancer.

When you are eligible or if it is recommended, get a colonoscopy.

Lived in Baltimore at the time. Pulled up outside my place after getting off a late shift and had to get a backpack out of my trunk before going in. I noticed a group of teenaged kids hanging out on the corner and thought "nope". Called my roommate to come watch me walk to the door. About 10 mins later a girl comes running down the street bleeding saying she got jumped by the group of kids for no reason. Stay alert out there yall.

I dropped my high school girlfriend off, then for some reason I locked the passenger door. Not 10 minutes later I was stopped at a red light and some scummy looking dude tried to open up the door. I have no idea why I locked that door after she got out, I really didn't have a habit of that. No idea what would have happened if that guy got in my truck.

$5 breakage insurance on a rental surf board. Broke that f****r clean in half in my first 10 minutes.

One day I was attempting to make carioca for the first time, a kind of Filipino fried mochi, and after I popped them in the oil, I settled in and watched them carefully. I never wear an apron whilst cooking, but for some reason I figured why not this time, and as soon as I stepped out of range of the fryer, they all exploded. Turns out, carioca can form an impermeable shell when fried, so pressure built up inside until they popped and sprayed hot oil all over the kitchen. Of course, I was safely away reaching for an apron and was completely dumbfounded. Made sure to punch some holes in all subsequent batches.

Of course, once I cleaned the kitchen, I ate them and they were delicious. 10/10 highly recommend