The Ballestero Blog

Do You Know What Drowning Looks Like?

The Monthly Feature from the Medical News TODAY

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/196538.php

If you and your family are planning to spend some of this summer by the sea, by the pool, or perhaps even a river or lake, perhaps you should ask yourself, would you be able to spot someone in trouble in the water, in time to save their life: do you really know what drowning looks like?

Mario Vittone, a writer on maritime safety, tells a story about a former life guard, now a boat captain, who spotted a potentially fatal incident from fifty feet away. The captain jumped off his own boat, and sprinted toward a family swimming between the beach and their anchored boat: he sped past the astonished parents, to save their nine-year old daughter, who had been quietly drowning not ten feet behind her father.

Vittone, whose articles have appeared in many magazines, including Reader’s Digest, said he was not surprised when he heard this story: he knows a thing or two about drowning, having served nineteen years in the US Navy and Coast Guard, and his strongest message is “Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning”.

Furthermore, says the CDC, many parents have watched their child drown without realizing what was happening. They did not know what the captain who saved the little girl in Vittone’s story was trained to notice and her parents were blissfully unaware of: the signs of Instinctive Drowning Response, a term coined by Dr Francesco A. Pia, a water safety expert.

Vittone and Pia wrote about the Instinctive Drowning Response, in the Fall 06 issue of On Scene, the journal of the US Coast Guard Search and Rescue. Pia says it is what people do to avoid suffocating in water: they don’t splash much, they don’t wave, and they don’t yell or call out. Quite different to what many of us might expect.

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When reading this today, all the alarms in my soul went off. How many do we know that have drowned spiritually in front of our eyes and we didn’t see the signs of their unspoken struggles?

I’m not talking about those whose overt actions and speech give away their desire for the world. It’s those that we know whose struggle for survival is inward and their pride keeps them from admitting they need help.

Pastors, evangelists, youth leaders, Sunday school teachers, parents and concerned saints have ALL experienced the horror of losing someone dear to them. Some of us were oblivious to the spiritual drowning.

God help us all to be more aware of the needs of our sisters and brothers.