My wife saved Christmas!

She works as a Support Coordinator for families with kids with developmental disabilities. One of her families is a single father, who we'll call Super Dad, who has three kids ranging through 10 to 20, *all* with moderate to high needs, all with different specific requirements, and at the time he was also caring for his terminally ill mother who was living with him, and had been on hospice for I think a year or more. Super Dad is a fantastic parent who sometimes presents as flaky or noncomittal because trying to manage all of that is *a lot*, and things fall through the cracks.

Super Dad's ex is, from everything I've heard, prime r/iamatotalpieceofsh*t material, but Dad continues to try and give her opportunities to be involved in her kids life (or did), because he's forgiving and wants his kids to have a mom!

So Super Dad saved up a little money, like $100 or $150, to do a Christmas shopping experience for the kids, and he invited mom to come along. He even took the precaution of hiding the money, just in case. So mom shows up, they socialize with kids for a while, and then Dad goes to the bathroom or is otherwise indepsosed for a few minutes. When he comes back, mom is nowhere to be found. He asks his kids where she is, and they indicate she went into the kitchen. He goes in, and finds the place has been rolled, and the money he'd hid is gone, and mom is nowhere to be found. She had *stolen her own kids Christmas money*.

So Dad calls the police, they put out a notice to pick her up, and actually they find her pretty quickly, with, wouldn't you know it, about the missing amount of money, less some cigaretts and snacks. They call dad to let him know, but explain that, due to the investigative process and whatever all other regulations, the money is evidence, and he won't get it back immediately.

So he calls my wife at *2:00 on the last business day before Christmas* and explains what happened. She gets off work at 4, for reference, and since it's the end of a payperiod, she *can't* go over her alloted time.

So my wife basically puts our an APB to her coworkers (half of whom are already gone), and starts calling up all of the various gift charity organizations. Problem is, most of them have already sent things out, or are about to. They don't have anything spare, if they have anything available at all, and most of them she can't even get a hold of a live person.

Finally, at *3:50*, she gets a call back from a place that runs a system where basically the kids get to walk through a warehouse and pick a certain number of things for their gifts to have. They have everything sorted and ready to go, and all their anticipated slots are full, but as she explains Super Dad's situation, the lady at the charity basically says "Screw procedure, usually we have at least a few families that don't make it anyway, give them my number. If they can call me tonight, I'll make sure they get in tomorrow before we officially open."

And with 5 minutes overtime, Super Dad gets to tell his kids that the next day they get to go pick out Christmas gifts. :)

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Katie Lutesinger

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People who steal from their own children deserve to be severely beaten.

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I did a stint in customer support and really helped this one lady, a receptionist in another state, who kept answering my "is there anything else I can help you with?" spiel with one problem after another. The call went on forever and by the end of it we were fast friends.

Just before she hung up though she said "people who are the most helpful tend to need help themselves, so, is there anything I can help *you* with?"

That struck a chord with me for some reason. I jokingly bounced some relationship issues off her like a Dear Abby reader and she did not find it funny. In fact she asked if I was serious and pressed for details about how my girlfriend treated me, which I provided because the severity of her concern was sobering. Long story short she got me out of an abusive relationship I didn't even know I was in.

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Pumpkin Spice

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Oh, wow. Receptionist inception! Receptioception!

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Nurse here. I was a student on a cardiac unit and there was a lady there waiting for surgery. She and her husband spoke little English, although their friend was there sometimes to help translate.
The night before her surgery her husband and friend left and I helped her take a sanitizing shower to prep for the next day. My preceptor told me her surgery was extremely risky and carried only a 20% chance of success. Neither of us were sure if she understood this fully, but she knew it was necessary and she was scared.

I kept thinking it might be her last night on earth and she was here all alone. Through broken communication her last words to me that night were her thank yous because she said we were so sweet and caring in a time when she was so afraid. I didn't care whether I was allowed or not, but I gave her a strong hug before I left that night. On the eve of surgery she was all alone, regular hospital meal, with little ability to communicate. I left with a terrible sadness.

I was relieved when I did see her the next week when she demanded more hugs and asked why I wasn't her nurse again.

There are days we see someone for the last time, and sometimes we never find out. Then there are days when things go well and people remember the kindness they received instead of their fear.

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Tamra

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Nurses quite often see people when they're at their lowest. I remember the kindness of nurses when I was sick, hurting and afraid and it made a huge difference . Thank you for all you do.

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ICU nurse in training.

I did my cardiac care internship (just a couple of weeks) and I distinctly remember this one English couple that went through our hospital.

They were on holiday when the wife collapsed due to a heart infarction and was (successfully!) resuscitated by her own son (15!) and the paramedics. She was in the ICU only for a couple of days and was then transferred to the ccu.

