December 7, 2008

• Thanks anyway, Dr. Heimlich.

  Just before 1 AM today, I was asleep in my bed in the corner of the front room, and Doug was on the couch next to the woodstove that takes up the center of this big room that makes up most of our living space.  He had cooked some ramen (the kitchen is the other end of the same room), and was eating.  He might have been playing Fallout 3 on the Xbox, too.  He often doesn’t stop playing to eat.

  The sound of his cough woke me.  Without sitting up, I asked if he was okay.  The only answer was more coughing/choking noises.  I was on my feet before I knew it, reaching out toward him, asking, “Can I …?”  Before I’d gotten out the word, “help,” he was on his feet, turning away from me, facing the woodstove.  Instead of, “help,” I said, “Heimlich,” reached around him, put my left fist under his diaphragm, grabbed it in in my right hand, and pulled.

  One thrust was enough to clear his airway.  While he went for a paper towel and cleaned up the ramen he had spewed, he said he had never been so frightened in his life, and admitted that he probably hadn’t chewed that bite well enough.  Ever the mother, I said, “Chew your food.”  That’s really a family in-joke, along with, “Don’t play with your food,” and several other such admonitions that have been repeated ad infinitum.

  He was back in the game within minutes, but I was still awake an hour later, and two hours.  The adrenaline finally faded enough to let me sleep, but the incident was on my mind when I awoke.  I realized I knew very little about the eponymous Heimlich, so my first move when I sat at the computer was to Google.

  Henry Judah Heimlich MD has apparently changed his middle name to Jay, earned the public resentment of his colleague Edward Patrick MD by claiming full credit for the anti-choking maneuver, has a cousin who played Potsie on Happy Days, and has given one of his sons a strong raison d’être in discrediting the old man.  Peter Heimlich and his wife Karen claim, among other things, that old Henry has heartlessly performed research on third world people by infecting them with disease, and that his Heimlich Institute is no longer engaged in research but exists only as a website and fundraising front for Deaconess Associations, Inc.

  Henry Heimlich reportedly promoted “his” abdominal thrust maneuver not just for choking, but for asthma and drowning, and several cases have been documented, of death resulting from use of the maneuver on drowning victims who then vomited and fatally aspirated the vomitus.  Meanwhile, several official sources have dropped the Heimlich name from the abdominal thrust maneuver, and in 2006 the American Red Cross stopped teaching it in first aid courses as the primary response to choking.

  Besides all that, the man is seriously ugly, looks definitely evil, and I’m tempted to say that his mother dresses him funny, but that lame joke might be too old and obscure for my audience.  In the last few decades, I have used abdominal thrusts to stop several people from choking, and did no damage in the process as far as I know.  I had not even been aware that the maneuver had been recommended for drowning, and if someone were to squeeze my diaphragm when I’m in an asthma attack, they’d probably get my elbow in their ribs.  Anyway, I probably saved my son’s life last night, so, thanks anyway, Dr. Heimlich.
  

  • 1:45 pm
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