Several weeks ago, the Ellen Family embarked upon our family vacation south. We were traveling down Interstate 75, and nearing the Kentucky border with Tennessee (only about two hours into the trip) when we hit a massive traffic jam. Both lanes going south were at a near standstill. We crept along for nearly 90 minutes and traveled only 5 miles.
About this time, we switched off the air-conditioning, afraid the engine might overhead. The kids were being fairly good, but everyone was sick of sitting there, staring at nothing and getting nowhere near the beach any time soon. I had my feet stuck out the window, getting a head start on my leg tan.
Suddenly, the passenger side door of the minivan ahead of us pops open and out jumps a woman carrying a baby of about 7 or 8 months. I’m naturally looking at her and wondering what’s going on, but hubbie says, “Look, there’s something wrong with the guy in the back of the van.” Sure enough, I can see I guy sort of flailing away, perhaps having convulsions of some sort.
I hesitate. I was an EMT, but I took the instruction almost 20 years ago – and besides I’m no longer certified. However, I am current in CPR. Can I help? I take about 2 seconds deciding and hop out of the car.
The woman with the baby is screaming hysterically. I ask the others in the van to please hold her back. An older man (maybe 55-60) is struggling to get the middle van seat out of the way in order to get to the guy in the back, who turns out to be a 19 or so year old young man. I tell him I’ll get the carseat, he can work on getting the middle seat moved. I get it out, but apparently the middle seat won’t move out of the way. We open the back of the van and he works on getting him over the back of the seat. I run around to the back of the van to pull him out.
The older guy pushes the young man (whose name, I realize is Jason, since his mother, the one with the baby, is screaming it hysterically) over the seat, and I grasp him behind the shoulders and pull him free. The mother tunes up another notch. He’s got some vile fluid running down the front of his shirt and still is twitching/slightly convulsing. I drag him to the median.
Laying him on his back, I tilt back his head to make sure the airway is straight (as we are taught to do) and lean in close, to determine if he is breathing. He is. So of course his heart is beating (if he’s breathing, after all) so no CPR is going to be necessary. However, he is quite unresponsive and still flopping around a bit. What’s wrong?
I tilt his head to the side and pry open his mouth and take a peek inside. Inside is a huge fat wad of chewing tobacco, seeping in the most horrid fashion out of his mouth and all over his clothes. Contrary to what his mother thought, he wasn’t leaking some brown vital juice, he was just dribbling his chew.
So now what. This is where I yell for someone to get an ambulance. He is unconscious but breathing; there is nothing more I can do for him. He is still heaving somewhat and quite unresponsive. “Has he been drinking?” I asked a couple times. “No ma’am, he has NOT,” the guy tells me. I tend to believe him; no aroma of alcohol. “Has he been smoking pot or anything?” “No, MA’AM!” comes the answer. Hm.
Someone says, “why not do the Heimlich?” Since he’s not choking there’s really no need, but I was worrying some of that tobacco might be stuck in his throat anyway. I couldn’t get much out of his mouth; I was afraid of getting bitten.
I haul him up and attempt to get my hands in the proper position. It’s difficult since he is too semi-conscious to stand. It’s not going to work. If someone is choking, they’re usually conscious and you can stand behind them – or put them in a chair. Out here in the median, no chair, nothing.
So the father figure takes over and gives his stomach a mighty heave, then another. Then another. And then it happens – it all comes up. Evil brown tobacco juice just boiling forth from his stomach.
And it all becomes clear. In the traffic slowdown, our boy Jason, no doubt bored by the trip and even more bored by the delay, keeps stuffing in the 'baccy until he overdoses on the stuff. He literally did. He chomped his way into unconsciousness right there on Interstate 75.
Once the puking ease up, he seems to be coming to. “He’s going to be FINE,” I assure the weeping mother “No more t’baccy for YOU” says Dad.
By now, traffic is beginning to move again. Once during the episode, I told hubbie to go back and tell the children it’s OK. I’m imagining they’re scared, and my daughter at least was. After it was all over, she burst into tears.
Anyway, I repeat my assurances all will be fine and urge them to turn around in the median and head back towards the last exit and to the hospital. They tell me they will and thanks me muchly. I jump into the van and off we go.
Ow, my leg hurts. My shins are COVERED with scratches and a horrible bruise is coming up on my calf. You think the median is soft and grassy? No, it’s filled with sharp gravel and prickly hard grass. I don’t know how I got the bruise, but that gravel and grass scratched the hell out of my legs. And guess what? Tobacco juice was all over my white T-shirt! (It did come out in the wash, miraculously.)
So, was I really a heroine? It was the dad, after all, who purged his son. All I did was check to make sure nothing was really wrong. I was happy I felt confident enough to act in an emergency, though I was baffled throughout much of it, since I couldn’t really find anything wrong. I just knew he was in drug-induced unconsciousness, however – but who woulda thought it was TOBACCO??
