I'm asking for a story that I'm writing. If a person is drowning in water and they're trying to breathe or they drink water while drowning, can they choke on it? And is it drowning painful? Like the struggle to breathe and once the water gets into your lungs
Responses (2)
If you inhale water there is a burning sensation in your chest, the water is blocking your lungs capacity to get oxygen in your bloodstream and so can take some time (if you panic it will be a lot shorter). As oxygen deprivation in the blood becomes detectable by the heart it starts to race and coupled with an elevated pulse caused by adrenaline this can cause the heart to fail.
Choking is usually a blockage of the windpipe by an object, you do swallow water while drowning but the urge to breathe means this is a small amount. Drowning is extremely painful, even if rescued it is not like in the movies the muscles in your diaphragm that allow you to breathe/cough cannot remove the water from your lungs, this liquid in the lungs frequently leads to secondary infections and sometimes pneumonia. Resuscitation rates are high but survival is about ~80%.
Dry drowning is quite common, this is where the larynx spasms closed and so suffocates the individual, this is most commonly found in drowning victims but can be caused by foreign objects in the throat or a puncture to the abdomen.