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A Close Call

That was interesting: I almost died last night. Went out with a friend to dinner and a concert, and at the restaurant swallowed a piece of corn wrong (it was embedded in cornbread) and choked. As in completely choked: no air was getting through at all.

She tried to do the Heimlich maneuver, but she wasn’t practiced at it and quickly realized it wasn’t working. So she called for help. Luckily, a strapping young woman at a nearby table did have some experience with the maneuver. She got up and took over, and after some effort managed to dislodge the food from my windpipe. About in the nick of time: I was on the verge of passing out.

It was very weird. When it became clear that my friend’s efforts were not going get the stuff out of my throat, I decided this was it: I was going to die.

And it just didn’t seem like that big a deal. I didn’t feel panicked, I didn’t feel scared, I didn’t feel desperate. The thought that entered my mind as I was about to lose consciousness was “So this is what it’s like to die.”

After I failed to die, everyone went on about their business. We all sat back down to dinner. I didn’t feel like eating (mostly because my throat hurt), but everyone else finished their meals.

And we went to a spectacular performance of Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil by the combined Phoenix and Kansas City Chorales. The effect was quite noumenal, under the circumstances.

Today I’m none the worse for wear, except for a bruised or possibly fractured rib. Am supposed to go in to the doctor next week for a check-up. Just in case.

12 thoughts on “A Close Call”

  1. Good grief! I’m so glad someone knew what they were doing (and now you’ve got me scared that I couldn’t do the Heimlich when needed); thank goodness we didn’t lose you over a bite of food! :/ Hope your ribs heal up soon.

  2. I think everybody should take a course and also have a refresher now and again. Surely YMCAs must teach this. My friend had learned it at the office but it was a very long time ago.

  3. Thank goodness, your rescuer knew what she was doing! I personally don’t have a clue when it comes to the Heimlich. Glad you could still enjoy the concert afterwards. Hope your ribs check out alright.

  4. Wow…kinda makes ya think…Something as simple as a piece of bread going the wrong way….and poof ….that’s it…Never gonna look at cornbread the same way again. Glad you pulled thru!!!

  5. p.s. I had to look up nounenal, I now hate you, since part of the definition
    on merriam-webster included this “from neuter of present passive participle of”, never have “gotten” participles.

    Thanks for the word look-up, but I’m pretty sure I will not be using it.
    Again, glad you are ok and hope the rib[s] are just bruised.

    • LOL! Noumenal is “a thing as it is in itself, not perceived or interpreted, incapable of being known, but only inferred from the nature of experience.” The Romantics used it as in Wordsworth’s “Intimations of Immortality” to suggest a sense of the Unseen, the eternal, or the divine.

      Now a “noumenon”…hmmm. Whatever that is, I don’t think I want to know about it.

  6. Wow, glad you are okay! Stories of fragility of life, and by the same account stories of non-fragility (i.e. babies that fall tremendous heights only to survive) always provide me with anxious feelings. Just so much out of our control.

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