By Jenny Neyman
Photo courtesy of Vicki Leach. Liam Leach, 17, recuperates at Providence Alaska Medical Center in early December after having a seizure and nearly drowning at the Nikiski pool.
Redoubt Reporter
Since he was a little kid, Liam Leach has loved doing two things — swimming and climbing trees.
Out of the two endeavors, Liam’s mom, Vicki Leach, of Soldotna, figured the tree climbing would be the thing to hurt him. On Dec. 4, it was the swimming that almost ended his life. Yet his love for swimming also helped save it.
Liam, 17, is autistic. He needs structure and consistency in his life, and swimming has been one of his fixations since he was little.
“He loves the water — loves it. So we very early taught him to swim because he always really loved the water,” Vicki said. “And tree climbing. You would have thought that would be the thing he’d get hurt at, but it totally wasn’t.”
Liam swims at the Nikiski pool several times a week, churning through lap after lap after lap.
“He swims 150 laps. And a lap is for him is down and back. For me it’d be 300 laps, but I’d be dead at two,” Vicki said.
As a reward after every 50 laps, he swims down to the 12-foot bottom of the deep end of the pool and sits for a bit, enjoying the feel of the water pressure. While he was down there Dec. 4, Liam had a grand mal seizure.
The seizures are a lifelong but infrequent condition. He can go months without having one. In this case it just happened at the worst possible time.
As his body seized, the involuntary reaction was to take a sharp intake of breath. Being underwater at the time, Liam’s lungs filled with water, essentially drowning him almost instantly.
Liam’s teacher, Jen Tyler, realized what had happened and jumped in after him. The lifeguard on duty, Rod Ritchie, also dove in. Kathy Gardner, who was at the pool working with a group from her Alaska Aquatic Therapy business, also recognized the situation. She had been Liam’s occupational therapist until just a few months ago, Vicki said.
Pool supervisor Nigel Lariccia also came to help, and the Nikiski Fire Department was called. Assistant Chief Trent Burnett, engineer paramedic Jim Hoyt, firefighter EMT Matt Quiner, firefighter paramedic Sheri Trimble and firefighter EMT Kole McCaughey responded.
When paramedics got to the pool, Liam didn’t have a pulse and wasn’t breathing, in spite of how quickly he’d been plucked from the water.
“He’s got people watching him all the time. It’s not a matter of him being unattended,” Vicki said. “Literally in seconds they can fill up their lungs. It’s just a matter of that fast.”
Liam was rushed to Central Peninsula Hospital.
“He wasn’t breathing at all and he was blue. It took them awhile,” Vicki said. “His lungs were a total mess.”
Luckily, Liam was revived. Vicki didn’t realize at the time just how lucky that was.
“This is really pretty miraculous, to be honest,” she said. “I guess because we see it on TV or on movies and they always bring them back, but from what they told me at the pediatric unit, that is not normal. Especially the shape his lungs were in. They were filled. But he’s in fabulous shape because he swims so much, which saved his life. But if he didn’t swim so much he wouldn’t have been in that situation.”
By the time Liam got to CPH his kidneys were passing blood, Vicki said. Doctors told her that’s a common occurrence in pool drownings, that a patient’s kidneys can get a hematoma in the rescue process, from something like being jostled over the side of the pool.
“Getting him out is the important thing. The pool and everything is cement. It’s not anybody’s fault. It just happens, like hitting the side of the pool or doing CPR,” Vicki said.
Liam was put on a LifeMed to Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage and Vicki and her husband, Daryl, met him at the hospital. He was put in the intensive care unit to monitor his lungs and kidneys.
“What the doctor said was just such a wonderful term, ‘His heart is acting goofy still.’ Which, yeah, I knew exactly what she meant,” Vicki said.
After a few days his lungs were functioning well enough to be released and the blood from his kidneys cleared, so Liam was sent home Dec. 6.
“He’s recuperating. He’s pretty fragile,” Vicki said recently. “Now it’s just to be sure he doesn’t catch anything. And this is a kid that is very active, so to tell you he is still taking naps every day and getting to bed early is highly unlike him.”
By Friday, Liam had a clean bill of heath and his doctor said he could get back to the pool. Vicki’s a little hesitant for him to dive back in. After nearly losing her son, she’s enjoying what she calls the family’s Christmas miracle, and wants him to stay on dry land a bit longer.
“Luckily everybody responded very, very quickly, and luckily we have good emergency services. They called them right away. They came right out,” Vicki said. “It’s so nice that our tax dollars are working all the way around, from the lifeguard at the pool to the helicopter pilot to the hospital.”
