I love reading dramatic stories about people taking risks to save someone else’s life – the courage of firemen running into a blaze or doctors who work quickly to save the life of someone in a critical state.
Jaime Thurston says: “With just the things in your body, you can save a life. It doesn’t get much kinder than that!” Jaime Thurston, Kindness the little thing that matters most
You don’t have to have any special training or even risk your own life to help save a life – giving blood is a great example of how we can all be life-savers. We can all carry an organ donor card so that we can help others in the event of our own death.
And there are so many other ways our bodies can help others while we are alive. If you are a mother producing more milk than your own baby needs, you can donate milk to be used in neonatal units for sick and premature babies. Did you know you can even donate your umbilical cord after birth – the stem cells it contains can help treat a number of conditions. Or perhaps you could go on a first aid course so you know what to do if someone is choking or has a heart attack.
In 2017, my daughter wanted to do acts of kindness for her birthday. One of the things she did was to donate her hair to the Little Princess Trust to make a wig for a child who had cancer. Not exactly ‘life saving’ but we hope it made a huge difference to someone who was very sick.
A physio friend of mine recently went on some professional development training to deal with choking. A few days later her own child was choking on something and she was able to act quickly to save his life. She has now run a number of training sessions for parents in her local community at The Hub at Castle Point, as she saw the impact that this relatively simple skill could have.
How can you use your body or skills to help save a life? Is this the week to finally get round to giving blood?