Copyright 2006 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company
By JENNY HURWITZ
Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
When Amanda Bloom saw her 9-year-old cousin floating motionless in their grandmother’s pool in Lacombe, she didn’t let fear or a lack of lifeguard experience stop her from taking action.
Instead, the 14-year-old sprinted to the scene, boosted Amber Leinbach out of the above-ground pool and dragged her 78-pound body onto the ground.
By this time, Amber had turned purple, her lips had darkened to blue and she was neither moving nor breathing, Amanda recalled.
Using techniques she learned “just from what I’d seen on TV,” Amanda performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, while pushing on Amber’s chest for about 30 seconds, until her cousin regained consciousness, coughed up water and vomited.
“I was afraid,” Amanda admitted; during the rescue, her legs had been trembling so much that she could barely hoist her cousin out of the water. “But I wasn’t going to give up until I got her to breathe.”
Amber seemed fully recovered Monday as she demonstrated karate kicks in her living room in Lacombe, more than a week after “the incident,” as her mother, Sharon Leinbach, called it.
After a three-day stay at NorthShore Regional Medical Center in Slidell, where she underwent a series of tests, including CAT scans and MRIs, Amber returned home on Memorial Day, Leinbach said.
Doctors attribute the near-drowning to a seizure, she said.
Amber had been playing for less than an hour in the latex pool at her grandmother’s house, Leinbach said.
The pool, approximately 12 feet wide, 30 feet long and 3 feet deep, had been set up only two weeks before the accident, said Carol Golemon, Amber’s grandmother.
Amber had been playing in the pool with her three cousins, all under 10, when they noticed she had drifted beneath the water’s surface and was violently shaking her head, Leinbach said. They pulled her up from beneath the water until Amanda ran out of the house and dragged her from the pool, she said.
The accident marks the second time in as many months that Amber had a seizure; she is now on medication to prevent a recurrence, Leinbach said.
While Leinbach did not know how long Amber had been under water, paramedics said she took water into her lungs, prompting her three-day stay at the hospital.
Officials say that four or five drownings occur each summer, often shortly after the end of the school year.
“Drowning is really pretty common during the summer,” said Michael Ellison, deputy chief of parish Fire District No. 4, which responded to the call. “It’s was a good thing that little girl was out there.”
Already, at least one child has drowned in a St. Tammany Parish pool this season. Hailey Mazzella, 4, died in a backyard swimming pool during a supervised party near Covington on Saturday afternoon, after being underwater an estimated five minutes.
An avid athlete, Amber plays soccer and intends to earn her red belt in karate in the next few weeks. But she plans to stay out of the pool for the rest of the summer, at her father’s urging.
“I still do (like to swim),” she said. “Probably in six months, I can get back in, when this thing is over with.”