She was getting better each day, and each and every day her husband profusely thanked us. He went as far to bring stuff like donuts, cookies chocolate etc to the nurses on the ccu (it's not a big team). She after a while went to the normal ward and the next day she was cleared to fly back to England again by our doctors. The husband came up to me (with another share of donuts) and was so thankful for the staff helping his wife, tears and all. How happy they were they could go back home and see the children again.

That's what keeps me going, not necessarily the thank yous, but to see we made a huge difference. It makes me proud of what we do :)

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This sounds f****d up, but one of my absolute best moments was taking care of one of my friends (a police officer) after he was hit in a gunfight. Paramedics usually wait at shootings until the scene is secured before going in. I said f**k that. I rolled in and stabilized him while my crew caught up in the ambulance. As I was working on him the other cop mentioned that there were casualties in the house. Since he was stable I went in to see what I could do for the others. The perp was handcuffed face down, obviously dead. The other person in the house had been hit multiple times, so I got to work. She lived. I found out later that there was a bomb in the room five feet away from where I’d been taking care of her.

Unlike a lot of the other intense calls in my career (many of which haunt my nightmares), being the first medic in to take care of a friend in a terrible situation felt really good. It made all of the horrible s**t I’d been through before worth it.

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I worked as a certified surgical tech in the veterinary field. We had a young dachshund come in with intervertebral disc disease, it couldn’t walk and it was urinating and defecating all over itself.

We performed the necessary surgery and a few weeks of physical therapy, that doggo worked so hard to get better and she ended up making a full recovery. She was even running around on her last day with us. I’ll never forget you, lil Penny!

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Wayne Gossman

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Thanks! My sister’s dog had the same problem and treatment and is doing well!

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Psychologist here:

I did my year-long internship at a university counseling center. While we normally only saw clients for 8-12 sessions, we were allowed to have one longer-term client to give us more experience. Mine ended up being this wonderful young woman who was deeply depressed. She was an identical twin. Sessions were slow going at first and there were a lot of tears. She worked through a lot and she was much better by the end of our ~10 months working together. My supervisor and I talked about her frequently and she watched tapes of our sessions.

The next year I was on my post-doc and I got a call from my former supervisor who had just started seeing my client's twin in private practice. The mother of the two, not knowing who my supervisor was, started talking to her about how her other daughter had gone to therapy and how her therapist had changed her life.

My supervisor called me to tell me this because, as she well knows, we don't get to hear that very often.

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Nurse here. I took care of a 4 year old patient who spent literally 5 minutes at the bottom of the pool. He should have died, or at the very least had permanent brain damage and been essentially a vegetable. I took care of him several shifts, watched him slowly improve, and watched him walk out of the hospital, high fiving and joking with the nurses and doctors. We see so many poor outcomes, but it’s miracles like this that push us to keep trying through the hard days and big losses.

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Got a call for a grass fire on a red flag warning day. Took us about 30 minutes to get there and there was already another type 6 (pickup truck + water tank) engine and a J-5 (tracked fire vehicle) on sight. 20-30ft flame lengths and spreading fairly quickly threatening a home and a cabin. Home owner evacuated with her dogs and we started hitting the fire with the J-5s and got a helicopter and two planes in the air to defend the house, and more engines on the way. All in all it was about 10 hours of chasing this thing through grass and swamp and cold trailing before it was declared out. Homeowner returned later in the day in tears hugging everyone despite how filthy we were and wouldn't let anyone leave as she had ordered a bunch of food for us. Was my first wildfire experience interacting with someone who our work had directly effected and it was a super feel good moment.

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I posted this story before but I was taking a CPR classes where the instructor was a retired cop. He told us a story of showing up to call with two boys, around 6 and 8, that had fallen into a pool not knowing how to swim. He said they were blue. He started to administer CPR when the mom stopped them. She said that they were Christain Scientist and that sickness is an illusion and all that. She said that God would heal them. He basically said "Not today he's not." And did it anyways while she screamed and tried to get him to stop. He was able to revive both boys. He said he chewed out by his supervisor saying that he shouldn't have done what he did, but the supervisor did it with a wink.

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Tamra

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2 years ago

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People like this parent should be charged with child abuse, at the very least. "God will heal them", my a*s.

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I work in tech support. My department was essentially being outsourced but our manager didn’t have the balls to tell us. Instead they had us doing lower level work to “help the queues” but it was basically preparation to demote us.

One thing I’ll say about my company is that they never lay off anyone, they will always find a position within the company to move someone to if a department goes away. It was October and I didn’t want to be out looking for a job right before the holidays. So while everyone in my department essentially rebelled against this move, I put my head down, did the best I could and just remained thankful for having a job.

