My friend and I were on our way from Charlotte to Seattle, which is about a five hour flight. You get a meal and a movie and a snack, in that order. Well, the movie had ended and the beverage cart was just finishing its service when I noticed a disturbance a few rows up.
An elderly couple was sitting there and husband appeared to be choking. He coughed and coughed and his wife was patting him on the back, looking around nervously and trying to get the flight attendants' attention.
Unfortunately, the flight attendants were distracted with a spilled pot of coffee and somehow managed to get the beverage cart wedged tight between the aisle and the lavatory door, baricading them all behind it.
I elbowed my friend and commented on the situation. After a couple of minutes, the man was still coughing and we began to wonder if he was alright.
Since I was sitting on the aisle, I unfastened my seatbelt and moved forward to ask the man if he needed any help. He shook his head and his wife told me that he was eating some peanuts and one must have gone down the wrong pipe.
At that time I told the man that I had training and that I could help. I told him to keep coughing because that meant that air was still getting through. Just then his coughing stopped and I knew that his air passage was blocked.
Without hesitation I moved behind him and tried to wrap my arms around the seat and his torso in a seated Heimlech manuver, but to no avail. We had no choice but to unfasten his saftey belt and try the move standing up in the narrow aisle.
We eventually managed to do this but not before the man began turning purple and then blue in the face. Sure enough, after a few vain attempts to dislodge the rogue peanut, the elderly man passed out and went limp in my arms.
I lowered him to the aisle floor and attempted to continue exercise my training. The space was so narrow that the position squeezed the man's shoulder's together a forced his arms straight up into the pressurized cabin air.
From this position I was able to push on his diaphragm in such a way that the obstruction was loosed and removed. But that was not the end.
The man was still not breathing, so I did the next logical thing. I began CPR.
His wife was in hysterics, the flight crew was trapped, and every passenger's eyes were locked on me as I fought to save a man's life at thirty-thousand feet. Which of course I did.
He began breathing again after only two sets of CPR and after the stewards had freed themselves from their in-flight prison they sat him back in his seat, fastened his safety belt and strapped an oxygen mask to his face for the remainder of the flight.
Of course everyone asked me if I was a doctor to which I had to reply, "No, no. I'm just an art student. I draw cartoons." Nonetheless, the flight crew presented me with a pair of wings and insisted that I have my picture taken with them. My friend obviously thought the whole situation was hilarious and started calling me "Doc" and the name just kind of stuck. The End.
