A doctor performed an emergency tracheotomy on a fellow diner who was choking on a piece of food.
The incident took place at a Calif. restaurant where a town symposium banquet was taking place, several of the best physicians in the nation attended, the Bakersfield Californian reported.
Pauline Larwood, Kern County's first female supervisor, was happily eating her dinner when she started to choke. The Heimlich proved unsuccessful, which meant extreme measures would need to be taken to save the woman's life.
"Next thing you know my server J.R. hears 'She's choking! She's choking!'" Bo Fernandez, General Manager Executive Chef at the Mark Restaurant, told BakersfieldNow.com.
Doctor Royce Johnson, professor of medicine at UCLA and Kern Medical Center's chief of infectious diseases got crafty. He used a friend's pocketknife to cut an opening in Larwood's throat and inserted the hollow inner cylinder of a pen so that the woman could breath, the Californian reported.
"The doctor said, 'Let's put her on the ground'....and he made an incision with a knife," Fernandez told BakersfieldNow.
Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), kept track of Larwood's pulse while Johnson performed the makeshift procedure.
"She had already started turning a real like blue, her fingers and her lips," Assemblywoman Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, who called 911, told the Californian.
Grove said Johnson remained calm while performing the life-saving procedure.
"He didn't scream; he just said, 'I need a knife,'" she said. "It was really unreal how calm [the situation] was."
Larwood lost consciousness during the incident and her teeth were clenched very tightly, which is why the Heimlich didn't work.
"I was sort of looking at her breathing, Royce is blowing into this tracheotomy that he performed and the CDC director (Frieden) is checking her pulse," Krogstad said. "She came around."
"She was fortunate that somebody as bold as Dr. Johnson jumped in," Doctor Paul Krogstad, a professor of pediatrics and pharmacology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, who helped with the procedure, said. "By the time I got there, he already had a plan going and Dr. Frieden and I just assisted."
Larwood was rushed to a nearby hospital and had to stay overnight but should be returning home shortly.