I didn’t realize that my attitude was getting noticed by the higher ups. One of my managers was a total prick but the one right below him seemed to have some semblance of a soul left.

She walked up to my desk one day and asked me to put my current call on hold. I truly thought I was being walked out (we didn’t yet realize they weren’t going to lay people off) but my manager set 2 concert tickets for my all time favorite singer down on my desk.

She had gone to my previous supervisors and actually took time to find out what would be really meaningful to me because she said I was the only person in the department coming in and giving 100% despite crazy changes and upheavals. I started crying. It was the first time I felt like just showing up, doing my job & putting in a bit of effort mattered.

Just a couple months after that, I was actually promoted and I’m still with the company today and doing what I really love within. I’ll never forget that day, I’ll never forget what it felt like to truly be recognized for my work ethic. I am a hard worker and I don’t have it in me to be like “f**k the man” because hard work has gotten me up the ladder & procured a decent life for me. It was so nice to see a return on that state of mind.

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Sheila Stamey

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2 years ago

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Not a popular frame of mind right now, but still, there are jobs that are worth it!

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I am a mother and a grandmother. Rest assured, it IS an emotionally difficult job.

My worst day on the job, in the fairly recent past, was having to Be with my daughter and her infant son after one of his six open heart surgeries while at home my father was dying.

My Best day on the job, in the fairly recent past, was learning the a heart had been donated and our little guy was going to have a transplant. His 7th surgery. He survived and is doing very well now.

Being a parent, despite it being a Common job, doing it to the Best of your ability, is emotionally difficult.

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Yay Pandas!

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I wonder if LadyMort has ever been a mother....

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CNA i was at a memory care place rough job but it was late one night and one of my favorite residents was still up. I had made a mocha for myself and was sitting at a table with him just having small talk, then he asked what i was drinking and he had never had a mocha before. I made one for him and his face just lit up. It was so sweet and those small things really make the bad days worth it

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I didnt have the most difficult job, but I worked in a witchcraft supply shop in Salem MA during Halloween season. So it was extremely busy and we were severely understaffed. It was stressful and I worked WAY longer hours than I should have, but overall I really enjoyed it. Anyways the best memory I have of that place was a woman came into the shop on a really quiet morning (unusually quiet for october). Because of this, I was able to chat with her, ask her where shes from, all that good retail small talk. She was looking at a dragonfly dream catcher and mentioned how she had to buy it because her late daughter collected dragonfly things. She started talking about her daughter and how this was one of the first vacations shed taken since her daughter passed. I could FEEL her sadness when she talked to me, but she was smiling and so gentle and sweet. I dont know what came over me, but I got a rose quartz crystal from the back and brought it out to her and said something along the lines of "this stone symbolizes love. Your daughter may not be with you, but she loves you so much, and I think you should have this" and I gave her the stone. We held hands and both cried a little, and then afterwards we were like "well that was weird". I still cant think about her without tearing up a little. I hope shes doing alright wherever she is.

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Norma

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2 years ago

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Thank you for sharing the love...

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Graphic designer here.

It was my birthday twenty years ago, fresh out of college, working two go nowhere jobs. I applied to a local print shop a block away from where I was living at the time.

I remember it was raining and I received a call at 7:30 in the morning after working the day before at an office job, then an overnight grocery store job. They wanted me to be there for 8 am to interview for the design job I applied for. Soaking wet, I walked in thinking “There’s no chance I’ll get this, in the state I’m in.”

Hiring manager was one of my former teachers at college. It was the shortest interview I’ve ever had. She called into the other room and said “Cancel the other interviews, this is the one.”

Her manager came in, shook my hand and said “I trust her judgement, completely. Welcome aboard.”

Twenty years later, it’s still one of the best days of my life

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I'm a swallow therapist. Had a patient in the hospital with a severe stroke and in a hard cervical collar, swallow was horrible. After the swallow xray I made recommendations of honey-thick liquids and puree solids (swallow was so impaired that he was aspirating normal and nectar thick liquids.) I hate this part of my job. The patient was understandably upset about it and all he wanted at that time was to drink some water.

He came back to the hospital after having a fall at rehab, about a week after I last saw him. I said "Hey, you're actually looking a lot better, lets repeat that swallow xray and see how it's going now."

Swallow was -way- improved! I gave him the good news that his swallow was so much better, I recommene he advances to soft solids and thin (normal) liquids. "You mean I can have water again?!" He yelled.
"Yep, and normal coffee too!"
He had the biggest lip quivering smile and tears in his eyes in sheer happiness at being able to drink normal liquids again. He was so happy and thankful. It's moments like those that I hang on to, to keep me going in this field.

