The truth about children who nearly drown…
Jul
8
Written by:
08/07/2010 2:52 PM
On hot summer days, many of us yearn for a dip in a pool or a lake to cool off and with another hot weekend around the corner, many of us will get our chance to do just that. We think that it could never happen to our family, but each year almost 60 children drown and another 140 kids under the age of 14 nearly drown in Canada.
I was one of those 140 kids. And I can tell you these incidents are not only predictable but preventable. On a hot July day, when I was three, my family was invited to the neighbour’s house for a swim to cool off. It was so refreshing and although I could not swim, my mother let me bob around the shallow end of the pool with the other kids, while she and the neighbour chatted on the pool deck.
It was while she was distracted with “grown-up talk” that I slipped down the slope of the pool and into the bottom of the deep end. I remember vividly how blue the water was, how all of the air bubbles I was breathing out floated up and above me towards the surface. I looked up at the surface in sheer terror desperately trying to get to the top of the water so I could breathe again. I remember thinking I was stuck and was never going to get out of the pool – even at this young age I understood I could die there. It seemed like I was underwater for an eternity, trying to climb some invisible ladder without success. It was at this point I felt the neighbour grab me from behind and pull me out of the water just in time for me to breathe again!
I cried as my brother and I were swaddled up and taken home. In speaking with my mother about this as an adult many years later, she confided that she had her own meltdown later that afternoon in the privacy of her bedroom. “I was so scared,” she said. “I kept thinking how you could have died, how I would not have been able to help you because I can’t swim and how I would never be able to forgive myself if the worst had happened. And I am sorry for what it did to you, this phobia of the water it created in you. It took you so long to overcome it and you were so little and it took years of failing that Red Cross beginner swimming class before you finally triumphed over it.”
My story thankfully has a happy ending: I did not die that day, I did not have any long-term brain damage and eventually overcame the psychological trauma and can now swim like a fish, but I am always very cautious around the water.
Come back tomorrow for “The five truths about children who drown and what you can do to help keep your children safe around water”.
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