It’s time for Christmas dinner with your loud, boisterous family.
With relatives like yours, there’s never a dull moment.
Everyone is talkative and outlandish – must be something in your gene pool.
Your parents, grandparents, crazy uncle Steve, aunt, and cousins all speak loudly across
the dinner table, fighting to get a word in on the conversation.
They’re all passionate about what they’re saying, faces red from strain and hand gestures
flailing all around.
It’s like you’re in the midst of a battle zone.
No one can seem to have enough wine to chill them out and the alcohol in the bloodstream
only seems to fuel them even more.
Suddenly a particular topic comes up – one that really gets your blood boiling – and
now it’s war.
You join in the madness, raising your voice and waving your hands wildly in an effort
to be heard.
You forget, however, that you were chewing on a bite of turkey before you began talking.
In your haste, you suddenly feel yourself start to choke after swallowing the wrong
way.
At first, you try to conceal it, still desperate to continue getting your very important point
across.
But your voice grows hoarse until you’re no longer able to speak.
You cough weakly.
Soon you go quiet – dangerously quiet, your face turns purple and you can no longer breathe
as the turkey piece obstructs your airway.
Your hands clutch to your throat.
Thankfully, your crazy uncle Steve knows what to do and he immediately jumps up from his
seat to heroically perform the Heimlich maneuver on you.
The turkey flies out of your mouth and lands in your grandmother’s mashed potatoes.
She isn’t overly thrilled about it but she’s relieved that you’re okay.
In this case, you were lucky, and you survived from choking because someone in your family
had knowledge about first aid.
Still, despite almost dying, you barely waste a breath before returning to your talking
point as if nothing happened.
You’re just that passionate over the subject matter.
During another night, you’re alone in your apartment as usual.
It’s 8pm on a Wednesday, which means you’re probably watching the newest season of Survivor.
Or, maybe, you’re watching reruns of old episodes from season 39 so that you can skip
the commercials.
Whatever the case, maybe you get angry because your favorite player, Karishma, just got voted
out at tribal council.
You cannot believe it!
You thought that surely she’d be the perfect goat to carry forth to the final three at
the end.
Enraged, you scream at the television and your passion-fueled rant causes you to swallow
some phlegm down the wrong windpipe – don’t you just hate when that happens?
Just like at Christmas dinner, you find yourself choking again.
Only this time, you don’t have your crazy uncle Steve there to help you.
So, what do you do if you are choking alone?
How on Earth do you save yourself?
First, immediately phone 9-1-1 or your local emergency contact.
If you are able to force a cough, the Mayo Clinic encourages you to do so.
Keep yourself coughing as much as you possibly can.
If you can’t cough, you’ll have to perform abdominal thrusts to yourself.
This part of the video may very well save your life in a future situation like this,
so we recommend that you close pay attention.
Here’s what you do: Place a fist slightly above your navel.
If you don’t know where the navel is, think belly button.
Next, grab your fist with the other hand and bend over a hard surface like your kitchen
countertop, chair or table.
Shove your fist inward and upward.
Continue doing this to the best of your ability until help arrives.
Your crazy uncle Steve would be proud!
But hopefully you don’t die.
Fingers crossed!
Finally, when all is well and done, you can return to your entertainment.
Just be careful in the future.
It’s okay to get excited, just don’t let your passion consume you to the point that
it can literally kill you.
After all, you’ve choked twice now from letting your emotions get ahead of you so
it may be time for an intervention.
We suggest that you calm down, ask your doctor for a prescription of Xanax – the literal
“chill pill” – or learn mindfulness therapeutic techniques and take deep breaths.
Most importantly, don’t try to talk while chewing on food and be careful about swallowing
your nasty mucus or phlegm the wrong way down your throat.
We realize it’s in your blood to be crazy but try not to over do it.
Yikes!
We might add that it is not that common to choke to death on your own phlegm unless you
have bronchitis, so you don’t need to worry too much about the threat of that happening
to you in real life.
But we figured we’d use this as an example for an amusing way to choke because our sense
of humor on the Infographics Show is pretty dark like that.
Also, we get the frustration about the elimination of Karishma in Survivor but it’s not worth
choking over.
She wasn’t a very good player anyway.
Do you agree with this statement?
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