I Can Handle An Emergency (Even When it's Not Yet an Emergency)

[sroni]

 
So, this afternoon we went to a Chinese restaurant and it was lovely. But I wound up kind of choking on some food. I say “kind of choking” because I could still breathe. I could feel myself wanting to freak out, but I forced my throat to remain relaxed and I kept breathing. I tried to kind of work the food back up, because it really hadn’t gone very far, but it wouldn’t move. I tried swallowing it the rest of the way, and that just made it worse. At this point, it was beginning to get difficult to breathe, so I tried to cough it up and wound up gagging it up instead. I’d already thought through what I was going to do if this failed (signal to Spouse, who was sitting right next to me, and if that failed, use the chair to give myself the Heimlich; I know how but I really don’t want to do that if I don’t have to because it hurts). Luckily, the cough/gag worked.

It was odd, because people expect me to not handle things well in an emergency, but so far, every emergency I’ve had, I’ve remained fairly calm and collected each time.

Comments

[sroni.livejournal.com]

I think that I would have been more afraid if I really truly couldn't breathe? I mean, breathing wasn't exactly easy, but I learned a long time ago that if I'm choking on something (or even if someone is choking me - I learned this in self-defense and judo, not by actually being attacked and choked, I promise) that a lot of the time, if I can just focus on being relaxed and breathing through my nose, I can handle it a lot better than if I panic.

If I hadn't been able to cough-gag the bite of food up, I might have started to get scared. As it was, I remember thinking "Okay, you can still breathe, so this is okay. I can't get it back up by working my throat. Okay. But I can still breathe, so I'm okay. Let's try swallowing. That made it worse. I can still breathe, so I'm okay. Don't panic. Stay calm. You're okay. You can do this. Breathing's a little harder. That's okay, you can still breathe. We're going to try coughing and see if that does it, and if not, get Spouse's attention and if that doesn't work, Heimlich on the chair, that's going to suck but it should work. You can breathe, you can do this, you're okay."