we were eating dinner and she got something stuck in her throat. one second she was eating, the next she made this horrible gasping sound and looked at me with absolute terror in her eyes. she literally couldn't breathe, she was making sounds but i couldn't hear any air coming in or out. i started smacking her on the back, not knowing what else to do...i wasn't about to attempt the heimlich on a 92 year old. i don't actually know how to do the heimlich, anyways. so i did all i could, i patted her on the back and told her she was fine, and not to panic. told her to breathe, which was a ridiculous effort because her face was starting to turn blue. i went to call 911 but she shook her head no and motioned for me to keep patting her on the back. i thought i had lost her...i mean, everyone chokes...but when she's almost a century old and her eyes are bright red and her face has the same awful blue tinge that my mom's had when she was laying in her casket...ack. but i kept patting her on the back, telling her to cough, telling her to breathe. eventually i heard tiny bits of air coming in and out..she could just barely breathe. so i just encouraged her. told her i could HEAR her breathing, so she wasn't going to die, to stop panicking. and then, slowly, she started to breathe normally. and once she got her first full breath in, she kind of collapsed against me and just shook...she was so terrified. we talked about it later...she thought she was going to die, too. 92 years old, and she had a near-death experience.
scary stuff. i kind of take my grandma's health for granted. you'd think with all the death i've been around that i would just be WAITING for her to die. and i was, for a year or two after my parents died. i slept in her bed, in case she needed me. every weird sound she made was because she was dying, every sneeze was a death sentence. but she's so healthy for her age that i rarely think about her dying. old people die when they get sick, or stop being able to function, that's how i think about her dying. i forget how fragile she is. how when my dog jumps on me, i get a scratch that doesn't even bleed, but she gets a bruise the size of a golf ball and bleeding that takes minutes to stop. how even a piece of chicken going down the wrong tube could be the end for her. and what the fuck will i do when she DOES die?
