Riley Odom, who works in VUMC Nutrition Services, was having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Then she almost died.
Odom was stocking the patient food and drink area on the fourth floor Round Wing Adult Acute Medicine unit when she decided to take a break and enjoy a sandwich, like she had done dozens of times before.
This time was different. A bite from the sandwich went down the wrong way, into her trachea, and completely blocked her ability to breathe.
“I was scared,” she said. “It was scary.”
Steve Barrett, RN, a five-year VUMC nurse, happened to be catching up on some charting at a computer at the nurses’ station when Odom got his attention by banging on a trash can and gesturing to her throat.
“I heard kind of a loud bang behind me,” he said. “She had her hands to her throat. It was right out of a safety video.”
Barrett’s training and instincts took over.
While another nurse, Hattie Isham, RN, called for a Rapid Response team to come to the unit, Barrett began doing the Heimlich maneuver on Odom — putting his arms around her abdomen from behind and rapidly tightening his arms to try to force the food from her trachea.
“She was 100% obstructed,” Barrett said.
He performed the maneuver once. Nothing happened. Odom was still choking, unable to breathe, and getting more scared by the second.
Barrett tried a second time. Same result. Nothing moved.
“It was like a cork in a bottle,” he said.
On the fourth try, finally some movement. Odom coughed a little, and her body, sensing the ability to get some air to her lungs, compelled her to take a breath — which promptly pulled the wrong-way sandwich fragment right back into her trachea again.
Barrett had to do the Heimlich three more times, for a total of seven, before it was finally successful.
“I wasn’t sure it was going to work,” he said.
The Rapid Response team arrived and took Odom to the ER to be checked out. It turned out she was able to return to work the next day.
“As a nurse, [the Heimlich] is something you learn how to do,” Barrett said. “I never expected it to happen, but in the end it couldn’t have worked out any better.”
For her part, Odom, who has been at VUMC about a year, agreed that if she was going to get badly choked, she was at the perfect place for it to happen.
“I said ‘Thank you for saving my life,’” she said. “I have awesome co-workers.”
There is, of course, one more question that comes to mind: Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were one of Odom’s favorites. After what happened, does she still eat them?
“Not at this point,” she said.
