Drowning Victim May Not Appear to be Actually Drowning

[Jim]

Thank You: I had no idea

[Ron Burgundy]

Good article. That silence thing is right on. I'm trying to teach my 3 year old to swim. Whenever his head goes underwater and he struggles to get up all you hear is crickets. Drowning is the #1 killer of childern in Florida. Scary.

[WILD MAN]

This is one of the best posts I've seen that wasn't in No Holes Barred. I was trained as a life guard when I was in the Navy 30 years ago but I never heard any of this before, Thanks.

[BobL]

Many thanks for a great post. I posted it on another forum I frequent and have sent it along to a couple of other folks as well. Great stuff!

[SoapPeddler]

Great post. It helped me to remember an incident about 6 years ago. My son was swimming in a pool with several adults around. He was splashing and bobbing around and having a good time. I noticed a funny look on his face as he went under. Something made me jump up and dive into the pool to get him. Another parent that was not near me did the same thing. We pulled him up and out of the water. He had gotten a mouth full of water and would have been is serious trouble if some one hadn't noticed what was going on. Always, always, always keep an eye on all swimmers in your group.

[MacToon]

Thanks for the great post - I passed it along via e-mail to all my boating friends. Let's all have a fun and safe boating season!

[Bamby]

I'm grad to see somebody seen the post worthy and resurrected it again for others to see.

You see back when I read the original format I knew just how right it was simply because I was as a young boy a fortunate survivor of what just as easily could have been my death by drowning. I can remember it well though at this point I couldn't say exactly how old I was except I know it was before I was old enough to attend school.

We were as a family with my parents, some Aunts and Uncles and cousins having a outing on the banks of a nice size creek in the country. Being a kid and fascinated by water and the aquatic life to be found in it I inadvertently stepped off into a hole that was over my short head.

I remember the paralysis of fear when I realized just what I had done and my desperation in my feeble attempts to get myself to the surface as the flow of the current slowly swept me downstream. I fortunately was able to propel myself with my legs to the surface a few times to get a quick gulp of air before I sunk again under the water. I remember each time I managed to pop to the surface seeing my parents and everybody else onshore but unfortunately completely unaware of my plight in the water just yards away from them! There was no chance to call out for help, scream, shout or anything to make them aware of my situation. There was just the brief opportunity to take in a quick gasp of air before I sunk below the surface again.

You can call it "Gods Will" luck or whatever but in my case the streams current is actually what saved me. The current swept me through the deeper waterhole to a point where I regained my footing in shallower water again. Had the same thing had happened to me in still water I feel confident is saying that my family would have been burying me as a young boy in short order and scarred with the consequences of the event for the rest of their lives.

I'm not sure if I ever even told my parents just how close I came to drowning that day. But I went on to learn to swim and can actually float well enough to keep my head above water now. But we all as boaters need to be aware of others in the water around us at all times simply because you never know just what can happen in the water.

Just a few years ago when swimming off the boat for some reason one of my legs went into cramps. I mean they were disabling excruciating cramps at that and extremely painful and they came out of nowhere. Like I stated earlier I can now float well enough to stay on the surface and breath and that's the position I found myself in working through the cramps but a lesser person who hasn't learned to float may have found themselves in a drowning situation in that incident also.. So what I'm trying to say is enjoy the water but always be watchful and aware of others sharing the water with you young or old you can never be sure of just what could happen....