Cafe Coronary

Can you guess what the phrase means?

a.) Coffee shop for heart surgeons and coroners.

b.) A local variety of ground coffee found only in Coron, Palawan, Philippines.

c.) Heart attack or acute palpitations induced by excessive coffee-drinking.

d.) None of the above.


Give up?




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It's actually choice d.)! Yes, "cafe coronary" is a misnomer, never failed to confuse me the first time I heard it. In medical terminology, it simply refers to choking on your food in a manner that requires the Heimlich Maneuver. When I first heard "cafe coronary," I imagined choice a.)! Haha.

I've never had any of that, thankfully. But last year, I had this scary experience of swallowing a small piece of the twine that ties up the Longganizang Lucban, or native sausages from Lucban, Quezon when I was vacationing in the Philippines. I had bought it from a stall inside Greenhills. I felt it lodge deep in my throat down my neck area, and it was so uncomfortable.

"Eat a banana!", advised my aunt, suggesting that the foreign object would stick to the banana chewings. Eventually, I had to get an EENT specialist to peek into my throat to remove it. He saw that my throat wall was scraped because it got all red, but I must have swallowed it completely because it was gone. Thank God. The doctor regarded the banana theory with straight-faced sarcasm. From that day on, I swore never to eat those sausages again. A nightmare at high noon.

Well, coffee-wise, I did guzzle two mugs of home-brewed Tim Hortons last night to help me stay awake. I underestimated its caffeine effects and ended up getting only three hours of sleep. I'm not really a coffee-drinker, I only do so occasionally, as in a little Starbucks frap here or a Dunkin Donuts there. Not on a daily basis.

My coffee cup runneth over...next time, (if the need arises) I'll make sure that it doesn't.