March 21 2016

Last Weekend, I Saved a Kid From Drowning

This past weekend, I went with my family (sisters and their kids included) to the Pelican Hill Resort. While a more thorough review of the experience is coming, along with photos, I thought I might start off by telling you my most shocking experience of the last two days. On Saturday, we were swimming with our kids when I noticed a father and son near the steps of the pool. The father was distracted, looking around, when I noticed his son bobbing down the pool steps until he reached the last one and went completely under water.

My first instinct was to ask the dad, “Is he okay?” To which he quickly replied “Yes”. I don’t think, at that point, he even knew where his son was since his son was completely submerged. I had finished swimming and was drying off, I had my bathing suit on underneath my towel and t-shirt. Instinctively and without his consent, I jumped into the water to pull the boy out, while he gasped for air. Afterwards, the father gave me a quiet “thank you” for saving his son’s life.

What I learned from this ordeal was that when kids are drowning it’s not like what you’ve seen on tv or in the movies – there isn’t any flailing of arms or splashing around. Instead, there’s silence. Sam and my brother-in-law Keith told me about this right afterwards and then, this morning, I started researching online. In a Slate article titled Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning I learned:

The Instinctive Drowning Response—so named by Francesco A. Pia, Ph.D., is what people do to avoid actual or perceived suffocation in the water. And it does not look like most people expect. There is very little splashing, no waving, and no yelling or calls for help of any kind. To get an idea of just how quiet and undramatic from the surface drowning can be, consider this: It is the No. 2 cause of accidental death in children, ages 15 and under (just behind vehicle accidents)—of the approximately 750 children who will drown next year, about 375 of them will do so within 25 yards of a parent or other adult. According to the CDC, in 10 percent of those drownings, the adult will actually watch the child do it, having no idea it is happening. Drowning does not look like drowning..

Scary stuff. Sam was in the water and saw the whole thing happen. I was standing outside the water, closer to the boy, so was in the right position to save him. I know that if I wasn’t there, Sam would have done the same. But what would have happened if both of us weren’t there?

Photo via Pelican Hill

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