Florida woman survives 45 minutes without pulse after C-section

A Florida mother is home and tending to her new infant less than a month after surviving without a pulse for 45 minutes following complications from a routine cesarean section.

A spokesman for Boca Raton Regional Hospital told The Associated Press on Sunday that a team of medical workers spent three hours attempting to revive the woman after a rare amniotic fluid embolism.

Spokesman Thomas Chakurda says the doctors were preparing to pronounce her death when a blip on a monitor indicated a heartbeat. Despite going 45 minutes without a pulse, she suffered no brain damage during the Sept. 23 ordeal.

"She essentially spontaneously resuscitated when we were about to call the time of death," said Thomas Chakurda, the hospital spokesman.

Source

The mysteries of life, how can someone survive without pumping blood in the brain. Reminds me of the Japanese man that survived in the wilderness for 3 weeks and when was found was at ambient temperature.

A man who went missing in western Japan survived in wintry weather without food and water for over three weeks by falling into a state of "hibernation," doctors said.

Mitsutaka Uchikoshi had almost no pulse, his organs had all but shut down and his body temperature was a chilly 71 degrees Fahrenheit when he was discovered on Rokko mountain in late October, 24 days after he went missing in the area, according to doctors who treated him at the nearby Kobe City General Hospital.

His body temperature is thought to have plunged as he lay in frosty weather of about 50 degrees Fahrenheit, greatly slowing down his metabolism.

"(Uchikoshi) fell into a state similar to hibernation and many of his organs slowed, but his brain was protected," said Dr. Shinichi Sato, head of the hospital's emergency unit. "I believe his brain capacity has recovered 100%."

Japanese man survives 3-week 'hibernation,' doctors say (2006)

Perhaps some of us are manbearpig and can hibernate .

In any case another unexplained curious case

50 Fahrenheit = 10 Celsius.

Looks like he just broke the record for recovering from hypothermia:

en.wikipedia.org...

If the temperatures were below freezing point, he would certainly have died.

a reply to: stormcell

Paradoxical undressing. That happens to me on certain "scientific chemicals." I wonder if that means a change of metabolism occurs when experimenting for the greater good of individual data sampling. I always felt like I was buried in snow and ice when a "trial" took a turn for the worse.

The brain is a powerful thing. It fights until it can no longer. Even when every other square nanometer of the body quits, the brain doesn't. Like a faulty computer holding a charge with no components to actually run it until some outside forces fixes it.

I found another source with some interesting details (to say the least!):

He said "extraordinary" doesn't begin to describe what happened. The hospital staff is calling Graupera-Cassimiro's survival a "miracle." Despite having no pulse for 45 minutes, she had no neurological damage, no bruises from the chest compressions, no burn marks from the paddles.

Afterward, Graupera-Cassimiro told her sister that she saw their deceased father and he told her she needed to come back, Chakurda said.

"In a follow-up with one of the physicians, she looked him dead in the eye and said, 'You don't have to be afraid of dying.'" he said.

"I've never seen a group of people so impacted, if you will, by what they saw," Chakurda added. "They all were very struck."

Source:abcnews.go.com...

Beautiful story!



Edited to add...

Here is another article with more details on her NDE.

"I was dead," Graupera-Cassimiro told ABC News. "My husband tells me, 'You were gray. You were cold as ice, and you were dead. You had no color in your lips.'"

Graupera-Cassimiro, 40, had gone to the hospital for a cesarean section on Sept. 23. The surgery was uneventful and the baby was healthy, but Graupera-Cassimiro started to experience shortness of breath, said Boca Raton Regional Hospital spokesman Thomas Chakurda told ABC News.

The last thing she remembers was being wheeled into the recovery room after the c-section and asking someone for a tissue because her nose felt stuffy. She said it felt like she'd fallen asleep.

Graupera-Cassimiro then stopped breathing. Doctors tried for three hours to revive her but it was no use. She had no pulse for 45 minutes.

During that time, she said she felt herself floating along a tunnel.

"I remember seeing a spiritual being who I believe was my dad," Graupera-Cassimiro said. "I remember the light behind him and many other spiritual beings."

But suddenly a "force" stopped her, and she said she knew she couldn't go any further.

Her heart started beating again on its own even though doctors hadn't touched her in several minutes, Chakurda said.

"I was chosen to be here," she said, adding that she's grateful to come back to her family, including her new baby daughter Taily, who turns seven weeks old on Nov. 11.

She woke up without any brain damage, broken ribs from the chest compressions or burns from the four or five times doctors tried to shock her heart back to life.

Source: 6abc.com...

Bit of hyperbole in those descriptions 'cold as ice'? Maybe if the room was that cold (unlikely) that's why she survived that long; but they had to have given her anesthesia for the C-section; maybe they just overdid it and she was highly sedated physically; a brain in suspended animation doesn't need a whole lot of oxygen and it takes quite a while for the brain cells to start dying. They would have also had oxygen on her leading up to the surgery for both her and the infant's sake, which would have supercharged her bloodstream.

I don't doubt the rest of the story, I've had awareness of life after death experiences myself.