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Sheila Stamey

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Those honey thick liquids are so awful. I had extensive esophageal surgery with my bariatric surgery, because of an undiagnosed situation, and had to go through that. Imagine very very thick water. Sometimes flavors but it was just so off putting. When they say honey thick they mean it.

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911 dispatcher - a juvenile called me completely hysterical because someone was following her in a vehicle. They were both travelling at a high rate of speed. I got her to calm down and gave her directions to our PD. She ran inside and locked herself in an interview room until officers got into the lobby. I was so relieved that she made it safely.

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Journalist. I wrote a story about a building the city couldn't give away. Had tried for 3+ years. I wrote the line "It's the building nobody seems to want, despite offers of city council members offering to pay the $1 transfer fee."

Three days later five offers came on the building, it's now being turned into a community center by a local nonprofit who will use it for a number of purposes.

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I work physical rehab in a skilled nursing facility. I had a young, early-40s patient with a hereditary degenerative condition who had been in different hospitals and facilities for months. In addition to genuine pain and disability she was being very self-limiting--unwilling to do pretty much anything for fear of it increasing her pain levels. Bit by bit a coworker and I convinced her to first roll over, then sit, then stand, then spend longer and longer periods out of bed. Finally, we got to the point where we were able to do a home visit, and you could see her remembering what it was like to be in her own space. That light of desire to go home was in her eyes and she worked harder from that point on, and two weeks later she was discharged. Helping her into the car and waving it out of the parking lot was the best feeling I've had so far in my career.

Tl;dr: Was able to help someone go from bedridden inpatient to home in a wheelchair after months of painstaking work.

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I’m a newly qualified nurse, my first placement in NICU. We had a very sick baby who I was told was most likely to die at 2 years old. Her mum couldn’t understand why she was there as she was a term baby. I’d been doing research and I tried my best to explain to her mum exactly what was happening and be a support. On my last day her mum hugged me and said thank you I was very close to tears.

I follow a photographer on Instagram who had take pictures of this baby girl for her second birthday, it was that baby. It still makes me so proud that she defied all odds, she has cerebral palsy and global developmental delay but she has surpassed everyone’s expectations and is able to eat herself. Nothing makes me prouder than seeing her thrive.

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CakeandNintendo

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2 years ago

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Honestly I get why some people wouldn't want to terminate their baby but if you found out your child was going to suffer in a way like this why would you even let them be born? To suffer in pain during a short life? It seems incredibly selfish to me.

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I worked front desk at a small hotel ~70 rooms. We had an old man stay with us for a long time, approximately 8 months due to being put out of his home by a fire. Red Cross paid for his hotel room so he was more than happy to stay as long as he could. He was a wonderful old man with a heart of gold. He would always come downstairs & talk to me in the evenings, & tell me stories of his life, & family. I eagerly awaited hearing from him daily, he became like a surrogate grandpa to me.

He ended up passing away before his house was repaired, he died of a heart condition in the hospital. Within the next couple of days his son flew in from California to collect his things & he invited all of us hotel staff that knew him to his funeral in a nearby town. We kindly obliged.

After the funeral we all gathered for food & the son was to give a speech. His speech was very touching for all of us to hear because he confirmed many of the stories our guest had told us over the last few months. It was at this time the son talked about his fathers final days staying at our hotel, & how we treated him with utter respect & he considered us his family. He asked the hotel employees if we may stand & the whole funeral procession applauded (in a quiet golf clap kind of way). It was one of the most touching moments of my life. I never expected that. I was very happy to know we had such a positive impact on his final days. I still think about that old man time to time.

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Former College Faculty - My work involved being with students one-on-one or in small groups giving them supplemental instruction to their course work. In the area I worked in, people who came to my sessions saw it as a weakness compared to some of my other colleagues because they felt "dumb" for not knowing some of the concepts or the software involved.

One student in particular was an older student who was down on herself a lot. She had been in a horrific car accident that left her with some physical ailments as well as PTSD. She also experiences some memory issues as a result as well. It was hard working with her because a lot of the time she let her frustration get the better of her and she would shut down. Being the kind of person I am, it was painful to watch and not having anything I say have an effect to try and calm her down.

One day though it was like a switched flipped. She marched into a session sat down and went to work like her life depended on it. She tore through her coursework. If she did not understand something she would have me show/explain it to her. All her frustration seemed to vanish. It was amazing to watch.

I was proud when I got to see her walk across the stage to get her degree and be there on the other side with the counselor who worked with her. She hugged us both. Later on she asked me for a recommendation for a Masters program which I happily wrote and she just graduated from it this year.

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I got fired around the holidays and mentioned to a friend that I didn't have a job. He got me a job working at a retirement home with him as a server and room cleaning when needed. I was initially hesitant but I started to like it quickly and my residents loved me.

