A Saskatoon mom is bravely speaking out about a breathing technique that innocently ended her son’s life while playing in a hotel pool during a family staycation.
It’s hard to imagine a simple game many children have played in a pool, taking 17-year-old Nolan Royer’s life, but it did.
“They were playing that game where you breathe really fast,” Nolan’s mom, Jodie Lonsberry, explained. “Then you hold your breath and go under water and see who can stay under the longest.”
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On Nov. 10, 2017, Royer drowned at the Sheraton Cavalier. Hyperventilating prior to submerging allows for a longer time under water, but it can also have big consequences.
“When you hyperventilate, you get enough oxygen in your lungs and in your blood that it over shadows the carbon dioxide and it tricks your brain into thinking there’s not very much carbon dioxide in your blood when there actually is, so you don’t feel the need to come back up for air so that’s what leads to fainting in the water,” explained Rebecca Newson, the YMCA’s aquatics supervisor.
There are no signs of a struggle, no flailing, nothing to alert others that help is needed.At the YMCA the practice is not allowed. Instead, they teach to blow bubbles.
“So what we really want children to learn is once you are done blowing out all your bubbles, you come back up for air,” Newson said.
The hyperventilation technique is often used by those who are free-diving or training to break world records.
“After you pass out, you take a great big inhalation of air so because he was under the water he just inhaled a massive amount of water and never came up,” explained Royer’s mom with tear-filled eyes.
Royer would have turned 18 two weeks later.
“He was incredibly active, incredibly fit, he was a part of the track team, the wrestling team. He was an air cadet first and then an army cadet,” Lonsberry said.
“He played bagpipes, he did art. He was a big personality.”
Recalling that day more than two months ago is heart wrenching for Royer’s mom.
“It doesn’t happen every day but it happens,” She said. “It happens. So be aware that it happens.”
That awareness bringing purpose to a life that ended innocently and too soon.
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