I saved a life.
// Purpose
There is a Mark Twain quote which I love and which has become prevalent for me and it’s..
“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why”.
I was born 14 November 1980 and I think the second date for me is 07 September 2014.
The last ten years have been somewhat of a blur since that date and I can honestly say that most years since (including this one) have come and passed without much thought but this year, on September 7th, I got a text to remind me of the fact that it’s been 10 years since that day and I can’t believe it.
You see, the 7th September 2014 had started like any other and it ended in the most spectacular of ways - ways I can’t really put into context but today, there is a man walking around on this planet who is still alive and gets to see his children grow up because of me.
And thats special.
// Life at the time.
10 years ago, I wasn’t married. I wasn’t even in a relationship.
I was single and ‘working things out’ in my best Sex in the City kinda way, I was spending a lot of time working out, eating really poorly (mainly just tuna and rice because of the protein and the gains) and I was enjoying seeing my friends regularly but I can say that I had no real purpose in life.
My job was going nowhere really, I was still just a bumbling sales rep, turning up at gone 10am and finishing by 3pm and doing enough to get by - I was being paid at the end of every month, earning a little commission and I was doing fine..
I was yet to meet Tina (we met in the November so not too far down the line) and I was still living in Gosport - I wouldn’t move to Poole for another 6-8 months which is when life settles down for me.
Poole is now my home and it’s been the place I have lived in for the longest time - I was a bit of a nomad before, In the three years prior to moving back to Gosport, I had lived in Basingstoke, Ipswich, Camberley and Fareham.. It had been ten years since I’d left the Army (I left that in 2005) and for the longest time, I didn’t know what I was doing.
But after that and 10 years ago, I was starting to find my feet as I lived in a one bedroom house.
The house was small but it was made to be mine - I had a small lounge which has a small kitchen set back into it and in my lounge was a set of (very creaky) stairs which wound upstairs to the main bedroom and bathroom area - the bathroom had a standard white unit set up with a sink, toilet and a bath, very basic and the bedroom was, well - big enough to hold a double bed and on one end, it had a set of wardrobes complete with mirrored doors.
The house was owned by my best friend at the time, Lee who was living with his, then girlfriend Kellie in Portsmouth.
Lee and I had been friends for years - we met at a small pub in the south called the ‘Belle Vue’ (which has long since been demolished) in the mid 1990’s and had been friends ever since.
(Check out the Belle Vue here for nostalgic reasons)
// Shock
The 7th September 2014 was a Sunday.
I’d woken up, bleary eyed and hungover and had spent the previous night (the 6th for those of you that can’t work it out) out with girls and partying - I’d got home in the early hours of the 7th and hadn’t really given much thought to what I was doing on the 7th.
The 7th September was pretty standard for me back then, I’d wake up - get some food and then sit around watching TV until I fell asleep and then went to work on the Monday.
I was planning on doing the same.
But I had a whole afternoon to kill and I text Lee to see what he was up too - I can’t remember exactly but I think he was up to something in the afternoon and I remember texting him back saying ‘I’ll pop over in the evening for a cuppa, we have a lot to discuss, you can’t say no as it’s a matter of life or death’.
Never had I been more prophetic.
I met up with Lee in the early evening and we made a cuppa (that’s Lee’s go to drink of choice in the absence of any beer) and we sat in his garden on some flimsy PVC chairs.
His girlfriend Kellie joined us - Kellie was 8 months pregnant at the time with their first child and was beginning to feel the strain of the pregnancy. Having had my son in 2006, I was experienced in the art of pregnancy (I say this with the biggest tongue in cheek) and knew she was about to get the swollen ankles and all the wonderful things that happen in the final month.
We were sat in the garden, on a rare sunny September afternoon in Portsmouth like any other day and then it happened.
Lee stood up, his eyes went wide, he made a very strange sound as he took an intake of breath and he fell back onto the concrete floor.
As he fell, I stood up to catch him and he collapsed into my arms. His eyes rolled into the back of his head and he stopped breathing.
Fuck.
// Collapse
When you join the Army, first aid, CPR and the recovery position are all rammed into you from the very start and by the end of basic training, it becomes a second nature.
I want to say that when Lee collapsed that I leapt into action and the CPR began immediately because he was suffering from a cardiac arrest but he’d just collapsed.
No signs to say what was wrong.
No history of any heart problems.
No machine or doctor around to let you know what to do.
I was by myself, in a garden with my best friend who had collapsed and with his pregnant girlfriend (who at this point had begun panicking) - it was mental.
The next 45 minutes are a total blur but I know that I did indeed begin CPR with the help of the call handler who was very helpful and very calm.
I did remain calm in those 45 minutes and I did do repeated chest compressions - breaking Lee’s ribs in the process and I did manage to keep him alive but it was horrendous.
When you carry out CPR, you don’t actually need to do the breath part (and I didn’t) and in the movie, the body lays completely still whilst you’re doing the compressions and the people in the movies lay on their backs with their neck’s nicely tilted whilst you work away but in reality, this isn’t the case.
You see (and I should do a disclaimer or something if your worried about graphic descriptions) when the body is fighting for life, it has spasms and it tries to breathe and the body makes awful noises when it tries to do this.
