Whats the most Courageous thing you have ever done?

Go back to nursing at 44!

Seeing my mother die before my eyes. She died of cancer and we all spent the last month of her life by her side (every day). We all gathered around her and held onto her as she took her last breath.

It was the most difficult thing that I have ever been through.

I would have to say becoming a single mom at 19. I was scared to death, but did what I had to do to support us. I worked two jobs, money was tight, but it was so worth it. He is 23 now and is definitely a young man that I am proud of.

I haven’t done it yet.

I stood between a guy holding a loaded .45 revolver pointed at my best friends chest and my best friend…...
They guy pulled the trigger ; BUT the gun did NOT fire ..he got pissed and left with his buddies.

About an hour later, one of the guys , whom I knew also came back and told me that they had went down by the river and the gun fired EVERY time ..

Guess I had an angel looking after me that night….

Taking care of women in India who had TB and some other deadly illnesses. Sure, I wore gloves, but you never know. I was working with a lot of open, gnarly wounds. Even did a little minor surgery at one point.

I put the mask over my face, didn’t breathe through my nose, and just went in to help in any way that i could.

I saved someone from drowning once.

It was in the Winter, we were kids and playing on the frozen river. There was one of those huge sewer mouths where it’s all warm inside, so the ice around it was melted, leaving a pool of water.
My friend goes right on the edge and starts messing around…I stayed back.
But wouldn’t you know it, the ice broke under her feet and she fell in.
She actually got a good grip to get herself out, but was weakened by the sudden burst of cold water, plus huge bubble coats that get soaked end up pretty heavy…so, knowing the ice would probably bust under my feet just as much, I ran over there, grabbed her arm and pulled as hard as I could to yank her out. It took a bit of a while because I had trouble pulling and trying not to slip in there myself, but I managed.
We were lucky, as the ice didn’t break under all the weight.

I didn’t mean to “save” her though, although I was frightened as all hell, I was hoping that she could have made it out on her own. But she couldn’t, so I had to go all Superman.

It was pretty stupid rather than brave, but I actually had time to weight out the actions plus the possible consequences, so…and I also never learned how to swim.

You know what’s creepy though? This friend of mine should have had an older sister…but said sister had died a few years before my friend was born…by falling through thin ice and drowning.

We never told her mother about this, and spent hours drying her clothes up at a public club for youths we use to hang out at.

Taking the car away from my aged mother who was suffering from Alzheimer’s.

@SirGoofy Difficult and good for you. My mom gave it up herself, thank goodness.

Led a cub scout den for 4 years! I also saved a man who had drowned…that was scary!

I have had my moments of derring-do, but I would have to say that the thing I have done that took the absolute most courage was to do nothing at all.

To absolutely surrender to an inevitable situation where my every instinct was to keep fighting it down to the ground is the most courageous thing I have ever done.

One of our horses had a stillbirth a few summers ago.
She got upset and started kicking around and just getting very violent.
One of the girls who was cleaning stables was stupid and went in her stall and shut the door behind her. She tried to calm her down, but she was too upset about her baby. The girl started screaming so I had to run down to the barn and literally throw her out of the stall.

I let the horse out of the stall and she made a run for the field. I locked her in there for a few minutes then realized that she caused another horse to freak out.
I didn’t think about what I was doing and I ran into the field and flung myself on the other horse’s back and got him out of the field. He got mad that I was on him, and bucked me off into a fence.

She calmed down after a while, I got in trouble for throwing the girl and life went on.

@jmah, my experience was very similar to yours. My mom had dementia and breast cancer. My brother and I drove 200 miles (from different directions) one weekend a month for several years to see her, talk to her, have lunch with her, and sometimes she knew us, sometimes she didn’t. Sometimes she took her anger out on us, and many times I cried most of the way home. We took her to her doctor appointments, waited through surgery, and then in the end, waited up all night until the end. I’ll never regret any of it. It was the worst thing and at the same time the best thing.

I just have to say , is that courageous? Difficult, heartrending, but courageous? No, that’s your mom!!! You may not like doing it as I did not like my mom dying.

I haven’t done anything really courageous yet. The closest I can think of would be coming out of the closet, but quite honestly that wasn’t a very big deal for me, so it didn’t take a lot of courage. Telling my mother took a greater measure of courage, but nothing like the GAs above me. I did it because it is who I am, and because I don’t like to keep things about myself hidden for any reason – especially not fear.

@lfino, I know what you’re saying about it being the worst thing, and the best thing..

All that I wanted to do was pick her up and take her out of there. And leave all of the needles, tubes and other crap behind. I wanted her to be well.

Leaving home and all my friends behind for a small school in Virginia, 600 miles away from my house.

I spent many years in the U.S. Army in a combat MOS and have seen enough combat for two lifetimes. I have never done anything brave or courageous…but I have done a few stupid things that other people thought were brave or courageous. It was simply training, adrenaline and lack of time to think about the consequences. If I had thought about it instinct would have told me, “Well that would be a stupid phucking thing to do, don’t ya think?” It wasn’t until much later, after the smoke cleared and the dust settled, that my little inner voice would say, “WTF were you thinking, don’t try that shit again. You almost got us killed, ‘tard.” It was pure dumb luck, really.

Courage is different for everyone. @faye, it was courageous for me, and no she wasn’t my mom anymore. My mom had starting leaving about five years earlier when the dementia started taking over her brain. I didn’t know if mom would know me, or if I would be her sister again. I didn’t know if she would yell at me and prevent me from leaving her room. I didn’t know if my mom would ask me why she was at this place, and if was because she “had gone crazy”. We had to lie to my mom just to get her out of her own house because there was no way she otherwise would have left. She had also developed paranoia, not uncommon with dementia, and had a fear of leaving her house. We moved her to a wonderful place, and I will always be forever grateful for those people, but we always had to act happy, so she would hopefully pick up on those emotions and also be happy. She never stopped asking how much longer it would be until she could go home again.

Every now and then, in her clear moments, she’d remember that my dad had died and ask if he was gone, and then would get incredibly sad. She’d also forget every day that she had breast cancer until she realized again that she didn’t have one of her breasts anymore due to the mastectomy.

Do you know how fun that is to be with the person that remembers daily that either her spouse has died or you have cancer? My dad had died several years earlier, but to her, it was a fresh new hurt every time. Yes, it took a ton of courage and there were times that I would have done anything at all to have my mom back.

@lfino you’re right, what you went through took much courage