her nightmarish ordeal never happened. No single factor can account for her recovery. However one thing is clear -- her rescue and the following treatment she received at the Hospital was superb. If she had not had that treatment there is very little doubt the toddler would be alive today. Here Royal Gazette reporter Paul Egan presents an account of what happened during those frightening times.

* * * Dr. Andrew Spence, who is in charge of the Hospital's intensive care unit, said Chantia is alive mainly because the small pool she fell into was filled with cold water -- cold enough to cause hypothermia and make her brain stop calling for so much blood and oxygen when her heart and lungs had little to give.

Under water for about 10 minutes, the hypothermia gave Chantia a fighting chance. But from there, her life was passed from one pair of hands to the next.

Had anyone failed -- from Mr. Kent Simmons who pulled her from the pool, to Mr. Terrence Tucker who drove the ambulance, to Dr. Peter Smith who finally coaxed a pulse from Chantia in the Emergency Ward -- the toddler would be either dead or severely handicapped.

But medical care alone may not fully explain it, either. Mr. Simmons called the recovery "a miracle.'' Chantia's mother, Ms Beverly Swann, also thanked God.

And clearly Chantia -- 23 pounds, shorter than a yardstick, and six months shy of her third birthday -- is a fighter.

"Whether the human spirit makes a difference or not is nothing you or any of my colleagues are going to prove, but I for one believe it is true,'' Dr.

Spence said. "A little bit of will power helps us enormously.'' Will power and second-hand knowlege was what Mr. Simmons summoned when he pulled Chantia from the cold jacuzzi. The 40-year-old leather craftsman and Court Street shopkeeper had been asked to keep an eye on the girl that morning while her mother visited a shop up the street. Chantia played with Mr.

Simmons' son Elijah, another two-year-old. They were in and out of the shop, watching a Corporation of Hamilton crew make underground repairs. A barrier the workers erected outside The Spinning Wheel prevented the children from getting further up the street, and "there was nowhere for them to go.'' Or so Mr. Simmons thought. A Bermuda Telephone Company Ltd. crew was also there, running a new cable into The Spinning Wheel. A Telco worker had opened a narrow wooden gate into the nightclub through which Chantia and Elijah slipped.

Mr. Simmons' search took him to the edge of the jacuzzi, on a small elevation above the main swimming pool inside the Spinning Wheel.

Elijah was soaked to the waist, and Chantia, weighed down by a winter coat, was floating on her back, her head beneath the water, her face already blue from lack of oxygen.

Mr. Simmons had no emergency training, but his wife "takes a course every year in CPR and fills me in,'' he said. "I pumped as much water as I could out of her, and gave her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and cardiac massage to the best of my ability.'' Chantia's recovery was particularly gratifying to Mr. Simmons, who along with a lifeguard tried unsuccessfully to revive one of his karate students several years ago.

"From the time I saw her I was scared that she would die,'' he said. "She was in my charge.'' Mr. Simmons' shouts prompted two calls to 911, and P.c. Andrew Robinson of Bermuda Police was first on the scene. He took over the cardiopulmonary resuscitation until an ambulance arrived minutes later.

Workers pointed the way to the pool when Dr. Smith, assistant emergency unit co-ordinator Ms Eloise Bell, and emergency medical technicians Mr. Tucker and Mr. Shannon Anderson jumped from the ambulance.

Dr. Smith took over resuscitation efforts, but Chantia's windpipe was too blocked with pool water, vomit, and other fluids to get a tube inside. The emergency team decided to get Chantia to the Hospital and continued to work on her in the ambulance.

When Chantia arrived there, "for all intents and purposes she was dead,'' said Dr. Spence. "There was no pulse, there was no attempt to breathe.'' A monitor detected electrical activity in Chantia's heart, but the organ was not pumping blood. Her pupils were big and unmoving, and her body temperature was a frigid 29 Centigrade.

In emergency, Dr. Smith, Ms Bell, and several others went to work and soon got a tube inside Chantia's lungs.

The heart monitor still showed "a straight line,'' Ms Bell recalled.

The drugs Adrenaline and Atropine were used to fire up Chantia's tiny heart.

"I can't remember how long it was, but it was a good long time,'' before a pulse could be felt, Dr. Smith said.

"Once we got an output, we'd done our job, and sent her up to ICU,'' the 28-year-old Englishman said.

