Father saves two-year-old son's life after recognizing dry drowning symptoms from a news story about another boy's tragic death

Gio Vega

A Colorado father, Staff Sgt. Garon Vega, saved his two-year-old son's life after he recognized the symptoms of dry drowning after reading a news story about another boy's tragic death. Vega says he immediately took his 2 year old son, Gio, to the emergency room after watching Frankie Delgado's family speak out about the death of their 4 year old son, Little Frankie, who died a week earlier.

Frankie, died on June 3, six days after he inhaled water while swimming with his family in Texas.

Vega's 2 year old son, Gio , on the other hand, swallowed water during a trip to their community pool last week and started suffering similar symptoms to Frankie, including a fever and trouble breathing, so Vega decided to take him to the hospital immediately after he read about Frankie's incident. An X-ray showed fluid in the boy's lung.
A doctor said it was a good thing that Vega brought his son in as he probably would not have survived the night.

Garon Vega

Vega has thanked Delgado's parents, for sharing their tragedy which helped save his own son's life. He said:

'I feel like I needed to reach out to the parents of little Frankie and tell them, I don’t know how to word it, but their little boy saved our little boy’s life,' Vega told ABC 13. 'There was a purpose.

'It was an unfortunate thing that happened, but if I had not told my wife that he swallowed the water, and if she had not seen that article, I think we would’ve ended up dispelling it as a regular sickness.'

Doctors told 4 year old Frankie Delgado's parents that they believe he died of dry drowning.   Francisco Delgado III, known as Baby Frankie to his parents, went swimming with his family at the Texas City lake.

Frankie Delgado

His parents Francisco Jr. and Tara said he started to complain of stomach pains shortly after getting out of the water, but they figured he just has a regular bug.
Over the next week, they say that he stared vomiting and having diarrhea, but appeared to be getting better.

Little Frankie and his parents

Then things got much worse. Francisco says that his son complained of his shoulders hurting Saturday morning, but then went back to sleep, only to wake up screaming in serious pain hours later.Then things got much worse. The boy was rushed to the hospital where he later died.
His father said:

'Out of nowhere, he just woke up. He said, "ahhh,"' his father told KTRK-TV. 'He took his last breath, and I didn’t know what to do no more.'

'I walked in. I could see him lying there. They were still working on him. I'm screaming. Let me just touch my baby. Maybe he needs his mama's touch,' Tara Delgado said.
'When she came in, she told us it's what's called dry drowning. His lungs were full of fluid. There was nothing else they could do for him.'

The Delgados

Doctors told the Delgados that little Frankie died from 'dry drowning' a rare medical condition that predominantly affects children because their bodies are small.

Dry drowning happens when someone breathes water in. The water never reaches the lungs, but it causes the vocal chords to spasm and tighten, eventually shutting down the airway.

A similar condition called secondary drowning happens when water gets into the lungs and then starts to build up over time, eventually making it impossible to breathe.

Symptoms of dry drowning usually happen immediately while secondary drowning has a later onset, between one to 24 hours.
Both cause the same symptoms which include coughing, chest pain, trouble breathing and fatigue.  They account for about one to two percent of all drowning incidents.