This is a true story about MRE's and the boy who loved them. I call it Gilby Goes to the Hospital
I was a Boy Scout with Gilby, who was an older and more experienced woodsman than most of the boys in our troop. (It might be more accurate to say that Gilby was a Boy Scout like the Pope is Catholic. He built fires without matches. He cooked meals without a butane stove. He knew nearly every knot of practical use. He pack was always light and his boots were always dry. In the morning he would clean his teeth by chewing on the cold, black coals from last evening's fire.)
After a day's hike through the beautiful wooded Virginia, our troop made camp and began preparation for the evening meal. To save weight, space, water and time, the troop prepared and ate meals communally -- typically a pre-cooked, freeze dried rice dish, pasta casserole or meaty stew, prepared with boiling water and some seasonings.
Gilby was not a loner, but Gilby liked his MRE's. That evening, he brought his favorite MRE, a hearty stew with a thick broth and chunks of beef. So while we younger boys were awaiting our meal with our bowls and spoons in hand, Gilby sat apart from us, patiently stirring his stew in its olive drab pouch. We ate and we watched him, admiring him for his independence and the dignity of his quiet and solitary nature.
A dignity which was immediately broken when Gilby leapt to his feet, dropped his spoon and stew and, eyes bulging like dinner plates, reached for his throat with both hands.
Now what Gilby was doing, though he didn't immediately realize this, was performing the international sign for, "I am choking." We Boy Scouts realized this -- in fact any Boy Scout will tell you that there are few things more anticipated than the opportunity to use First Aid skills. So naturally we then leapt to our feet (presumably to perform the Heimlich Maneuver, but god knows how we would have done that considering that Gilby had about 12 inches and thirty pounds on the biggest of us) and rushed toward Gilby. Quickly he placed an open hand out in front of himself, "No--," he said in a strained but clear voice, " -- I'm OK."
We stood back (knowing, in our Boy Scout wisdom, that if a person is coughing, sputtering, speaking or making any appreciable breath sounds that they are not (yet) choking, and that it is best to let them cough until they clear the obstruction) while Gilby put a hand to his throat again, stared off into the distance and began coughing, chortling, jaw flexing, throat tapping, gurgling, etc. We Boy Scouts were, well, pretty freaked out.
After a few moments of making strange, hunched-over throat noises. Gilby stood up -- still looking off into space -- and said, "It's stuck."
"Can't you swallow it?", asked a young scout.
Gilby donned a look of stern concentration, softly gripped his throat with one hand: " . . . no . . . I . . . I can't! . . . it's . . . stuck"
It, as best he could discern, was a particularly chewy piece of beef that he had been working on only moments before. And over the next few minutes we discerned that it was stuck somewhere in his esophagus. (This was accomplished by careful experimentation: that is, Gilby repeatedly trying to drink some water only to have it hit the beefy occlusion and be gagged back up.)
Needless to say, this was no fun for Gilby, who, despite being a dozen miles from the nearest road and nearly 200 miles from the nearest major hospital, really just wanted to finish his dinner. This is the part of the story when Gliby Goes to the Hospital, and really the details are unimportant save this one: many hours later, when he was finally seen in the ER (apparently the triage nurse had a good laugh when he came in) the physician decided to stick an optical probe down his GI tract in order to visualize the proteinaceous obstruction. While attempting this, the doctor apparently "slipped", causing the probe to contact and stimulate the highly sensitive tissue of his soft palate. This had the effect of really wailing on Gilby's gag reflex, causing his peristaltic muscles to spasm, consequently ejecting the offending meat at high velocity. The little projectile skirted gaily across the floor (with considerably more agility and vigor than one would desire to see in one's cooked meal) and rolled under a counter, never to be seen again.
So what is the moral of this story? I really don't know. How about: Chew Your Food"
Yes, that seems like a good enough moral to me. I hope you enjoyed it; Good Health to You, and Bon Appetit.