JACKSON TEACHER USES HEIMLICH MANEUVER ON CHILD

JACKSON -- Linda Musgraves, a kindergarten teacher at the Jackson public schools' Primary Annex, was herding her students out to the playground Sept. 3 when she heard a yell.

It was Jean Norman, another kindergarten teacher. One of her students, Christopher Eskew, appeared to be having some kind of seizure.

Musgraves rushed to him. "I noticed he wasn't breathing and I saw some smashed banana on his mouth."

She performed the Heimlich maneuver, a technique for disloding food from a choking victim's windpipe, with little effect. She saw him turn blue.

A veteran of 23 years in teaching, Musgraves once before had successfully used the Heimlich maneuver on a student, and once at Lake Wappapello resuscitated a girl thought to have drowned. She wasn't new to crises but she was worried.

"I said, `I can tell this kid's leaving.'"

Moving him into the nurse's room at the school, she performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on Christopher. When he began choking, she again did the Heimlich maneuver.

"I kept thinking, `Six minutes. Six minutes. Brain damage happens in six minutes.'"

In the meantime, the school secretary was taking information by phone from emergency personnel. When the ambulance arrived, Christopher's breathing was still labored, Musgraves said. "He was pulling on my hands and rubbing his stomach."

Christopher was taken to St. Francis Medical Center with a temperature of 104 F. It turns out he had a strep infection and may have had a convulsion. Whether he was choking on the banana is unknown.

The next day, he returned to school briefly just to show his worried classmates he was OK.

"The next day he was pretty excited, telling all his friends about the ambulance ride," said Christopher's father, Larry Eskew.

Musgraves thinks the episode lasted only a couple of minutes. "You're scared," she said. "I didn't even think to check his heart. His eyes were rolling around."

When Christopher returned to school for good the following Monday, he walked up to Musgraves, hugged her and said, "Thank you for helping me."

Musgraves says that was when "I almost lost it."