But I Didn't Go Toward the Light

I almost died today. I started this story with this sentence when I told K and she laughed at me. Go ahead. Laugh. You think I am joking. I am not joking. And I will tell you this story even though you laughed at me. Jerk.

I was on my way back to the office after running a work errand that took up my normal lunch hour. I stopped by Quizno's and bought my favorite sandwich, since it was almost 1:30 and I was STARVING. I decided instead of being patient, and eating my sandwich at my desk while I checked my own blog to see if I had possibly posted yet, I would eat it as I traveled back to the office. I was one block away from my office and almost done with my sandwich when I came to a stoplight. I took (I think) what was the last bite of the sandwich, which was possibly larger than other bites because it was the last bit and I needed both hands, and then I took a deep breath for some reason. And the whole abnormally large bite which had not really been chewed got sucked down my wind pipe. I tried to cough and it was this tiny little thing that sounded more like a throat clearing, since I was only able to take enough air to allow a smurf to function normally. I did this possibly five more times, and I looked in my rearview mirror to see my pretty purple face, and then little white lights swimming by. They were pretty lights, like little lightening bugs, or like those sparklers you wave around on the 4th of July. I then had thoughts like "I'm all alone," and "I'm in a car with no brake set except the one my foot is on," and "if I pass out, how do I make sure I don't die." I'm not sure if I got to the point where I would have put my emergency brake on, or whether I would have thought to lay on my horn, but fortunately even though I was having a hard time forming rational thoughts, I did have the sense to make one more valiant effort to cough (actually it was more like 4 or 5) and summoned all my efforts and muscle support to overcome the the obstacle of the Chicken sandwich and cough as hard as I could. Finally it came out. I still had to cough several times to convince my air passageway that it should, in fact, accept air.

One thing I did learn: when you have almost suffocated, for some reason you (or maybe it's just me) suffer from pins and needles, or more like nails and screws, in your upper back every time you cough or sneeze. Any other near suffocation victims out there who can tell me if I'm a freak of nature, and if not how long this lasts for? I feel a little Google spree coming on.




In honor of my newfound appreciation for my lungs, and also in honor of the Grey's Anatomy premiere I will be missing tomorrow night because I have no cable.

The moral of the story is either:
A. Do not eat Quizno's alone in your car.
B. Fast food will kill you.
C. We must all sit down and lay out a plan for future car choking incidents. Do you honk on the horn or ram a tree to get help? That is the material question.