Well, I suppose the time my sister saved my life.
We were on a family vacation to Florida in 2001, and everything was amazing! Disney World, Epcot Centre, Islands of Adventure, Universal Studios – we were absolutely spoiled on this trip. We also had an awesome hotel, we were staying at a Holiday Inn resort of sorts. There was this huge pool area my sister and I spent a lot of time at. One evening as we were about to go down to the pool, we were looking for something to bring to play with, so we brought some coins to toss in the pool and dive for; mostly nickels. My sister and I were diving for a nickel and pushing each other under and such, having a great time, when I decided to hide the nickel in my mouth.
Please note that I am 12 in this story, and my sister is barely 15.
As I surfaced with the nickel in my mouth, feeling clever, my sister gave me a playful shove and I inhaled the nickel. Right down the ol’ blowhole. It turns out, a nickel is the exact same size as a 12 year old’s trachea. So, as I tried to breathe but was immediately hindered, I gave the international sign for choking (hand around the throat, terrified look… you know) and my sister understood right away what was happening – she had choked on a “Sweet-Tart” type of candy as a child too, don’t ask what our issue is with choking on small round objects – and she pushed me to the side of the pool, up onto the deck. I was on my hands and knees, staring at the pool deck, trying to cough, but feeling the nickel in my throat flip up (open) as I breathed out, and flip down (closed) when I breathed in – I could only breathe out. My short life was flashing before my eyes!
I could hear my sister screaming for help as she climbed out of the pool; I looked for help but only found a newspaper headline about 9/11 staring back at me. The man reading the newspaper did look over his paper at me, but immediately went back to reading it. My sister saw this, thought “NOT TODAY!” and hauled me off the pool deck performing the Heimlich. Just as things were starting to go black, the nickel was Heimlich-ed out of me into my hand. A lady came over to see if I was ok, the pool boy came over to check on us and asked us our room number. We found out later that he called up to our parents saying “Your children are not breathing” which was a cause for concern. We made our way back to our room where I wrote about the incident in my travel journal, I even taped the nickel to the entry, which I have to this day.
Mary Maxine 