WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-Burlington Boy Recovering After Near-Drowning
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Burlington, Vermont - June 15, 2009
Ten-year-old Cody Andrews of Burlington was home Monday watching his favorite hero Spiderman rescue people. Cody got a first-hand lesson about rescues last week after he nearly drowned at the swimming pool at the Boys and Girls Club in Burlington.
Police say Cody was swimming with 16 kids when a lifeguard spotted him floating unconscious on his stomach, pulled him out and administered CPR until EMTs arrived and brought Cody to the ER with a faint pulse.
"I feel good," Cody said.
Monday Cody was back home feeling good after 42 hours in the hospital-- 16 of them in critical but stable condition with a tube down his throat on a respirator. His mother Ann says her son already had a learning disability but doctors say he will fully recover with no complications.
"No brain damage and he's doing good," she said. "He has aspiration pneumonia and he's taking medicine for it."
EMTs estimate Cody was unconscious no more than 4 seconds. No one is certain exactly what happened, but Cody says he remembers some of it.
"Water went in my mouth and I was coughing a lot," he explained. "I fell over. I felt like I was going to die."
"The club told the police that the lifeguards scanned three times, saw all heads up, twice, and after the third time that's when they saw Cody's head underwater," Ann Andrews said.
Cody is just happy to be alive and he has a message for the lifeguards, EMTs and doctors: "Thank you everyone for saving my life."
For now Cody must stay indoors. But he and his loyal cat Reese's spend the time with Spiderman and taking medicine for his pneumonia until he can get outdoors for his summer vacation.
And many people came to help Cody, including his school principal Joyce Irving from the H.O. Wheeler school who spent hours with him at the hospital on Friday and Saturday morning.
Brian Joyce - WCAX News
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