21 Strangers Who Stepped In To Help When People Needed It

6.

“I was eight months pregnant and I had gone three times to the hospital for trouble breathing, which I thought was due to asthma and allergies. Every time before this one I had been told that I was just a nervous new mother with a history of anxiety, and not to worry about it. After being practically dismissed in the waiting room at the hospital where I was supposed to deliver, there was a mom and her little boy that I was playing with to keep him distracted while they waited. We were making pleasant conversation, when suddenly, the mother told me that I didn’t look right and despite having waited longer, she and several other patrons in the waiting room began begging the nurses to take me in because they all felt I was in danger.”

“After being told to let the staff do their job and basically sit down and shut up, the mother approached me and my partner, and told us to leave and go to Boston to an emergency room there right away. We listened, and, as it turned out, I was in heart failure, which was causing fluid to build up in my chest and suffocating me and my son. They told me when I got there if I had arrived even 30 minutes later, no intervention efforts would have saved either of us. The damage to my heart was so bad I was hospitalized for 4 weeks and my son was delivered 4 lbs 3 Oz, 8 weeks early. He was in the NICU for two weeks and PICU for two weeks before they released us both just before Christmas. Not only did those people in the waiting room save my life – especially that wonderful woman – but the doctor who delivered my son came in on her vacation week to operate because they knew she was my only shot at survival. They told my partner and family one of us would more than likely die in the process, our odds were VERY low. That doctor came in at 8 a.m. on a Monday morning, on her own time, and stayed and checked on me and did my postpartum care for the rest of the week. Strangers saved me and my son’s lives.”

—sammykeyes23