As you’re pushing down (hard) on someone’s chest to keep the heart pumping blood around the body, the body fights hard to draw in oxygen and as it does this, the chest tightens up.
As you’re reading this, take in a deep breath through your nose and you’ll notice how your chest expands and becomes tight and if you’re conscious, you can see how someone pushing down hard on your chest would mean you would exhale and you’d empty your lungs.
But when you’re unconscious and fighting for breath, fighting for your life, the body breathes in and holds onto that breath with every muscle - it literally fights back to keep you from compressing the chest, so you have to work and press harder and harder.
As you do press down hard, the body exhales the breath and you hear a loud, involuntary groan and the eyes roll back and the whole process continues.
This routine went on for around 25-30 minutes - the compressions, the breaths, the fighting and groaning and the involuntary spasms caused by a body fighting for it’s life and when I eventually looked up, the garden was full of people.
Neighbours, friends, family and passers by who had been dragged in off the street by a frantic Kellie - anyone who she thought could help.
And then, 35-40 minutes into what felt like an eternity - the sound of sirens.
The welcome sight of two humans dressed in green uniforms, carrying oxygen and rushing through the back doors.
// Life
When the two paramedics (and then a few moments later, a doctor) arrived, I was in shock.
I had been doing chest compressions with the call handler for around 35-40 minutes and I was exhausted. As the paramedics set up around me, one of them grabbed me and said they’d take over and I stood up, wandered around for 2-3 minutes in a daze and then sat back down next to Lee’s head.
They asked that I do breaths with a small plastic globe thing as they took over the compressions and hooked Lee up to drips and monitors - they hung the drip up on the fence and they had the electric shock paddles set up in a few minutes..
“CLEAR”…
They shocked him..
Continuation of chest compressions…
“CLEAR”…
Again, another shock.
And then they set up a machine which did the chest compressions for them - a kind of robotic arm which pressed down (faster than any of us were doing it) and kept that pace up.
The doctor came in and began administering various things.. sticking on monitors and within seconds, they had Lee on a stretcher and were carrying him through the house and into the waiting ambulance.
Then…
Life. Wonderful, rich, glorious life.
Not in a ‘I’ll wake up and thank everybody, say I’m ok and get off the stretcher’ kind of life but life in the sense that Lee woke up, struggled with the paramedics as they got hiim into the ambulance, vomited and then was sedated but hey, it was life.
As we moved back into the garden, with sticky pads from monitors lying around and discarded caps for syringes laying on the floor, it was eerily slient.
// Next
The next few hours were a blur and to be honest, as I was in shock, I don’t remember that much of it - I know that we went to the hospital to see Lee and he was induced into a coma to get some rest and to try and allow the body to heal and in the relatives room, I shook his Dad’s hand, gave his mum a hug and saw his brothers but the drive back home was weird.
My one bedroom house felt empty even though I was the only one living there.
I don’t think I got that much sleep that night as the adrenaline was surging through my body and I didn’t go to work the next day.
I went to see my mum and explained what had happened, she came round and made me some tea and she cleaned up the dirty bowls of rice and tuna from the days before.
It was the lull after the storm and it was just like time had paused and everything was in limbo.
Until he woke up.
And wake up he did.
There was always a risk that Lee could have suffered some form of brain damage (and he won’t mind me saying that he was probably a little damaged before) but he woke up and when he came out of the coma, he was fine. He was cracking jokes with the nurses and he was trying his best to get extra cups of tea.
The press came around and wanted to write a story about the incident (which we duly posed for and spoke about) and then life went back to how it was.
Lee has a small device in his chest nowadays which will shock him if he ever suffers a cardiac arrest again - he will happily let you touch the matchbox sized device which lives just below his left shoulder and for the last 10 years, he’s done just that.
// Meaning
The whole incident could mean something.
I know it certainly means something to Lee and his family as he’s been allowed to create 10 years worth of more memories and he’s had more children but to me, it’s something I did. (I don’t mean that to sound flippant)
That fateful day was special - I saved my best friends life by pounding on his chest repeatedly until help arrived. I believe Lee and I were supposed to meet back in 2008, I believe we were supposed to be friends for years and I believe that I was supposed to be the one to save his life.
Lee was 32 when he collapsed and with no prior heart conditions, no little funny wobbles or chest pain, no fainting or any warning signs - he could have died that day but he didn’t.
Life is so short and so precious - it can be taken away with no prior warning, every day could be your last and there is absolutely no way of knowing what is going to happen so you have to live every single day in the best way you can.
Looking back, September 7th 2014 is a stark reminder of life’s fragility and the profound impact one moment can have on our entire existence.
Saving Lee’s life was a crystallization of all the unpredictable, sometimes chaotic forces that shape our destinies.
The lessons I take away from that night are numerous but it’s taught me that even in the midst of a mundane routine or a wild night out, we are all just a heartbeat away from something monumental.
Every person we meet, every experience we have, and every choice we make carries the potential to alter the course of our lives and others'.
For me, it was a reminder that purpose often reveals itself in the most unexpected ways, and that sometimes, being in the right place at the right time can become a life-defining moment.
As I reflect on the last 10 years, I am filled with gratitude for that day, for the chance to make a difference, and for the reminder to live each day with intention and presence.