An unusual survival situation in a man's own home: potentially fatal, and yet with people all around -- almost, but not entirely, out of earshot. Lots of useful takeaways here, the first being the power of tenacity.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/07/27/...ke-in-bathroom/

Water from a toilet bowl and thoughts of his family kept a 62-year-old Dawson Creek, B.C., man alive for a week when a stroke left him partially paralyzed on his bathroom floor.

“You can only yell for a couple hours and you lose your voice,” he said. “You get too tired to yell.”

Realizing his best chances of being heard were in the early mornings and evenings when his neighbours were leaving for or returning from work and were outside in the parking lot, Adsley said he waited for those windows of opportunity.

At the end of Day 4, Adsley ran out of water because he couldn’t reach the lever to flush the toilet. He continued to yell.

“Even though I felt I probably wasn’t going to make it, [it] didn’t mean that I was not going to try,” he said. “I was going to try. It was just a matter of trying to see if my strategy of calling when people were going to work was going to work.”

Wow, poor guy! Glad it had a positive outcome. It does show you the power of never giving up, but aside from just taking better care of yourself (eg not smoking 2 packs a day, trying to stay fit, etc) not much more you can do to prepare for something like that. It must be agonizing to be so completely trapped but so tantalizing close to many people.

Good illustration of why it's a good reason to keep tabs on family members who live alone. Or for those who live alone to have some kind of system in place so that if they don't check in every day, that someone will notice and check on them. Works like letting someone know where you're heading to hike and when you're ETA.

Bet those three kids feel awful that their dad was alone and suffering when they might have worked out some way to be alerted.

For example, Grandpa or that elderly relative can send a goofy daily joke or answer a few lines of daily inspiraton if talking on the phone every day is excessive. Lets someone know that all is o.k. -- or NOT!