When Carolyn Creswell invited friends to her sprawling rural Victorian home for a dinner party one spring Saturday evening, she never imagined she would be leaving the property in an Air Ambulance.
The Carman's muesli founder and her husband Peter have opened up about the terrifying ordeal in November 2024, when Carolyn choked on a piece of steak during the meal at their Gippsland home.
"We are so blessed to live in a country where we have this level of support," the 52-year-old said of the emergency response.
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"I'm grateful every day and I'm so grateful to still be alive and still be a mum to my kids."
The mother-of-four's traumatic brush with death was captured on home security cameras, showing her getting up from the table of six and coughing on the patio before splitting her head open as she collapsed on the ground.
"It's a bizarre thing to be able to hear the stories I've watched it over and over again to try and work out what I did wrong," she added.
Peter tried the Heimlich manoeuvre but when unsuccessful, they called emergency services.
"She was starting to go purple and I said 'can you breathe?' and then I said 'are you choking?' and she nodded and that's when I knew she was in trouble," he recalled.
"I went inside to get my friend to ring Triple-Zero and he got straight onto them.
"I went back outside and in that split couple-of-seconds, Carolyn had fallen over and there was blood coming out of her head."
After years managing their kids' local nippers program, Peter was trained in life-saving CPR.
He desperately performed compressions on Carolyn for almost 30 minutes while another friend remained on the line to Triple-Zero and a third kept watch at the front gate of the remote property so paramedics wouldn't drive past.
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Peter and Carolyn praised the efforts of Triple-Zero call taker Imogen Disney and Ambulance Victoria ALS Paramedic Trent Jackson, who today reunited with the woman they helped save.
"Peter was absolutely fantastic to stay so calm in such a stressful situation to someone he loved so dearly he did an absolutely fantastic job," Disney recalled.
"We don't really often hear recovery stories, so it was really nice to hear that Carolyn made a full recovery."
Jackson described the moment he was able to remove the pieces of steak that were blocking Carolyn's blocked airways.
"I grabbed a laryngoscope... which is a device we use to prop open the patient's airway so we can have a look deeper into their throat and mouth," he said.
"I could see the end of the piece of steak, which I was able to grab onto with some forceps and extract it.
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"Had another look and could see the tag end of another piece of meat pinched onto that one and pulled it out. It was a significant blockage, so a large piece of steak."
Carolyn was airlifted to hospital with head injuries, nine broken ribs and a broken sternum.
After a week in intensive care, Carolyn has made a full recovery.
Peter believes everyone should know "some form of CPR at a minimum, just to keep your loved one alive until the ambulance can get there", with Carolyn crediting it with saving her.
"There's no way I'd be alive now if [Peter] hadn't known what he did," she said.
"When you're in hospital, in intensive care, and every doctor that walks past says 'it's always the steak, it's always the steak', so my other message to people is chew your steak very well.
"And don't use butter knives, you need proper steak knives because you can go from one moment just having a lovely dinner with your friends to within a few minutes you're in a life or death situation."
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