This happened to me once, but was scary. I was eating mussels in a wine and butter sauce. I dipped the empty shell in and sipped a little of the sauce.
MY throat snapped shut and I couldn’t breath for 30 seconds, pretty terrifying. I started to breathe through my nose and tried to calm my mind, not an easy thing. Eventually it relaxed, I drank some water, and 5 minutes later resumed my meal just fine.
I’m a 57 yr old male and nothing remotely close to this has happened before.
I may have a slight hiatal hernia, undiagnosed. Sometimes the first bite of a meal gets stuck. I get up and walk around and can feel the muscles release. The food slides down and all is fine. I try to take a smaller bite, chew well, etc. It happens when I am talking to someone, or in a hurry.
The choking incident freaked my wife out, she thought I was dying. It crossed my mind too.
It is not uncommon to have stuff, especially liquids, “go down the wrong way”. It can happen with saliva, come to that. It is not usually as bad as you describe, but it can be. I am surprised that you would have reached 57 without experiencing this before.
I am not a doctor so I may be totally off base, but the wine may also have strongly irritated the your pharynx causing it to swell up. I notice that if I accidentally inhale a few drops of spicy soup I get a coughing fit to raise the dead, followed by slightly restricted breathing for a few minutes.
I’d think something else in the sauce irritated your throat causing this. I once had a tiny piece of cheese stick in my throat somewhere, driving me crazy for hours (probably 30 seconds). If I started to inhale my throat would close up, if I exhaled it would feel fine, until I inhaled again. My lungs were quickly running out of air that way. I was in a crowd of people and afraid if I drank something I’d spew it out over the crowd, so I ran towards a mens room and it dislodged on the way.
I’ve had other things stick to the back of my throat and give me that feeling, but they usually dislodge easily. I could see some bit of seasoning in the sauce, or a bit of mussel, or something that came out of one doing that to you.
Had the normal “down the wromg pipe” thing happen before, but never like this. It paralyzed something down there, I couldn’t breath for a solid 30 seconds. I felt as if my throat was snapped shut involuntarily, trying to breath and nothing going down.
Probably not an allergic reaction, I’ve eaten mussels and the classic wine/butter preparation many times before. Just something about it that night that caused my throat to snap shut.
I will be aware of it. Strangely enough, I did finish dinner that night which included several more mussels. It was the wine and butter sauce, a sip of it, that triggered the problem.
I was at an outdoor restaurant in Prague when this happened, 10:30 at night. I couldn’t imagine being rushed to a hospital in the Czech Republic. Several others had the same dish, no problems with them.
I think if it were allergic you would not have recovered so fast.
Every once in a while if I am eating a salad with vinaigrette that has too much pepper I will get one bite with the combination of vinegar and pepper that will cause a spasm in my throat. It is not so bad that I can’t breath, and it is quite different from choking or getting liquid into the windpipe. But it isn’t real comfortable. I drink a bunch of water and it relaxes in a minute.
BTW I also have a hiatal hernia and it’s way down below all this choking and gagging action
I experience something similar with a particular kind of soda(Bentley) that is a less sweet lime soda, sometimes something happens to trigger a coughing fit. I still drink it though
I did a search on the web and came across this thread.
I had something very similar happen to this weekend…I was at a wine tasting tour and was at the very first winery. My second sample wine was a pinot noir which I swirl in my glass and took a sip and was rolling it over my tongue for several seconds before swallowed. That’s when I coughed about 3 or 4 times and felt like I had something stuck in my throat. I could not breathe for about 45~60 seconds. I had somebody perform the Heimlich maneuver 4 or 5 times to no avail. The most effective thing was to hit me on the back repeatedly. I was able to regain breathing slowly after 5 or 6 short gasping breathes.
Very scary for me and everyone involved.
Any input on prevention or what took place is fully appreciated!
