My Near Death Experience

Today was a bad, bad day. Usually I eat phở every morning for breakfast, but this morning I woke up later than normal due to the Benadryl that I took last night to help me sleep so I skipped it. I was so hungry at lunch that I scarfed down the first piece of pork, and it became lodged in my throat. Okay, no big deal because I've had rice stuck in my throat before and had it washed down easily with a swig of water. This time was different. When I drank the water, the pork wouldn't budge, and the water just came right back up. It couldn't go down because the piece of meat was in there pretty well! I tried again to force water down, hoping it would flush the pork down and into my stomach. The good news: the pork did move a bit further down. The bad news: it moved down blocking my windpipe, and I couldn't breathe. So I tried to gag myself, even sticking a chopstick down my esophagus to try to push it down so I could breathe. No such luck! I started banging around, and Vuong was downstairs, luckily, and came running up after he heard me thrashing about. That's about the time that I lost consciousness. I woke up to him hitting on my back, and I was able to breathe a bit. He was a medical student before he got his degree in Economics so I guess he knew what he was doing. He took me to the hospital, and we saw one doctor who used his tools and camera to look into my mouth. He couldn't see anything so I was taken to another doctor with a longer tube slash camera thing. He stuck it all the way down my throat, and I couldn't breathe again - which scared the ish out of me. There were four nurses there who had to hold me down while the doctor stuck the tube down my throat because I was kicking and punching due to the lack of air getting to my lungs. After repeatedly gagging with the tube down my throat, I heard the doctor say "nuoc" which is water in Vietnamese, and I let out a big belch. Apparently the tube with camera thing also had a water spray thing?? He pulled the tube out, and I could breathe again. Life was good! I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where you couldn't breathe, but it's not cool.. not cool at all! That's definitely the way that I do NOT want to die. Moral of the story: Chew your food before you swallow.

Below is the photo the doctor took of the pork buried into my throat just before he sprayed the magic water to wash it down.