We had a thing where every other day we would change their sheets. Well this woman leaves her room and looks stressed on her way to the laundry room. I asked her what was wrong and she said her husband had surgery and was recovering but wet the bed. She said she'd just wash the sheets and he could just last on the mattress since it wasn't sheets day. I told her her husband was absolutely not just gonna lay on a mattress and went and got her fresh sheets that minute. She and her husband were both grateful.

I found out next time I came to clean that he was a die hard golden age DC comics fan. Like didn't even know D**k Grayson became Nightwing old school fan. As a way of thanking me, he handed me a very old copy of Superman 24. He said it wasn't worth selling but I was welcome to it. It means a lot to me that he thought of me. Some of those old folks were incredible and I miss them very much.

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Markus It/He

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2 years ago

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Can't believe D**k is censored there. It's a name lol

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I worked at an animal shelter. We got a pit bull puppy named King. He was deathly ill. He had serious mange and his whole body was hairless and scabbed. During his treatment, he spent days throwing up and having nasty diarrhea. He made me so sad. The look on his face was so painful. We didn't know what would become of him.

But then things began turning around. He stopped getting sick all the time, slowly gained some weight, and his fur came back little by little. Soon enough he was a strong, healthy boy. You could see the life in his eyes. His transformation was incredible. Eventually he was adopted. A few months later, his family sent us pictures of him and he looked like a perfectly healthy, well adjusted doggo. He was loving his second chance at life. It was a wonderful thing to witness and stories like King's are what make me so passionate about animal rescue.

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My first shift as a driver for a catering company. We had a food stand at a concert venue and my only duty was to drive there and drive back. I wasn't sure what to do during the show so I just hung out on a bench for a while until my boss told me to go enjoy the show. Got $15/hr and free lunch to watch Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Tom Jones, Brian Wilson, and Neil Young.

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Yay Pandas!

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Whoa!

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Had a summer job selling ice cream. We had a little boy with autism come in with his family and later freaked out because the different flavors touched so we gave him a scoop of strawberry ice cream free of charge. He later comes up to me and my friend ( I was at the cash register ) asking for an extra spoon. We always keep a few extra spoons in the pockets on our aprons, so I did some “magic” and made a spoon appear in my hand, he couldn’t see the lower half of me because of the wall, and when I gave him the spoon he had the biggest smile I’ve ever seen and ran away to his mom yelling “she can do magic!!” Over and over. Melted me and my friends hearts.
Had another kid come up to me while I was taking an order tugging on my apron to get my attention, so when I was done with the order I crouched down to see what she wanted, and she said: I didn’t know your name but I wanted to give you this anyway. She held out a drawing of a person at the cash register with the text “to someone, from Beth” ( fake name ). Such sweethearts. I love that place

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Abnus

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This is so sweet. This can melt even the coldest of hearts.

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Buried now, but I've been itching to tell this story.

Had a young patient who suffered a vehicle vs pedestrian accident about a month or so after his wedding. Persistent vegetative state. I worked with him some months after the accident in a long-term acute care ward. I do night shifts, and as I was doing some care I noticed a ribbon tucked under his window curtain. This ribbon was white and every 3 inches or so was tied a small, colored ribbon, and on each colored ribbon was written a well-wish (get well soon, we're thinking about you, you're in our prayers, etc.). The white ribbon was several yards long, with probably hundreds of colored well-wishes written on it. It was beautiful, and when I realized what it was I said that absolutely does not need to be tucked into a corner and hid.

So I gathered up every thumbtack/pushpin I could find that night, and I hung that thing around his room, taking care that it didnt go behind the head of his bed (lest a pushpin fall out into his bed, he was defenseless against sharp objects like that). It made 3 circuits with big arcs. It was beautiful, a riot of color and prayer and hope in a rather sterile, dreary, hopeless place. Finished, went home.

Day or so later I met his wife coming out of his room, she exclaimed "you're the one who hung the ribbon!" Turned out the night I hung it was the night before their first wedding anniversary. She came to visit her husband and saw that. It brought tears and joy to her.

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I work in residential psych. One day I had to do a training on a day I don't usually work and figured I'd pick up some extra time in my unit. My boys are relatively low-functioning ASD teenagers. They saw me walk in and I got "Hi! Did you leave something?" I told them I'd be there until bedtime and one of them got the cartoon-happy, eyes-bugged-out rictus-grin expression and started wiggling like an overexcited puppy. Residential is hard as f**k, and I'm burned-out as all hell, but god damn if that kid didn't make me feel a little better about working there.

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We saved a couple of kids stuck in a locked warehouse. It made my day seeing their faces after we had rescued them.

