Emergency Tracheotomy Kit

This is a glass-cased version of why our Dad carried in a metal tube inside his coat pocket all the time. (Important detail: he’s a surgeon.)

It’s a kit for performing a tracheotomy.

We could be at a movie, standing in line at the bank, or sitting in a posh restaurant eating a sumptuous meal, and if someone – anyone at any table – coughed, Dad went on instant alert.

Freezing with our forks and spoons mid-air, we were horrified to think he might suddenly leap up from our family meal, grab the cougher, throw them bodily onto our table scattering all the dishes and glasses, climb up on the table himself to straddle the victim, reach in his suit jacket to retrieve this “Emergency Tracheotomy Kit”, pop the lid and withdraw the sterile scalpel and then slice into their throat then insert two fingers to hold the airway open and shouting, “Call an ambulance!”

No shit, Dad!

Fortunately, it never happened.

But I still feel a surge of panic when someone coughs more than once in a restaurant.