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A Salt Lake City man is recovering in the hospital this morning after spending several days lying in a bathtub, hoping someone would find him.
The 82-year-old man was discovered this morning in his home near 400 East and Milton Avenue. He told the neighbor who found him that he slipped and fell on Friday and had been waiting for help ever since. Firefighters say had it not been for his attentive neighbors, the man could have died.
Lou Beddow's neighbor, Cindy, discovered him inside the tub. She says she became worried about him after realizing she had not seen dog tracks in the snow. She had a spare key to his house and went over to check on him this morning. When she found him, he was sprawled out with his legs over the tub.
Another neighbor told KSL that Beddow has lived alone for years. He says he's a retired postal worker who walks his dog at least five times a day.
David Peters said, "He talks about how old he is getting all the time, when it's his time to go, but he's hung in there a long time."
Beddow told neighbors that he survived by drinking the tap water from the bathtub. He was transported to St. Mark's Hospital in serious condition.
The firefighters who responded say they're really not sure how long Beddow was in the tub. They say they were most concerned about compression injuries, where the body shuts down after lying in one position for too long.
Scott Freitag, with the Salt Lake City Fire Department, said, "He may not have had initial injuries when he went down, but being down for that long, we worry about severe internal injuries that once we start moving him around would manifest themselves."
This is the second time in two days we have seen something like this. On Tuesday, a woman was found stuck upside down in a vent, where she'd been for 30 hours. In both cases, the victims could have died had someone not been aware of their daily habits.
Freitag says Beddow and the Ogden woman are lucky the outcome was what it was. He says this is a good example of why it is so important to keep an eye on your neighbors.
E-mail: spark@ksl.com