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Abnus

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From the Reddit comments . . . . “Why were they in a warehouse?” “Because kids” followed by stories of dangerous stuff users did as kids.

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I'm a nurse. I had a patient that was very sick. She was passing out in bathrooms and having a lot of GI issues. Turns out, these symptoms were because her heart wasn't beating fast enough and she needed a pacemaker.

Unbeknownst to me, someone took her to the bathroom. A physical therapist called me frantically that she needed help. I went in and she was pale, diaphoretic, really low blood pressures. Her heart rhythm went crazy and she passed out on the toilet. This was a big lady but we somehow managed to get her onto the floor, stabilize her, get her up and into bed. She went down for a pacemaker shortly thereafter.

She didn't come back to our floor, but she made her new nurse call me from her procedural unit to tell me we/I saved her life and she wanted me to know how much better she felt with the pacemaker and how thankful she was.

On my unit we have very few good outcomes. To this day, I think this was the best one. It was amazing that she took the time to have her new nurse call me and tell me that. I didn't save her life, we all did, but it was the first time I felt like I had a part to play in a very happy outcome.

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We once had a wedding for a patient. He was dying but not in good enough health to even go home. They had been together for 15 years but never married and his dying wish was to marry her and have it easier for her to have benefits once he died. The doc was also a notary so she did the ceremony and we had a local florist bring in flowers for the bride. It was so tender and sweet.

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Not a day but about three months all regarding the same patient.

Came into my ward almost skeletal, heroin addict, could see every rib and so on. CT showed multiple ring enhancing lesions in his brain, diagnosis was brain cancer and end of life care was started.

The relatives would not accept it and went higher up the chain and eventually got a second opinion. The second consultant also believed it was likely to be cancer but couldn't be 100% certain and arranged for a biopsy. In theatre when they tried to biopsy the lesion it burst. Turns out it wasn't cancer but multiple abscesses on the brain.

End of life care was stopped and intravenous antibiotics were started and continued for months. Nasogastric feeding was started and eventually diet slowly introduced. A few nibbles turned into half a meal, then full meals and eventually two at every mealtime.

Stopped taking his methodone and vowed to never touch drugs again. He came to us almost dead and emaciated, and left with a pot belly about three months later.

Last time any of the ward staff saw him he had earned a city and guilds qualification in interior design.

anon Report

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Worked for a call center. I know that doesn't sound emotionally difficult but it is one of the most draining jobs ever. Financial company, a lot of "I know you think this is your money, but as it's retirement funds and you're only 30 you're not eligible to take it yet." I'd just taken my 10th call of someone cussing me out for this reason in a row when this lady calls me.

She's young, barely 40, and already crying when she gets to me. Turns out she needs money because she's about to be evicted as she can no longer pay her rent due to medical bills. Because her husband shot her in the head two months ago. She's just woke up from a coma, found out she can no longer work at her job as she can't do the manual labor, she can't walk, can barely talk, needs to figure out how to raise her daughter as a single parents since the husband is going to be in jail forever and now has nowhere to live.

I couldn't get her all of the money that day because of the way the system is set up, there's a lot of documentation needed by law, but was able to get her started for a hardship withdrawal. She spent 5 minutes at the end of the call just thanking me, and thanking God for letting me be the one to answer the phone since she was so scared of what was going to happen.

Call times be damned, I was going to be there for this woman as long as she needed me. She called back a few times after that for follow up and always asked the other reps to tell me thanks again. My last update was a year later when she called to start a new retirement plan with the company she had just been hired to work for.

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I work as a police officer in a fairly busy city. At the end of a normal 10.4 hour night it's not uncommon to have 12 calls in my history. Sometimes as many as 15-18.

Last year in January it snowed. I sat under an overpass and did not have to move from the time I signed on, until sign off. Not a single call.

Glorious.

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Abnus

Abnus

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1 year ago

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Glad no one got hurt and in need of police/fire/EMS

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Military - we were on a natural disaster deployment (hurricane) and it was super last minute so dining arrangements hadn't been contracted out and no one even knew where they were going. We get to the first location where we were going to bunker down for the night and were told to go to the grocery store that was still open and get whatever supplies we could. Randomly, there was a Chinese restaurant still open throughout the hurricane. The first shirt authorized us to order dinner there if we wanted as long as no one got hurt. We had SO many orders placed at the restaurant that night. They were happy, we were happy. The next morning our civil engineers jerry rigged a coffee maker so everyone could have coffee before setting out to our next location. It was the worst tasting coffee I've ever had, but everyone was so grateful and it was a huge morale booster. We break up and head out to our next locations. We're at a place where everything is closed and destroyed. Still no dining contracts. So we go to whatever convenience stores are still open (we went by the busload because we had to drive aways to get to them) and buy out whatever they have. Candy bars, chips, it was basically all junk food. After almost a week of eating garbage (all that junk food sounds great, but after a week my body felt like hell), a local restaurant re-opens to provide dinner for us. I had a completely basic garden salad that tasted like heaven. We also came into the dining area to see a door was plastered with letters from the community thanking us for the help. Best week ever.

