Back in November of '13, a chicken bone got caught in my throat at church. It didn’t choke me-- I could still breathe-- but it was stuck down there. Went to the hospital. On the way to the hospital, it turns out, I coughed it back up, but it still felt like it was down there so I went to the ER just to be sure. Sure enough, it had been dislodged by that cough. But I was well-treated for three, four hours while they ran some tests.
I choked on a fish cake in the cafeteria when I was in grade school. I couldn’t cough it up so I started walking towards the head of the long lunch table towards the teacher. About halfway there, I knew I wasn’t going to make it so I smacked Jennifer Morris in the back of the head (she of the white-blonde pigtails). I saw her jump up in a panic and then I don’t remember what happened. I think I would have remembered the Heimlich, so somebody probably just whacked me on the back.
Or I died like Tripolar.
AnotherKari mentioned not going into a restaurant bathroom when choking. I have a sad story that illustrates that point. Last year a co-worker of mine, a young woman who was one of the smartest and friendliest people I’ve ever worked with, did that while choking on a piece of meat, presumably because she was embarrassed about causing a scene. She was found in a stall some minutes later and lapsed into a coma on her way to the hospital. She never awoke from it and died four months later. She was 25 years old.
Wow- back in the early 90’s I worked at the front desk of a hotel and was eating carrot sticks and joking with a coworker. I started cough/laughing and she commented, “hey, don’t choke, I don’t know how to do the Heimlich” which I thought was hilarious and caused me to suck in a breath and I DID start to choke on an inhaled carrot sliver. My eyes widened and she shrieked that she didn’t know what to do so I grabbed the phone and dialed Security but remembered I couldn’t breathe or talk! The front desk was for a pretty busy casino frequented by locals, so there were plenty of people around. I paced the back office freaking out and security busted in and started throwing me around like a ballerina as I slowly started to black out. Finally, one of the casino floor men came in and pounded my back and I was able to cough it out. My mother was on shift there in the casino and was called back to the reservation office. I burst into tears as soon as she walked in.
Oddly enough, right about the time this thread was started, I went through a period of about a year where I choked three different times. Each time, I was able to work it loose, and I developed a fatalism that I was going to die by choking at pretty much any time.
Hasn’t happened again since.
Still dead after all these years.
Does anyone still make those petite-size ones? I used to get those at Target (they had both the name brand and their in-house brand, both of them in both the standard horse-pill size and the petite size). Then they discontinued the petite sizes of both the name brand and the store brand.
And given that the same dosage can be put into the petite-size pill, why do they make the horse pills in the first place? They are kinda hard to swallow – I’m thinking of experimenting with breaking them into little pieces to take them.
I’m really skeptical about anyone, while choking, heading off the the bathroom to die in private. I don’t think a choking person could make it that far.
After a lifetime of eating them without any problem, a few years ago I started frequently finding myself inhaling pork rinds. Not big stick-in-your-trachea-and-suffocate-you pieces, but more like inhaling dry pork rind dust deep into my lungs, triggering a really unpleasant, deep, painful eye-watering cough as my lungs fight to eject the foreign matter.
I still eat them, but very cautiously, trying to be very conscious of how I breath and doing my best to be certain I have closed my throat while I chew.
No other food triggers the same reaction, even dry, crumbly foods like crackers and whatnot. Something about pork rinds…
Perhaps a cite would help?
It’s a Guyana newspaper, but I doubt the phenomenon is confined to a particular country.
I’ve choked the worst on liquids that went down my air pipe. Miserable and scary feeling.
Come close to choking on food but thankfully it never got lodged in my throat. I make a point to eat slowly and chew thoroughly. But I get distracted every once in awhile and get chocked up on food. Seems to happen less frequently as I’ve gotten older.