It was a trivial incident that escalated into a full blown crisis/near death experience.
Mrs V went out for lunch in Leeds with fellow members of a book club. There were in a trendy eating place where they served rustic chunk meaty sandwiches on 'planks' barely large enough to accommodate the sandwich.
Mrs V had a lamb sandwich and cut a chunk off to eat as it was too big to grapple with. The chunk of lamb that she had was gristly and chewy. Being posh, she looked at the options available to her - there wasn't enough room on the plank to accommodate a chewed bolus of food, the napkins were linen and she didn't want to spoil them so she attempted to swallow the lamb.
Mistake
The lamb got stuck in her throat and severely restricted her breathing. One of the bookclub members is a nurse who sprang into action and tried the 'drink some water to flush it down' technique - it failed, the water was going nowhere. The Heimlich manoeuvre followed - no movement on the lamb's part. Meanwhile a 999 call had been made and Mrs V's breathing was barely possible and changes of skin colour towards blue were happening. The first responders arrived followed by an ambulance. They managed to dislodge the meat and some semblance of order was restored at which point my wife took over the event. Her blood pressure and heart rate were both stratospheric and the paramedics wanted to cart her off to casualty but she insisted that they hung around for five minutes and remeasured her vitals and they'd returned to something resembling normality so she sent them on their way after signing a discalimer.
She refused to ring me knowing that I was on my way to Manchester to meet up with my cult followers for beer food and a Muse gig. She drove home and retired to bed. The restaurant waived the bill for the book club and Mrs V reckons that the book club session itself was cancelled.
I was blissfully unaware of the drama until I got home in the wee small hours and my daughter told me about the events. As tempting as it was to wake Mrs V up and demonstrate my joy at her cheating death I didn't want to become the second member of the family unit to need the attention of the emergency services within twenty four hours.
Mr's V currently sounds a little hoarse, has sore ribs and hand prints on her back. I've had my first bollocking of the day which confirms that a full recovery has been made.
Thanks for your concern folks.
You're the best.