​

Edit: I want to add that we were *not* the heroes of this disaster, we mostly just did clean up and surveying.

anon00000anon , Joel Rivera-Camacho Report

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I was working at a retail store 2 summers ago. It was a trendy place where only “attractive/Instagram model,” types were hired (not sure how I got the job with that criteria). One day Gwyneth Paltrow came in to shop with her daughter and told me “I love your outfit.” She didn’t really talk to/compliment anyone else. I really appreciated it because out of all the other people that worked there, I would say I struggled the most financially (everyone was younger and either living at home or got substantial help from their parents and lived on their own, traveled all the time, always bought new clothes, partied, while I am putting myself through school with no help and paying rent), and some days I could hardly pay the transportation to get to work. It might sound superficial, but I thought it was really funny that a millionaire told me that I looked well put together even though I was like struggling to feed myself at the time.

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Pumpkin Spice

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2 years ago

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This would be way better if Gwyneth Paltrow wasn't a little turd. As it is, it's really sweet.

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I was in the USAF stationed on Guam when Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1991. They did an evacuation, Operation Fiery Vigil, to get all of our people possible to safety. A lot of them at least came through Andersen AFB on their way back to the states. Because of my job, I was basically sleeping at work on the floor a couple hours here and there while people were processing, as were many others. With the huge sudden influx of people arriving, space was very limited, and people were sleeping wherever. It was rough for single airmen, but for families that had any kids, it was kinda a nightmare in some ways. I was fortunatwe enough to live off base and be able to offer my apartment to a fellow airman who came through with his wife and young child. I just randomly picked them because they were going to be stuck for a couple days before heading CONUS and I felt like a small kid didn't need to be around all the chaos that was going on. I took them to my place, gave them the keys, told them to eat and use whatever they needed, and offered them the maybe hundred bucks I had squirreled away in the cupboard for an emergency. I know it doesn't sound like a lot, and it's not saving a life or anything huge like that, but for a couple days I was able to give one family that had their lives turned upside down a little break. And I got lots of cool little hand tracings and scribbles to put on my fridge their son left behind for me and a reason to feel good about myself for at least a little while.

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This will probably be buried, but Cardiac Nurse chiming in here. I had a patient who unexpectedly needed an open heart surgery to bypass clogged arteries. He said he had things to take care of at home and was threatening to leave against medical advice, which would likely disqualify him from the surgery or delay it immensely. I convinced him to stay for one more day to talk to the doctors and then helped to set up a plan for him to get all of the pre surgical tests as an outpatient, therefore letting him take care of his personal obligations. He walked back over to my floor from the ICU a month later and a couple of days after his surgery, saw me, and started crying. He hugged me and said that I saved his life and he wouldn't of done the surgery if I didn't convince him to stay. Probably the most inspiring moment so far jn my short nursing career. Whenever I have a hard day I think about this guy and it makes me remember why I do what I do. Honestly, I think he helped me as much as I helped him.

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Peds here- I've had lots of wonderful days. One that stands out for me is calling a little boy's mom to tell her to go ahead and come to the hospital for surgery because we found a matching donor! I'll never forget the shrieks of excitement in the background as she pulled the phone from her ear and announced "we're going to the hospital!"

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Firefighter Paramedic here. My best day happened twice so far when I earned my 2 Phoenix Awards....

That’s what u get when a person you find in full cardiac arrest (dead), ends up walking out of the hospital without deficits.

It’s very rare, and really a good feeling when it happens.

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Abnus

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o7

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So, I work a pretty physically demanding job. If it is cold outside, you are cold. if it is hot outside, you are twice as hot. It gets rough. To make matters worse, parking is atrocious, so I have to pull into the parking lot BY 5 AM to start a 7 AM job, which means I am up at 430 EVERY weekday and most weekend days. So needless to say, it can be very draining.

Well I got in one day, and was surprised to find that I was assigned to take a ride on a tugboat to take a barge from our shipyard to another one in order to switch out cranes. All I had to do was untie the replacement one, and tie down the broke down one. 10 minutes worth of work. The rest of the day was travelling to and from the other shipyard. despite the heat of the day, the breeze on the water was perfect. Seeing the city from the water made me realize they designed the city around being aesthetically pleasing from the water. Best day ever! even better than the days where we get in and have nothing to do. Because even then you have to make yourself look busy. But not on the water because there is nobody out their looking over your shoulder.

