You are a hero!! I hope they write you up for the interoffice newsletter (and give you a medal) and a cash reward!
Well Done!
Maybe instead of a medal, which would be cool though, you can suggest the company arrange a small medical class at work that can teach things like CPR, abdominal thrusts and basic first aid.
They have them every couple years at my work. We also have a defibrillator and they had classes on that as well as CPR classes.
We also have classes on fire extinguisher usage. A lot of people think these classes are dumb but a first response to help someone may make the difference in the time it takes an ambulance to get there.
Excellent idea. Make sure they teach how to self-Heimich.
Darn. They never taught me that in Rd Cross training. I could have used that when I was choking to death and only knew how to Heimlich someone else.
The Red Cross training programs are lifesavers, but they are ridiculous in one way: every year or so, they will announce that something we learned last year is now totally obsolete and that we should forget all about it and do it THIS way instead. I thought about it when bbs2k said that the Heimlich shoudl officially be called something else.
IMHO that is totally counterproductive. If you teach people something this year only to ask them to forget what they learned next year, because doing it a different way is supposed to be marginally better, all you do is confuse people and leave them feeling insecure in an emergency.
So what did you do?
I was taught it when I was a teen, in an advanced swimming class. Basically the idea is to throw yourself at the corner of a table. Sounds damn hard (and painful), but I suppose whatever ribs you break are well worth avoiding death.
Just wanted to add that it is always helpful to know the self-heimlich not just for yourself, but with the growing number of obese and morbidly obese people out there – it could save their life. My husband is not obese or mo, but he is quite large compared to me – both times that I have had to give him the Heimlich, I had to do a modified version of the self-heimlich on him (in other words, thrusts from the front), as I could not get enough force in the thrusts from behind him.
The most important thing about knowing the heimlich or the self-heimlich, though is remaining calm. My husband knew how to do both, but he was a bit panicked both times that he began choking. Hopefully, I have impressed upon him how important it is to only take 1 large pill at a time since then, but one never knows.
See upthread. A mechanic who just happened to come by saved my life. I probably wouldn’t have typed this if he hadn’t.
Even typing this makes me quasy…I could so easily have died. Going from alive and busy and munching some candy while reading a report, to dead and cold. In under ten minutes. In my own home. On a ordinary Thursday afternoon. If I hadn’t had the presence of mind, when I started choking, to open the door of my apartment and go to the landing so there wouldn’t have been a locked door between myself and whoever came up…if only…
:: shudder::
Ah, got it. I misread.
That is really fucking frightening.