Story told by her mom, Michelle Spencer.
On March 5th, 2022, Carley who was 11 years old at the time, was in her 4th year as an Artistic Swimmer. From her first practice when she was 8, she walked out and said “this is my thing Mom!” She absolutely loves it, and she works really hard at it. Because of all of her time in the pool, she is a really strong swimmer and can swim lap after lap. As her Mom, I never had any reason to worry…or so I thought.
That day her team was swimming 2 lengths of the pool underwater without taking a breath at the end of a long practice. She made it 1 ¾ laps before she surfaced with a gasp of air and then slowly drifted under. Blood was noticed in the water around her as her teammates pulled her out of the water.
Like so many other survivor stories, the right person was there at the right time. A PA (Lynn) was on deck and saw Carley laying on the deck lifeless, with her blue face and lips and her blue eyes staring straight up. She wasn’t breathing and had a weak pulse. Despite the blood, Lynn wiped Carley’s face and performed rescue breathing. Over the next 2 minutes she continued breathing for Carley even when she threw up blood again. Carley eventually began moving and then suffered a seizure from the lack of O2 to her brain.
Since we were not at practice that day and were 45 minutes away, we met her at Children’s Hospital where she arrived in the ambulance. She was receiving high flow O2 from a non-rebreather mask, but underneath it was dried dark blood covering her face and neck. She looked scared and sad all at the same time. She had taken in a lot of water and was having trouble breathing. They warned it may get worse before it got better, and that she was not out of the woods, and prepared us that they may have to intubate her. She couldn’t breathe if they tried lay her flat, and naturally she would get really upset, so she slept sitting straight up that night propped up with pillows. That first night was really long, and I don’t think I took my eyes off of her for a second, because at that time we didn’t know what happened. We were worried that she had a cardiac problem, but she completed a cardiac workup complete with a treadmill test and an echocardiogram, and passed everything with flying colors. Luckily she got a little stronger each day, and returned home after 3 days.
It was a few weeks later when we finally learned what an underwater hypoxic blackout was. It was really brought to the forefront of the Artistic Swimming world when one of the Olympic Athletes blacked out at the end of her routine and pictures of the event went viral.
Carley (and our family) were so incredibly lucky that day that the right people were by her side to get her out of the pool quickly and to start resuscitation efforts. Carley does not remember anything other than making the turn and then feeling like she could make it, and then eventually waking up at the side of the pool later.