by Stacey Paretti Rase
For those of us who have heard the remarkable story of Covington’s Rachel Nolan, life around the poolside will never be the same again. For those of you who haven’t, read on and heed the following advice: No matter what age your children are, or how well they swim, never take your eyes off them when they are in the pool.
I’m sure we’ve all made the same mistake that Lynn Nolan made. Her two children, Rachel and Robby, ages eight and five, were enjoying a dip in the pool one sunny Monday afternoon in June. The idea of one of her children drowning was the farthest thing from her mind, as they are both excellent swimmers. Lynn was just nearby, only three feet away from the water’s edge, in fact, when Robby came up and demanded her attention. “I have something important to tell you, Mom,” Lynn remembers Robby saying. “I looked with my mask under water and I think Rachel is stuck down at the bottom of the pool.”
Lynn jumped up immediately and her worst fears were confirmed. Rachel was indeed in the deep end, thrashing about underwater, seemingly stuck to the bottom of the pool. In a panic, she dove down to rescue her daughter but found that she couldn’t bring her up. Rachel’s entire arm was lodged deep in the hole of the pool pump’s drain, having been sucked in because the drain was missing its cover. A million things went through Lynn’s mind at that moment.
“I went down at least four times and tried to pull her out,” recounts Lynn. “I just remember thinking each time I went down, ‘Oh my God, she’s going to die down here.’”
Lynn called for Robby to get the telephone and then ran quickly to the garage, where she and her husband Bobby store their scuba gear. If she couldn’t bring Rachel up for air, she figured she would try bringing the air down to her. She found an oxygen tank, but there was no regulator. Abandoning that plan, she ran back to the pool, where she saw a site that would bring chills to any mother. “I looked down and Rachel wasn’t moving. She was completely still. I remember looking down on my digital watch and mentally recording that it was 5:31,” says Lynn, who worked for years as a pediatric intensive care nurse and understood the urgency of rescuing her daughter before oxygen deprivation caused permanent damage to her brain.
In the next terrifying moments, a call to 911 was made, as were calls for help to the next-door neighbor and Lynn’s brother-in-law, who lives just down the street. Lynn continued her frantic dives down to Rachel, with no success, when the thought occurred to her to shut off the pump, thereby releasing the suction of the drain. She ran to the other end of the yard and placed the pump on service mode, then returned to pull Rachel’s lifeless body up onto the pool deck. “When I brought her up, I couldn’t find a pulse,” Lynn says. “I remember looking at my watch again and reading 5:41. She was dead.”
Lifesaving CPR
Rachel most certainly would have been lost if not for what her mother did next. Working as if on auto-pilot, Lynn stayed calm and administered CPR, using a combination of chest compressions and rescue breathing to supply the brain and blood with oxygen until advanced medical personnel arrived. “I had never done mouth-to-mouth rescue breathing before, and it had been eight years since I’d worked as a nurse,” Lynn says. “But I feel like anyone could’ve done what I did. You don’t have to be perfect at CPR; you just have to do something. I just kept telling myself that there was no way I was going to lose her on the side of that pool.”
Rachel was rushed to nearby St. Tammany Parish Hospital, where she was stabilized, and then transferred to the children’s intensive care unit at Northshore Regional Medical Center in Slidell. Doctors prepared Lynn and Bobby for the worst, noting that major, irreversible brain damage can occur after just seven minutes of oxygen deprivation. “I knew I had blown that time limit,” Lynn says, “so it was a complete miracle to see Rachel lift her injured arm up voluntarily at 3 a.m. Tuesday morning. Then, at 5:30 a.m., she flickered her eyelids when I talked to her.” Rachel continued to defy all odds, and truly amazed the medical staff when the breathing tubes were removed on Thursday morning and she immediately spoke. “I don’t want that thing in there,” she muttered, referring to the tube. Doctors had said that she probably wouldn’t talk for at least a week.
