Woman Wakes After Heart Stopped, Rigor Mortis Set In

[babylonsister]

Woman Wakes Up After Family Says Goodbye, Tubes Pulled
Patient Brought To Cleveland Clinic

POSTED: 12:58 pm EDT May 22, 2008
UPDATED: 5:57 pm EDT May 22, 2008


CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A West Virginia woman was being transferred to the Cleveland Clinic after walking the line between life and death.

Doctors are calling Val Thomas a medical miracle. They said they can't explain how she is alive.

They said Thomas suffered two heart attacks and had no brain waves for more than 17 hours. At about 1:30 a.m. Saturday, her heart stopped and she had no pulse. A respiratory machine kept her breathing and rigor mortis had set in, doctors said.

"Her skin had already started to harden and her fingers curled. Death had set in," said son Jim Thomas.

They rushed her to a West Virginia hospital. Doctors put Thomas on a special machine which induces hypothermia. The treatment involves lowering the body temperature for up to 24 hours before warming a patient up.

After that procedure, her heart stopped again.

more...


http://www.newsnet5.com/health/16363548/detail.html

[Dogmudgeon]

1. The Diving Reflex (may have been what) saved her

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammalian_diving_reflex">Mammalian Diving Reflex.

--p!

[madokie]

6. Interesting

[nichomachus]

2. Oh crap

This is just going to energize Christians and other right-to-lifers to keep dead people hooked up to machines for months waiting for their "miracle" that will never come.

[LucyParsons]

3. Oh, no - a "miracle".

Nancy Grace'll LOVE this.

[Javaman]

4. Freaky.

either bad docs or a truly amazing constitution.

[jobycom]

5. It's Hilary Clinton's campaign!!!!!

Okay, that might take a greater miracle to revive, but it was just sitting there, waiting to be swung at...

[Dogtown]

9. Oh, that's just MEAN...

but *really* goddam funny.

:bounce: :toast: :bounce:

[jobycom]

15. Hey, I'm a Clinton supporter!

And thanks! :toast:

[ronnie624]

7. What a pantload.

No doctor is quoted as saying rigor mortise had set in or that she had no brain waves for 17 hours or that it is a "medical miracle".

The article does say this however: "They rushed her to a West Virginia hospital. Doctors put Thomas on a special machine which induces hypothermia. The treatment involves lowering the body temperature for up to 24 hours before warming a patient up."

And this: "However, Thomas was kept on a ventilator a little while longer as an organ donor issue was discussed."

[mike_c]

10. I tend to agree-- rigor mortis implies CELL DEATH as calcium leaks...

...out of sarcoplasmic reticula. I think someone's confused about what really happened.

[Canuckistanian]

16. How can muscles recover from rigor mortis?

And if the muscles stopped receiving calcium, didn't that also mean that her organs (specifically her liver) had also failed?

Something strange happened here, but I don't think it can be passed off as a "miracle".

[TwilightGardener]

8. Oh geez. As a former ICU nurse, I can just hear all the desperate families

out there pointing to this case as justification to leave loved ones on ventilators forevah and evah, being "coded" every time their hearts stop, etc.

[nancyr]

11. What about her brain?

I always thought if a brain was without oxygen for something like 4 minutes, it would be damaged.
Too, if she was on a respirator she was being kept alive artificailly. Doesn't sound all that miraculous to me.

[Maine-ah]

13. they kept going at my Dad for 20 minutes

then he was on life support for 3 days. No activity, no nothin'. That's when we decided to let him go. It's what he would have wanted.

[kestrel91316]

14. Sounds like my grandfather - they kept at him for FORTY minutes

before his heart finally restarted. Unfortunately, every other organ in his body was pretty much already dead, especially his brain and kidneys. They turned him off two days later when my sister arrived to be with Gramie.........

It would have been best, given his massive pre-existing medical problems, if they hadn't worked to get his heart going at all. What a waste of scarce community medical resources IMHO........

[Trillo]

12. She's very LUCKY the Docs didn't harvest her organs. n/t

[Dogtown]

17. But, babs

What we really want to know is, "How did she escape the bright light?"