HERO - Me, Myself and I! :)

well, a non weight loss blog today, but still ALL ABOUT ME! And something I should be very proud of!

This morning, getting ready to go do my supervising, I could smell smoke. hubby could smell smoke. Nowhere in our house could we see any signs of fire and no smoke anywhere.
Hubby walks over to neighbours house, then returns.
Informs me that he can smell smoke over there AND the smoke alarm is going off. I asked if he knocked on the door...and his reply "no, i don't know them!"

So i ran over there, hear the smoke alarm, but worse...the smell! OMG it was just horrible.
I am banging on the door, calling out, run to the windows, bang bang bang.

My neighbour is an odd old lady, hard as nails, the most amazing family who visit her EVERY day and her grandson has lived there since her husband died. She swears like a trooper, sleeps late, stays up late...you would think she was an 18year old!!!

Even though I couldn't hear anybody, and at her age she doesn't drive so no car in the driveway, I just KNEW she was home, but no answer to my calls. the grandson has a car but leaves for work early, so he wasn't there. I ran home called the fire dept. I was almost in tears!

I then ran back over there and banged on the door again.
I hear this "Who are you? What do you want?"
so i tell her it is her neighbour and i was worried about the smell of smoke and her smoke alarm going off.
She replies "Why are you here?"
"Because there is smoke" at this stage I am coughing because the smoke coming from her house is SHOCKING!
She opens the door and the smoke just rolls out.
Turns out she left the pot on the hot plates ALL night. Burnt the entire pot and filled the kitchen with black smoke. She heard me knocking, then heard the smoke alarm. Didn't know what the beeping noise was so ignored it. And was expecting me to be her daughter and couldn't be bothered getting out of bed!
She eventually got out of bed a little bit after i knocked on the windows, but i had run back to my house to make the phone call.

She told me to cancel the fire dept which i told her they come and check everything anyway, they wont cancel a job once it is called in. And thank goodness too! When they arrived, 4 men jumped out of the truck, 2 more out of the car thing. And even the oldies were hot! They ran in there like the movies, even though I told them it wasn't an emergency. They had to check the walls and look for points of entry into the roof cavities etc...to see if any sparks may have gotten into the roof and we just couldn't see it. They also assess how much smoke damage.

They were very surprised she didn't wake up after the fire alarm! And i felt guilty for ringing them when she was ok, but they reassured me I did the right thing. No waste of time! They also couldn't believe how she was happy to stay in the house with all the smoke!
I still felt like a bit of a tool for calling.
But
In hindsight, if i didn't bang on the window, she wouldn't have woken up. What then??? OMG! I didn't even know her name (I do now) and i have lived next door to her for 4 years. And she could have died! If I hadn't gone over there, but knew there was smoke...how much guilt would I feel?

Now I am very concerned about her. She told me she hoped her daughter didn't find out because she was so embarrassed. She then said, "Do you have a child? I think I see some man come and get her sometimes. Who is that man?" I am thinking...OMG some strange man is getting my child??? She says"He drives one of the cars that is always in the driveway"..."Oh that would be her dad! My husband!"

Now I am not a doctor, nurse or other health care worker, but to me, I am sensing that old age is truly setting in and maybe a little memory loss, dementia? is coming. I hope not, but if it is, and she doesn't tell her daughter what happened...how bad can it get until they sense something?
Her daughter does visit every day, and if she came today I am sure she would have smelt the smoke. I was out all day at work, so wasn't here to see her.

So now I must catch the daughter on one of her visits, give her my phone number if she ever wants someone to just pop over and see if she is ok or if she needs me. I hope I can catch her sooner rather then later.

But in the mean time, I will go to sleep knowing that today I saved someone's life. Today, I am a HERO!