There, Chantia was wrapped in a tin-foil-like "space blanket'' to contain what body heat remained, and paralysed with drugs to keep her still.

Then, a "juggling act'' began as doctors tried to slowly return her to life while dodging myriad pitfalls.

Chantia was "a freezing cold little child with terrible lungs and almost no oxygen in her blood,'' said Dr. Spence. Her blood pressure was still "too low to record.'' The brain swells when it loses oxygen, and if pressure inside the skull had exceeded Chantia's critically low blood pressure, blood to her brain would be cut off.

By keeping the level of carbon dioxide in her blood below normal, doctors reduced the swelling in Chantia's brain.

But there were other concerns. A normal response of the body to stress is increased blood sugar. But more blood sugar would mean more brain activity, and that would require more oxygen. Doctors wanted to keep Chantia's demands for oxygen as low as possible.

Chantia's blood was also 90 percent more acidic than normal. She was given sodium bicarbonate to try to correct that.

Seizures were another danger, and sedatives like Dilantin were used to prevent those. The day she was admitted to Hospital, Chantia received at least a dozen different drugs.

There was Thiopentone to relax the vocal chords around her breathing tube, the antibiotic Lefoxatime to fight chest infections, Desamethosone and Mannitol to stop brain swelling, Albumin to raise her blood pressure, Valium and Diprivan to sedate her, and Atricurium to paralyse her.

"It was like trying to juggle too many balls at once,'' Dr. Spence said. But together with Chantia, they pulled it off.

Nurses stayed by Chantia's bedside, tended to four different intravenous tubes, monitored and charted every vital sign, and tried to calm and inform her frantic family.

Nurse Mrs. Glenda Daniels, the intensive care unit co-ordinator, said the dynamics were hard to describe. "There is no way you could re-enact the scene,'' she said. "The Police wanting to come in, the social worker coming in, the relatives who were very upset, and don't forget the seven other patients we had in the unit at the time, who were all very, very ill.'' There were setbacks like seizures and a collapsed lung, but by 10 p.m. that night her body temperature had returned to normal and her eyes began to respond to light.

By the next morning, the pneumonia had worsened, and brain damage was still the greatest fear.

As an experiment, the strong sedatives Chantia was under were weakened, and "she started to move her arms and legs,'' Dr. Spence said. Early in the afternoon, her grandmother went into her room, said: "Please wake up,'' and Chantia opened her eyes. "It was a very encouraging sign,'' said Dr. Spence, but to be on the safe side, Chantia was put back to sleep.

The next morning, a brain scan showed only minimal swelling, and the medical team knew "our treatment had been a success beyond our wildest dreams,'' said the 33-year-old Scot.

By February 1, Chantia's lungs were recovered, the sedation was stopped, and the ventilator removed. "She breathed beautifully,'' he said.

On February 2, with all eight beds in intensive care needed for patients at greater risk, Chantia was transferred to the Children's Ward. There, paediatrician Dr. Janet Grant-Tyrrell kept a close eye on the girl as she recovered from what remained of her lung infection and regained her co-ordination.

Chantia is doing well, and there are no signs of brain damage. But she will have to be monitored to determine whether there will be long-term effects, Dr.

Grant-Tyrrell said.

Of every 100 patients admitted to intensive care, between eight and 10 will die. But in the last 10 years, the mortality rate for patients admitted with severe head injuries has improved to 27 percent from 50 percent, placing King Edward on a par with large hospitals in America and the UK.

"I don't like to lose any of my patients,'' Dr. Spence said. "When it's a young fit, healthy toddler who doesn't have a chance, yes, it means much more.'' "It really was a whole lot of teamwork,'' Dr. Spence said. "If we don't all work together, you can have the best doctor, or nurse, or patient, or whatever, in the world, and it will not work.'' GOING HOME -- Chantia Swann is seen leaving the Hospital with her parents Ms Beverly Swann and Mr. Michael Davis and sister Tracy Davis.

SAFE AND SOUND -- Chantia Swann is seen here on the day she left the Hospital.

Her recovery was called "a miracle.'' AMAZING RECOVERY -- Two weeks after she all but drowned in a swimming pool at The Spinning Wheel, two-year-old Chantia Swann returned home with her parents.

Here, Chantia sits with intensive care unit co-ordinator Mrs. Glenda Daniels and consultant anaesthesiologist in charge of intensive care Dr. Andrew Spence.