So… this was no good.
Or maybe in the end it was good. I don’t know. I guess maybe it’s one of those glass half full or half empty situations. Except I would usually consider myself a half full type of person and yet I feel like I’m focusing really hard on the negatives of it.
(Warning: nothing about this post is sexy or fun in any way. But I thought maybe writing about it would make me feel better.)
My mom started choking the other day (Sunday). Couldn’t-breathe choking. I-had-to-do-the-Heimlich-maneuver-on-her choking. It was pretty awful. Awful for about 30 seconds for her and awful for the last two days and counting for me.
I had to go somewhere Sunday afternoon and I was probably 10 seconds from leaving when I heard a crash from the kitchen, which is where she was. A crash like plates or something got knocked onto the floor. I walked back in to see what happened and I saw she was choking. She knocked something off the table when she stood up.
I think outwardly I was pretty calm but inside I panicked pretty much immediately. I got her in position for the heimlich and did two or three thrusts and it didn’t work. Then I really started to panic because I started remembering how when I was a kid and learned CPR and all that stuff, they taught us the heimlich. But then when I was around 16 we had to do CPR in gym class and the lady who came to teach us acted like the heimlich wasn’t what you do anymore. She talked about back slaps and maybe then the heimlich after that.
So I started thinking did I screw up? Should I have done the back slaps first? Am I even doing it right? Why isn’t it working? My mind was going in a bunch of different directions. Meanwhile the life of the person I love most in the whole world was in the balance. Ultimately I re-gripped her and did the heimlich two more times and it worked. She was OK.
What happened right after is kind of a blur. I know we hugged and I was asking if she was OK and everything. She said she was fine. Well, she ended up a little sore and bruised. But otherwise OK.
But after a minute or so it was like the heaviness of the situation, that in the blink of an eye she potentially could have died, hit me like a truck. I got really really freaked out and I was hugging her to me and I couldn’t let go. She kept saying it was OK and she was OK and was basically trying to calm me down. Which is more than a little embarrassing, that this happened to her and it ends up that she’s trying to make me feel better.
So right when I finally started to calm down, it hit me that I had been about to leave when this happened. Another minute, not even a minute, and I wouldn’t have known anything was wrong. So what then? What if I hadn’t been able to help? What if I’d come home and found her dead on the kitchen floor?
Then I REALLY started freaking out. To the point of physically getting sick. She continued trying to calm me down and everything. Although she did say jokingly afterwards that she kinda liked seeing me freak out like that. You know, cause I only reacted like that because I love her so much.
But anyway, for her it was like 30 seconds of unpleasantness and then it was over. And she looks at it like a positive experience. She said it’s not that she ever doubted she could count on me in a bad situation, but now she knows she can. She said she feels even closer to me than ever. More than a few times, in between lots and lots of kisses, she’s called me her hero. Which is obviously pretty nice.
But I’ve spent the last two days feeling lousy. It’s just scary to think of how close the worst possible thing that could ever happen came to actually happening. And I can’t stop thinking about it. Not the choking incident specifically, just how quickly everything could be ruined forever. What if something awful happens when she’s driving to work? Or when she’s driving home? What if something like this happens again when I’m not there? What if what if.
I hope all this worrying goes away soon. I’m not sure writing this helped quite like I was hoping it would, but I wrote it so I might as well share it. I’m truly sorry if this upset anyone or brought up bad memories or anything like that.