Between "25 and 30 minutes" convulsing, expelling "foam" from his mouth and struggling to "breathe". This is how a witness explained that the 25-year-old young man of Italian origin, who almost drowned last Thursday on the Playa Grande in Puerto del Carmen, resisted. According to this person who intervened in his rescue, that was the time it took for the medicalized ambulance of the Canary Islands Emergency Service to arrive at the scene. She also points out that it was several bathers together with the young man's partner who pulled him out of the water and not the lifeguard, who she says "didn't realize" what was happening at first.
As this person told La Voz, the young man, who was admitted to the hospital in serious condition, began to convulse while swimming in the sea with "his wife". "She was right behind him and grabbed his face. When we realized, we started shouting and whistling calling the lifeguard. The lifeguard wasn't even looking," she explained. Thus, while the person who was with this witness tried to call the lifeguard's attention, she ran to help the couple. Then "another man jumped into the water" and, together with the boy's wife, they managed to put him on the sand. When he was already lying on the shore, his wife explained to his rescuers that the boy suffered from epilepsy and was suffering an "attack".
The incident occurred at around 5:00 p.m. on Playa Grande, in the section between the floating mats and the first entrance to the beach, according to this witness. According to her, that entire area was being watched only by that lifeguard, who was in the watchtower when everything happened and who was the only one "in sight". "We started shouting, shouting, shouting and whistling at her and nothing... Then she came running, but at first she didn't realize," she insists.
"He was desperate, he couldn't breathe"
With the lifeguard already at the scene, they all put the young man, who was still convulsing, "on his side". After a few minutes, another lifeguard appeared, whom she assumes his partner warned "with the walkie-talkie". Then "at least four" more members of Emerlan arrived. Shortly after, "a man in red swimming trunks" appeared, who was "walking along the beach and stopped to help" and who, this witness ventures, "perhaps" was a doctor. All of them, she says, tried to help this young man for more than 20 minutes, since the medicalized ambulance of the Canary Islands Emergency Service, the only one that exists on the island, did not arrive.
"After 20 minutes, he said 'I can't breathe, I can't breathe'. He was already desperate, he turned purple... it was a horrible thing," she recalls. In that agonizing time, his partner ran to the house where "she said they lived or were staying" to get his medication, but "between the foam he was releasing, all the water he had swallowed, the blood and everything... they couldn't give it to him", recalls this witness, who points out that the boy "had bitten his tongue a lot" due to the strong convulsions.
"Within the bad, he could tell it"
"Foam was coming out of him all the time, I don't know if from the attack or from the water. He was screaming, because he couldn't breathe, and we told him 'calm down, calm down'," she continues. According to her, while they were waiting, the young man tried to sit down, "but he fell". "There were at least three people on top of him, holding him so he wouldn't hurt himself" with the spasms. In the time they were waiting for the ambulance, the Emerlan personnel also came with an "oxygen tank", but again the attack did not allow it to be applied.
After those 20 minutes, "after a while, after a while, the ambulance arrived and treated him," says this person. Then, according to her, the paramedics in the "medicalized" ambulance "pricked him" and transferred him to the Doctor Molina Orosa Hospital, where he was admitted in serious condition.
After what happened, this young woman who helped save him, and who has preferred to remain anonymous, tried to find out what state he was in. "The last thing I know is that he had improved a lot." According to her, that same night she learned that he had been admitted "to the ICU, because he had swallowed a lot of water, he was very stiff and they were going to take some x-rays." Despite this, she is happy because "within the bad, he could tell it".
