Choking Not a False Alarm This Time

Advice to the public on how to use the Heimlich maneuver on a person with food lodged in his windpipe had become chiefly a matter of academic interest to me. Especially since my four children had grown up, and I no longer had the nagging, perpetual fear of potential disasters in which I must be ready to try to save their lives.

I was the type of father who slept with one eye open for years, lest I fail to hear the sounds of an emergency in the night. There was a time when I thought I would study how to do a homemade tracheotomy with whatever sharp instrument might come to hand, in case I had to act in a life-or-death crisis. But I didn’t, and all that diminished as the children grew up.

It didn’t really disappear, though, because I remember being teased regularly by the kids about my tendency to leap out of my chair at a restaurant at the first sound of a stranger’s cough from across the room. This became one of our family jokes. Sometimes, we practiced Heimlich maneuvers (which we later called Heimlichers and Gemeinlichers) more or less as horseplay.

But all this past became prelude recently during a restaurant emergency in which my wife’s life unexpectedly was in the balance, and my turn had come to act--and without delay. The experience taught us that restaurants don’t necessarily have people trained for choking emergencies; in California, restaurants are required only to display posters depicting the Heimlich maneuver.

We were in a Chinatown restaurant with two younger friends, sampling the array of dishes being piled before us. The meat in one of the recipes was quite tough and the pieces rather large, and there was not a knife in sight to cut them.

Suddenly, my wife, BeBe, grabbed the glass of water in front of her and drank. Almost as quickly, she coughed up the drink and began motioning to me that she was choking.

Without a Pause

As in all the false alarms that had amused the kids, I jumped up out of my chair without a pause. Around me, I recall, I had a flash of shocked faces of fellow diners and about half a dozen kitchen workers and waiters. What surprised me briefly, but later came with the force of amazed disbelief, is that most of the people who saw the tableau quickly turned away from the sight and appeared to pretend that nothing was happening.

I went behind my wife’s chair, reached around her body with both arms, clenched my hands together somewhere around the upper abdomen and gave a sudden, hard wrench. By all the precepts I had absorbed from the masters, the guilty morsel was to come flying out of the windpipe. But I saw nothing. I asked BeBe if she still were choking. She nodded with frenzy. Up until then, I was acting on reflex, feeling no emotion. But with the failure of the first attempt I was struck by a heavy dread.

A human cannot long be without oxygen, I knew. And, I realized: No one is helping me. It is up to me or she is going to die right here in this restaurant. I yanked again with my arms, more desperately. She shook her head, no. I wrenched again. No good. I was feeling the choking hand of fear myself. Afraid I was not getting at the right spot with the maneuver (the fear turned out to be justified, judging from pains that later showed up over her ribs), I urgently ordered BeBe to stand up. I glanced up to see a fellow diner, a sympathetic-looking man. He was encouraging me by clenching his own hands into a fist and duplicating the maneuver.

I put my arms around her again and pulled sharply. Again, to my urgent question, she indicated she still was unable to breathe.

Request for Help

Before trying again, I yelled, “Call an ambulance!” The one helpful diner dashed to the front desk of the restaurant to give the alarm.

I tried again.

“It’s OK now,” my wife gasped. The meat had been dislodged at last.

She sat down, relieved but covered with embarrassment for the scene. Out of some feeling of propriety and for the sake of our companions, we tried to resume dinner, but none of us wanted anything further. On the way out the door, I stopped to tell the manager or owner that none of his people had lifted a hand to help, and that no one had offered sympathy or asked afterward how my wife was feeling. I told him I would never re-enter the place. He looked embarrassed and said, incongruously, “Thank you.”

By the time we arrived home, I was feeling so shaken inside that I wouldn’t have been surprised to have a heart seizure. We didn’t have an easy time sleeping that night. After that, it was a matter of entering the new lore into the family receptors and receiving congratulations from the appreciative listeners.

I don’t think I will ever enter a restaurant with my former confidence that the personnel there have been trained to handle such emergencies. As of yore, I will be alert for signs of disaster, and, of course, I will not be counting on any outside help.