“My mother is drowning”: the dramatic 911 call that saved a life

“Hi. My mother just drowned with a piece of food and it’s purple ”. So, with a voice that expresses anguish and despair, begins the call he made this Wednesday at noon Mariana 911 because her 88-year-old mother choked on her lunch.

Fortunately, thanks to the calm advice he gave the Cordoba police operator, Paola Molina, the woman was able to save her life.

The event happened in the neighborhood The Palm trees, West of the city of Cordoba. Mariana’s mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, was having lunch with her 14-year-old grandson, when she suddenly turned purple, as her own daughter recounted on Antena 3’s signal.

Realizing that her mother had grabbed some food, the woman despaired. “I tried hitting him on the back and realized it wasn’t working,” he said. Just now, asked his son to come out and get some help on the street, which the teenager did, without getting any results.

After the failure of the communication attempt with the PAMI, Mariana noted that it occurred to him to call 911. In the end, it was this idea that saved her mother’s life.

It was then that she was treated by Sgt. Paola Molina who calmly told the woman how to perform the drowning rescue technique known as Heimlich maniobra.

“Take her from behind, calm down, press on her chest and try to cough,” were the instructions of the agent, who repeated to Mariana at all times:Don’t cut me, don’t cut me“.

After a few seconds where the suffering of the woman on the other end of the line was heard, Molina heard Mariana’s words of relief: “There it is, there it is… she expelled the piece of food.” “Give him some water now, so he can breathe easier.” Calm down because if you don’t make her nervousThe police replied, still in an extremely calm tone.

“Sometimes everything has turned purple. Purple lips, ”he repeated. Mariana, still in shock, even though her mother was already safe. “I understand you,” the agent told him and made sure everything was fine before cutting off the connection.

“We congratulate Paola Molina, operator of 911, who collaborated to save the life of a woman from 88 years old who was drowning in food Las Palmas neighborhood. The sergeant indicated by telephone to Mariana the steps to follow to carry out first aid on her mother ”, she announced in Twitter the official account of Cordoba police.

Along with the post, the account uploaded the audio of the call which, due to the combination of advice from the sergeant and the action of Mariana, could have a happy ending.

“We are in continuous training in CPR and other maneuvers. In all of them, calm is essential for success. I listened to her so nervous that if she didn’t calm down we couldn’t come to a good ending, ”Molina told the program. The coffee table, of the aforementioned signal Antenna 3.

The Heimlich maneuver is an abdominal compression technique to unblock the airways in case of obstruction. It was created by the American doctor Henri heimlich in the 1970s and has become a key technique in all choking first aid practices.

It is estimated that only in the United States, the maneuver of this doctor saved, from 1974 to the year of Heimlich’s death, in 2016, some 100,000 lives.

Among these people saved by this maneuver, we can cite the former president Ronald Reagan, the pop star Expensive, and the actors of Hollywood Elizabeth Taylor, Goldie Hawn, Walter Matthau, Carrie Fisher, Jack Lemmon and Marlene Dietrich.

THE NATION