Cameron Seale

ugust 2020, my 4-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter had been swimming in the neighborhood pool, I was on the side watching. Only one other neighbor child was there with us so it wasn’t crowded. After a couple of hours, we decided to have snacks. My son asked if he could take off his puddle jumper while he ate. I let him. He sat in my lap for a while and ate and then when he was done said, “Can I swim again?” I said sure and started cleaning up our mess.

When I looked up I didn’t see him. I asked his sister if she had seen him go into the bathroom but she wasn’t sure. I started to walk towards the bathroom but something pushed me to get closer to the pool. There he was, at the bottom face down, not moving. I jumped in, and threw him out of the pool, blue and lifeless. I jumped on top of him and started giving CPR while my neighbor called 911. I’m glad she did as we were new to the neighborhood and I’m not sure I would have been able to give the exact address of the pool.

He started throwing up a little and I picked him up like in the movies, thinking he was ok… but he was still lifeless. I put him back down and continued CPR. Vomit kept coming but not much else. He was still blue and so I kept breathing for him. He finally started to moan. I kept giving him breaths.

At this time my knees were bleeding; the ground had burned them.

The neighbor moved him to the covered area and I continued to give rescue breaths. EMTs finally got there and took over. I hopped in the back of the ambulance and as we were driving, he asked which hospital and gave me two choices. I chose Texas Childrens. We went straight to the airport, got him on life flight, and landed in Houston.

My husband was driving there as well, after he got my daughter taken care of. The ER staff tried oxygen but ended up having to intubate him. They weren’t sure he was going to make it past 6 hours. X-rays showed that he had clouded lungs and the machine was doing all the work for him to breathe.

He slowly kept trying to do the work on his own and after 18 hours, he shocked us all and was extubated. Docs were not expecting him to recover so fast but after 3 days, we were headed home.

I never dreamed he would have jumped in on his own. He has since told me he thought he still had his floaties on. He had developed the muscle memory for the drowning position. That and the false sense of confidence the floaties gave him are the reason we no longer use any type of device and we are always in the water with the kids. I take full responsibility for having such confidence that these devices to keep my children safe. Hindsight is 20/20. We are very lucky and blessed we still have him and he is 100% injury free. Not many like us get a second chance.