Anyone can Heimlich Maneuver

Essie Collier, a fourth grader at Racine’s Fratt Elementary School, noticed one of her classmates was in distress during lunch Tuesday. Students were eating in a classroom because the lunchroom had been cleared out so residents could vote. “I just saw that she was holding her neck, and I rushed up there as fast as I can,” Essie said. Teacher Samantha Bradshaw said Essie wrapped her arms around the student and began performing the Heimlich. Her classmate’s airway was cleared, and within seconds the girl was breathing fine. The 9-year-old elementary school student in Wisconsin may have saved the life of a classmate by performing the Heimlich maneuver on her as she choked on food. “I have never seen a student react in that way before,” Bradshaw said. Essie said that she learned the technique two years earlier from a YouTube instructional video, when she was 7, and that the lesson stayed with her. The School Board plans to honor Essie at a board meeting in late November for her heroics.

Henry Heimlich the surgeon who gave his name to the simple but dramatic procedure used to rescue people from choking saved someone’s life with the Heimlich Maneuver this week aged 96. The technique for dislodging food or objects caught in people’s throats has been credited with saving untold thousands of lives around the world since he invented it in 1974. Last Monday the retired chest surgeon encountered a female resident at his retirement home in Cincinnati who was choking at the dinner table. Without hesitation, Heimlich spun her around in her chair so he could get behind her and administered several upward thrusts with a fist below the chest until the piece of meat she was choking on popped out of her throat and she could breathe again. The doctor said, “It was very gratifying,” “That moment was very important to me. I knew about all the lives my maneuver has saved over the years and I have demonstrated it so many times but here, for the first time, was someone sitting right next to me who was about to die.”

Jokes about bad food

I wanted to get healthier,
So, I gave up alcohol, pizza, fast food, junk food, and chocolate.
So far, I’ve lost 10 pounds and my will to live.

When I was a boy, I had a disease that required me to eat dirt three times a day in order to survive… It’s a good thing my older brother told me about it.

It turns out the answer to my problems wasn’t at the bottom of this pint of ice cream, but the important thing is that I tried.


Diet Coke: Making people feel better about ordering two Big Macs and a large fry since 1982.

November 15th Birthdays

1992  – Shailene Weedley, 1989 – Zena Grey, 1934 – Joanna Barnes, 1984 – Sophia DeMartino

1978 – Sean Murray, 1975 – Chad Kroeger, 1972 – Johnny Lee Miller, 1948 – Jimmy Shoo

Morning Motivator:

You have the same number of hours per day as Mother Teresa,
Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein.

Squeeze play