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I am a cardiovascular technologist in a cardiac cath lab. We had the sweetest 80yo female patient come in with a massive saddle PE. She was stable in the ICU, only requiring 6L/min on a nasal cannula, despite her massive PE. We brought her back for intra-arterial thrombolysis and she coded on our table. We did CPR, we intubated her. We were able to give her the TPA to break up her PE before we had to get her into the ICU. We took her to the ICU and stood in the room as her husband came in and saw her while the physician explained what happened and what the plan would be at the time. Once the doctor left, the husband told me, tears streaming all the while, a powerful story about his experience with miracles and his belief in God.

The intensivist was not optimistic about our patient’s prognosis, but our interventionalist was. Slowly she began to improve, and 2 days later, I saw her sitting up, extubated, and joking with her husband. She thanked us for everything we did, and her husband did the same with tears in his eyes. I’ve never felt so bonded with a patient, and I will never forget the look of eternal gratefulness in their faces, especially the husband’s. It had still been the most rewarding day of my career.

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Border Patrol Agent. Lead Agent on scene for the largest cross border rescue in history. Partnered with Mexican officials to locate and rescue 20 individuals ( including a small child) who had been stranded by coyotes and shot at by cartel members.

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poiplescales

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2 years ago

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For those who don't know they don't mean animal coyotes, They mean people paid to smuggle them over the border safely.

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Veterinary technician here.

Mine was being called in on ER while working general practice. Arrive at the hospital to assist on a c-section. One puppy was stuck and we were pretty sure it was gone already. Owner had not had any rads done and we had no idea how many to expect.

11 puppies later. All alive including the one that was stuck. Was a good night.

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I’m a district nurse and do all kinds of stuff, including palliative care. There was one patient (an elderly woman) who declined rather quickly, and went from having a visit every two weeks to multiple visits daily for pain relief. I was there for what turned out to be her last two days. She was mostly sedated, but her children were with her, and it was clear that they had all had a close relationship.

I came back at noon to check in and the family was anxious because her breathing had changed. We talked about what to expect, and then before I left, the patient rather suddenly began to have long pauses in her breathing. I decided to wait a little longer, and ended up sitting there with them while she died. Her three daughters were lying in bed with her and holding her hands, and it was a sunny day and the door was open out to the garden. After she died we washed and dressed her together. The whole experience was peaceful and bittersweet.

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When I was in EMT school my very first call I had ever gone on was a fall with a leg injury. I dont remember much from it but I still remember the patient just holding my hand while I was doing her vitals. The entire time she just complimented me it was honestly pretty heartwarming

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Volunteer EMT here

Somebody called 911 as they were driving when they saw two snowmobiles sitting in a field with two bodies lying next to them. Unwitnessed snowmobile collision in subzero temperatures? We're probably gonna end up dragging a pair of frozen corpses back to the truck. Hope neither of them is a child.

We had two ambulances and God-knows-how-many police cars cruising up and down the highway searching for this scene. The caller was still on the line, but he had kept on driving and was nowhere near the crash site. He was also unsure of exactly where he saw it--first he'd said it was near a church south of a certain intersection, but the only church on that stretch of road was *north* of that intersection. Meanwhile our victims are out there freezing to death.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, but was probably less than 30 minutes, somebody realized that a certain pile of debris about a quarter of a mile away from the road looked kind of like a couple of snowmobiles when viewed from a certain angle. Dispatch confirmed a few more details with the caller, and we were all relieved to find that the hopeless scene we were all dreading was actually just a pile of c**p some farmer left in his field months ago.

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in.love.with.taylor.swift

in.love.with.taylor.swift

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2 years ago

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phew!

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Firefighter here. When we run CPR calls, we rarely get a chance to really follow up with our patients. Where I work we do get updates if they made it out of the hospital or not, but that’s the end of it.

A few months ago we had a CPR save of a gentleman who had what we call a “widow maker” heart attack. It is a blockage of the LAD artery, the largest supplier of blood to the heart tissue itself. This type of heart attack has a very high rate of mortality associated, thus the nickname.

He was a huge success story and likely would not have made it without quick intervention (early CPR, early defibrillation) of bystanders and the EMS system. The part that makes this story one of the best days is that he flew his whole family out and they all came to the station to say thank you. It was incredibly rewarding to get to meet him and his family, and to hear about the changes he has made so far that are helping him to lead a better, healthier, and longer life. We very rarely get a chance to “close the loop” on a case like this.

I can’t say why this particular save was so impactful, but there was just something about seeing the whole system come together to save this one man that really made it the best. It’s great motivation to keep doing what we do every day!

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