I recently visited my sister, Amy in California for her 40th Birthday. We spent a night in Reno, then drove to her house about 1 1/2 hours away in Lincoln, CA. It was a short trip, but it was a blast! My flight home was on March 16th, we took Southwest which made a connection in Las Vegas. Don't ask me why we had to fly south and then north again. ANYWAYS.... when we stopped in Vegas the majority of the people on the plane got off leaving only a handful of us. I was flying home with my brother, Nate and one of my sisters husbands good friends, Jonny. The layover in Vegas was longer than normal because the door in the front had a broken spring that had to be fixed. We started to get hungry during this process, so Jonny decided to get off and get some food and come back on. He brought back a personalized pan pizza from Pizza Hut and offered me a slice.
Nate was sitting in the window seat, I was in the middle and Jonny in the aisle seat. I had my tray table down, Nate made a comment that made me laugh so I started choking on a small piece of pizza. At first I thought it was going to come out after a few coughs, but then I inhaled a bit and lodged it even further! I had no airway whatsoever, not even a whistle. I start to panic, Nate helps me get the tray table up, Jonny gets out of the way so I can get in the aisle way. At this point, the flight attendants realize something is wrong and there was Hank - the Southwest flight attendant that saved my life. He gave me the Heimlich Maneuver 3 times, and at last the piece of pizza came up. It didn't fly out of my mouth like you would think, it just came up and landed on my tongue.
It sounds silly to explain it, and I'm sure there will be jokes down the road about it. But it scared me SO bad, it's never a good feeling when you think you're going to die! It is also a reminder not to take life for granted, and not to laugh while eating pizza.
