By BOB SHRALUKA
WZBD.com
Decatur Mayor Dan Rickord believes everyone, young and old, should learn the Heimlich maneuver.
Stands to reason since since the maneuver may well have saved his life!
“I was in a restaurant recently when I had a full-fledged choking incident, it was serious,” he told people at Tuesday night’s city council meeting in City Hall.
Scared? Yes he was!
Rickord said he began choking and couldn’t get his airway cleared. Someone tried the Heimlich maneuver on him but it didn’t work.
“It got the point that I was about to go down,” he continued. “Then John Kintz (president of the Kintz Insurance Agency in Decatur) came running toward me and I began running toward him. “He did the Heimlich and it didn’t work the first couple of times. Then he did it very hard and it worked.”
The unidentified food particle went down rather than out, but the only thing that mattered was that Dan was able to breathe freely again.
“So I sure want to thank John,” the mayor said as told of the incident after all business was conducted at the meeting.
“It (Heimlich) is something everyone should know how to do. It should be taught to kids in school,” he closed.
A Cleveland Clinic site says the following: “The Heimlich maneuver is a first-aid method for choking that you can use on adults and children. Another name for the Heimlich maneuver is abdominal thrusts, because it involves thrusting into the abdominal area.
“It’s a quick and life-saving method, but you should only use it on conscious people who can’t breathe on their own.”
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