Mom warns of deadly dangers of ‘dry drowning’ after daughter is rushed to ICU hours after swallowing swimming pool water

A Florida mom has warned of the terrifying dangers of ‘dry drowning’ after her daughter swallowed water from a swimming pool.

Annie Gallagher’s five-year-old daughter was enjoying a summer day when she was submerged for just the ‘blink of an eye’ and came back up for air coughing.   

At first, Ms Gallagher thought nothing of it. ‘She seemed okay and wanted to go back to playing, which she did,’ the mother-of-three said. 

But later that night, the kindergartener crawled into her mother’s bed, complaining that she didn’t feel well.  

Ms Gallagher said that while her daughter seemed fine at first, she later complained she wasn’t feeling well and seemed tired

‘Honestly, my first reaction was to send her back to her room for a good night’s sleep because I was still up cleaning the house for the next day,’ Ms Gallagher said. ‘But something in my gut said “Don’t do it.”‘ 

Ms Gallagher rushed her daughter to the emergency room, where doctors found she had suffered ‘dry drowning’, a lung injury that occurs from inhaling water into the airways rather than swallowing it down the digestive tract. 

The child had suffered a lung infection called aspiration pneumonia, which occurs when foreign objects or substances enter the airways and irritate them so much that it causes an inflammatory reaction. 

When water goes into the airways, it cuts off access to them, making it difficult to breathe. 

‘[Doctors] then determined that if I hadn’t brought her in that night, the outcome would have been catastrophic,’ Ms Gallagher said.

‘She had begun to slowly suffocate as she drowned in her own fluids that were flooding her lungs.’

However, the term ‘dry drowning’ is controversial. Though some online have said that it can occur from swallowing just a small amount of water, other health agencies have said that a patient must be fully submerged, which would not make it ‘dry.’

Dr Debra Houry, Chief Medical Officer at the CDC, said in May that drowning ‘can happen to anyone any time water is present.’ 

Ms Gallagher’s daughter spent seven days in the hospital with aspiration pneumonia. Doctors said ‘if I hadn’t brought her in that night, the outcome would have been catastrophic’

The National Drowning Prevention Alliance (NDPA), however, states that ‘for a drowning event to occur, the child or adult must have been submerged in water.’

‘Drowning cannot happen by swallowing water or simply playing with it.’ 

Dr Purva Grover, a pediatric emergency medicine physician at the Cleveland Clinic, wrote in a hospital blog that while dry drowning is not a real medical term, ‘if you do have a near-drowning incident, symptoms can show up after you’ve left the water.’ 

Even 12 hours later, you may suffer breathing problems as your lungs swell with water.  

Ms Gallagher’s daughter was transferred to a children’s hospital within hours and led to so much stress that the mother passed out and ended up in the ER herself. 

‘I couldn’t believe my kid was in critical condition,’ Ms Gallagher said. ‘I wondered, “How did this happen?”‘

However, her daughter responded well to antibiotics and was discharged from the hospital a week later. ‘Suddenly, the life had come back in her eyes,’ Ms Gallagher said. 

‘Simply seeing my daughter get out of bed or her wheelchair allowed me to breathe and smile with her. She laughed for the first time in a week, and nothing could have been more beautiful than that moment.’ 

The girl is now 12 and thriving, and she still swims regularly despite the scare. 

‘I want parents to know these things happen,’ Ms Gallagher said. ‘We can’t put our kids in a bubble, unfortunately, but we have to keep living.’

‘The best we can do is be aware of safety hazards, teach our kids, and watch their backs while they are still learning.’

‘More than anything, though, as a parent, trust your instincts. Mine saved my daughter’s life.’