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Dear Stephanie,

What a great instructor you are!  I was so happy you gave us our class.  By the way, what is the name of the medical supply store you told us about?   

Okay here is a perfect story for you, because not every emergency happens at home. 

Yesterday I was at CCs Bill Botts Park at Jefferson and Duquesne on a playdate.  My baby was munching on some small apple pieces I cut for her as she hates applesauce.  Sure enough she chokes and not a hiccup type, a full blown scary choke. So I perform the infant tilt and pat. On the first tilt 3^rd WACK the piece of apple dislodged.  But the scary part was either little pieces were still stuck or as the Paramedic explained, the salivary glands kicked in full gear to push whatever was still lodged in her throat, out or down.  I must have tilted her about another 10 times out of shear fear.  My baby must have lost a cup worth of saliva.  She was gagging, crying, coughing and trembling in fear.  She continued to spit up saliva for nearly an hour and a half.

When this first started my friend started to call 911 on her cell phone.  I told her to call 411 and ask to be put through to local police/fire.  411 told her she had the wrong information line and to call 911 and hung up. Click.  By that time I had solved the problem, or so I thought.  As time passed and I continued to see my baby gagging, I called her doctor. He said take her to the Emergency Room (for an x-ray, go figure) if things did not settle down and my baby was still wrenching or throwing up saliva.  So now I was in a quandary, could I put a gagging baby in the back seat in her infant car seat and drive on the freeway or call the paramedics???

I did not think driving on the freeway worrying about a gagging baby was safe.  So I called 911 and told them "I am in Bill Botts Park in the City of Culver City, CA. It is located at the corner of Duquesne and Jefferson, please connect me to the Culver City Paramedics." They connected me asap. I spoke to a dispatcher and he got my coordinates and the wonderful Culver City paramedics showed up - One of whom was at my CERT Training).  I immediately told them that you had trained me and that I was a member of CERT. They were impressed. Good.  They looked at my baby (and were a bit surprised that I was not in full panic at this point), my baby was calm for the moment.  I explained to them what I did and he saw I was COVERED in saliva.  I really wanted to know whether she was in a condition to travel via me driving or if I should travel by ambulance to the hospital (SM UCLA).  He said the conservative answer would be travel by ambulance, but as time passed and he could see that my baby was able to take deep breathes and her airways were clear and the salvia deluge was over, he said I could take her. As I was putting my baby in the car, he commented that I really did an excellent job and all my training seemed to pay off.  He said he was pretty impressed!

So thanks!!! You did a great job and apparently through all the interruptions with the baby, I actually learned something. 

But I did want you to know that I did call 411 first and that did not work. One of the medics said that different cell phone carriers are plugged into different 911 call centers so that you can get local 911 depending on your cell phone carrier.  Not sure if this is true, but 411 was COMPLETELY UNHELPFUL.  So maybe you want to investigate what that is all about since it may be precious minutes being wasted if this situation was more serious.

By the way, I did go to the Emergency Room, wrote in "Reason for visit: infant choking." The intake person looked into the stroller and was a little confused (it was nearly 2 hours from the time this scary event took place) so I explained to him what happened.  We waited a few minutes; I put my baby to breast and found she could swallow. I called the doctor on-call back and he said an x-ray would not have shown anything in her throat and that she was swallowing so she was fine, though probably bruised, traumatized, and it was time to get her home, and nursed calmly.  After we got home, Carmen told me she ran into a chair and stubbed her toe at her house. It was purple, I applied ice and then taped the two toes together (she felt soooo much better).  What a day of First Aid!