A Post from Katie

My first year of college, I worked as a lifeguard at an indoor pool for a semester, and over the summer.
My job was exciting, productive, fulfilling, and occasionally boring and routine as what you'd expect at any other job. On an average summer afternoon, I went into work without expecting much trouble from the patrons that attended this pool. Lots of mothers came in with their fat, smiling babies, crowds of annoying/screaming children who had come in with summer camps, and a couple lap swimmers who just wanted to work out.

On this particular afternoon, I was doing my routine walk around the pool and in the hot tub I saw what appeared to be a teenage girl who had fallen asleep.

I walked over to the hot tub to inform her that 1) children under 16 cannot use the spa and 2) falling asleep in the spa is dangerous.
As I sat down next her, she didn't notice my presence. Her eyes didn't open, her face didn't perk, she didn't move.

I came closer to her and put my index and middle finger on her throat (the way we are trained to check pulse). She had none. I immediately blew the heck out of my whistle, and asked for back up from my co-workers to help me pull her out of the hot tub.

I personally delivered rounds of CPR on her, I breathed into her mouth, I put AED pads on her chest to shock some life back into her body. Her skin was red and hot, but she also felt so cold....
My coworkers and I did everything we could until the EMS arrived and carried her away.
I spent the rest of my day worried sick about her. Did she make it? Did I get to her in time? Will I receive a call from her parents saying "thank you, you are a hero"???
I heard nothing all day until I called my manager and he delivered the news, the girl was dead. She was 14, and dead.

I spent hours and hours every day, training to avoid these kinds of emergencies.
But this particular girl slipped through my fingers.

If this story had a moral, it would be...
That life is precious.

I KNOW how cliché it sounds but as I was giving that young girl chest compressions and breathing into her, I had nothing else on my mind but to bring her back to life.
My knees bled, elbows ached, and sweat dripped from my forehead so that this girl could get up and go to college, so she could experience her first High School Prom, and finish going through those awkward years where we all feel insecure, ugly, and pressured to do things we don't really wanna do. I wanted her to wake up with her eyes full of life and see all those things.

Because that's what life is about...
Do you have any idea how much of a miracle being born even is? You've heard this a million times, but the odds are against a healthy, human baby being born. It's a miracle you're even here!

I walked out of that work shift feeling awful. I rarely ever feel that down-right-terrible. We did everything we could to bring that girl back, and sometimes, you're too late. Or sometimes, there's something getting in the way of you reaching your goal. Sometimes, you can't bring back the dead.

But then, upon crying it out, I realized, “hey I have a life. I am currently a human being. I can make a difference, I can go through awkward phases and hardships. As much as it sucks that this poor girl didn't make it, as much as it sucks that her mother probably showed up to pick her up from the pool wondering where she was, I realized that life is a miracle. It's so fragile. She lost hers just from being too young and sitting in a hot tub for too long.

Knowing that, knowing my story...What are you going to do to make the most of your life?