Emergency

For the most part lifeguarding is a fairly boring task. You stare at the pool, drink a ton of water and tell kids what to do. However, there is a reason they prepare us for emergency situations. They do happen. All of us guards working the one to six shift yesterday learned this first hand. It was just like any other day. We got through open swim from one to three forty five just fine and moved into lessons. Guarding during lessons is usually quite easy. You watch the instructors teach their kids so its like there are two levels of protection on the children. I was guarding the leisure pool when I heard the long whistle behind me (behind me is the lap pool which my friend Dana is guarding). I turned around and saw it. There was a kid having a seizure in a swim instructors arms. Dana had jumped in (this is what a long whistle communicates, guard entering the water) and taken control of the convulsing child. He sounded a second long whistle to indicate a major emergency and within seconds another guard rushed out to get a backboard in the water (the preferred method for getting guests out of the water quickly) and they slid the kid straight out of the water. He stopped convulsing once they got him out of the water and thankfully he was conscious. They gave him oxygen and waited for the paramedics which showed up quite swiftly. Thankfully the only part of this situation that affected me is that I had to keep watching the same pool with no rotation for almost 2 hours. This only sucked cause I had to pee. But really I have no right to complain because I am not Dana or Emma (the swim instructor who's kid it was). They were both thoroughly freaked out and had to finish their shifts early. They both acted truly heroically though and I'd really like to congratulate them.