The road to recovery
After ten days that were a roller coaster ride of emotion for the Nolans, Rachel returned home, leaving behind a hospital room whose walls were filled with prayers and well wishes of family and friends. Over the course of four weeks, she underwent 20 hyperbaric treatments, which delivered pure oxygen to her brain in hopes of restoring ultimate function. A teacher from Rachel’s school visited daily, helping to re-train her memory, as she had forgotten some basic facts that she had just learned in the second grade.
“The doctors have told us that 90 percent of the damaged area of her brain should heal with treatment,” says Lynn. “It’s been hard for her, but we’re so lucky. Bobby and I have been telling her story at our church because we want to share how incredible God is. She truly is a miracle.”
Is your family safe?
Bobby and Lynn hope that Rachel’s story will bring awareness to the problem of body entrapment in pool drains. A U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission report released in March documented 74 cases of body entrapment and 13 confirmed deaths in the period between January 1990 and August 2004. The incidents involved swimmers between the ages of 22 months and 89 years, and occurred in both public and residential settings. The median age of the injured was nine years. One report included a 43-year-old woman whose necklace became caught in the drain, driving home the fact that the problem is not isolated to children. The CPSC also alerts hot tub and spa owners to another related problem: hair entanglement. This occurs when a swimmer’s hair becomes entangled in a drain cover as the water and hair are drawn through the drain; it is more prevalent in the shallow water found in hot tubs, and even in wading pools.
How do you know if your neighborhood or home pool is safe? For starters, if the drain cover or grate is cracked, broken or missing, immediately shut down the pump and do not allow swimming until it is replaced. In case of an emergency, know how to access your pump’s on/off switch, and have that switch clearly marked for others to read. If your pool is maintained by a regular service, have them check the pool’s drains regularly, to ensure the structural integrity of the cover and to check the flow value of the water passing through the drain in gallons per minute; exceeding the specified rate causes a greater suction. Freddy Gonzales, who owns Pacific Reflections and builds pools on the northshore, has advice for pool owners who perform their own maintenance. “Put a brush on the end of a long pole and gently nudge the drain cover periodically to make sure it fits snugly.”
If you are installing a new pool, or thinking of reworking your existing drainage system, there are several approaches available to ensure greater safety. “Use dual drains instead of just one, so if a child does get trapped in one, the other drain quickly releases the pressure. And insist that only dome-shaped, or anti-vortex, covers are installed,” says Gonzales. “I cannot begin to tell you just how hard the drain suction can be. A child of 65 to 70 pounds can be held down if they put their body over a single drain,” he warns. Gonzales also alerts pool owners to another common danger: stainless steel ladders. Children often try to swim between the ladder and the side of the pool and get trapped. “Be sure to take the ladders out. When we design a pool, we use only seats and steps for entry into the pool.”
Become a lifesaver
Even if you’re lucky enough to never face an entrapment like Rachel’s, chances are, if you live or play around a pool or open water—as so many northshore residents do—you will one day be affected by a drowning. Nationally, drowning is the leading cause of death to children under five, and for every drowning, there are eleven near-drowning incidents, according to government statistics; many of these result in totally disabling brain damage. The harsh statistics emphasize that constant supervision must be maintained around a pool, no matter what skills your child has acquired and how shallow the water. And, in the event of an emergency, being trained in CPR techniques can make the difference between life and death.
Eduardo J. Hernandez, MD, FAAP—who was Rachel’s doctor at Northshore Regional—stresses the importance of CPR certification. “Initiation of appropriate and immediate CPR makes a dramatic difference when saving someone’s life.”
Luckily, there are a myriad of options on the northshore when it comes to choosing a training course. Many hospitals and organizations such as the Red Cross make CPR training a priority, as do concerned citizens like Paula Ourso. “Teaching children to swim safely is a passion of mine,” says Ourso, who organizes group CPR classes. “There’s a lot of water in Louisiana, and it is important for kids and parents to understand how to stay safe.”
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