Marbles are not Food

About eight or nine years ago the kids were sitting around watching TV. Calvin had been playing with a marble and apparently had been sucking on it. Gross, but not to a little boy. After playing with it for a while he finally did the unthinkable, he swallowed it!

He jumped up and ran over to me. He was gurgling and coughing and grabbing his throat.

"What's wrong?" I asked a little worried.

He managed to choke out, "I swallowed a marble!" And then he proceeded to gasp and gurgle some more.

I frantically thought back to my yearly CPR and First Aid training. Was he big enough to do Abdominal Thrusts on his little body? I got behind him and placed my hands in hopefully the right place.

Wait! He was still breathing! Abdominal Thrusts are for when someone's airway is completely cut off. Whew! Thank goodness I remembered that little bit of training. But I hovered just in case his throat became completely clogged by that marble.

Meanwhile he continued to choke and cough. Finally he swallowed that pesky marble. "OOhhh! Ouch! That hurt!" He was still grabbing and rubbing his throat.

"Are you ok? Can you breathe now?"

"Yes, my throat just hurts. Wow!"

"All right. I'm going to call the doctor just to make sure I don't need to worry about anything." Remember, he was my first and I called the doctor about anything abnormally weird that kind of scared me and his almost choking scared me.

I dialed, waited, listened for the correct prompt, and finally reached the receptionist. "What can I help you with today?"

"My son just swallowed a marble and I wanted to know if I should be concerned about anything."

"Let me check with the doctor." She proceeded to take down the pertinent info and put me on hold while she consulted with the doctor.

About a minute later she hopped back on the line, "Is he still choking?"