French Woman Returns From The Dead

French Woman Returns From The Dead

www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk

A French woman pronounced “very certainly clinically dead” woke up 14 hours later to declare: “I had a wonderful sleep.”

(visit the link for the full news article)

For the time being, this short article is the only article in English covering the strange resurrection of Lydia Paillard, but the incident is pretty well covered in the French Media.

Lydia Paillard, 60, was taken in to the Polyclinique Bordeaux-Rive-Droite for a chemotherapy treatment.

She reacted badly to the treatment, feel into a deep coma, and was eventually declared brain dead by the doctors.

They asked Paillard's three sons to sign a discharge to cut the life support, stating that there was no hope whatsoever of recovery, but the sons refused to sign without complementary tests.

Instead, Paillard was transfered to the Bordeaux University Hospital, where her comatosed body went through further exams. Here, a scan showed faint cerebral activity, and Paillard eventually woke up, after 14 hours of coma.

"I had the feeling of sleeping for a long time, but to them, I was dead", says Lydia Paillard.

www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

It will be interesting in the comming days to see what other details emerge about this incident. Is this a case of incredible awakening from almost certain death, evidence that medical practice needs a revamp in order to catch these bare signs more often, or just a case of a lack of care on the part of the first hospital involved? Only time and additional data will reveal the answers.

I am so glad that this woman's sons refused the medical advice and did not unplug her. When a person has cancer and the medical community has already written you off, any kind of "complication" will get someone the
death sentence. Doctors, once their minds are made up that you are going to die, basically don't want to help you live...they would much rather see you kick the bucket so they don't have to deal with you anymore.

Kudos once again to that lady's sons for helping her. I feel the medical community should look again at the Hippocratic oath....and quit trying to play god. Oh yeah seems the money has a lot to do with this as well.

~ holly

Jesus.... Makes you really reconsider the new (at least here in Aus) Opt Out policy for Organ Donation...

Had she been here, and had not signed the paperwork to opt out, her organs would be in someone else now...

scary...

reply to post by Heliocentric


Your title is misleading.
The woman was never dead in the first place.

Originally posted by midicon
reply to post by Heliocentric

 

Your title is misleading.
The woman was never dead in the first place.

It's a matter of interpretation.

According to the French doctors, she was clinically dead.

You assume that she wasn't dead, just deep 'down under', but that rests to be proven.

In any case, it raises interesting questions about our definition of 'death'.

reply to post by Heliocentric


I don’t think it raises any questions about our definition of death.
We know what it means when we say someone is dead.
We perhaps do however need to improve upon our methods of ascertaining actual death.
I don’t assume that she wasn’t dead, the facts tell you that.
There are many people who are pronounced dead prematurely.
Many deep coma patients have also been thought to have been brain dead.
There are also conditions like cataplexy with sufferers being pronounced dead on more than one occasion.

Regards Midicon

Originally posted by midicon
Your title is misleading.
The woman was never dead in the first place.

That is the title in the headline of the Belfast Telegraph.

The Breaking Alternative News forum has a rule that any news article submitted must quote the headline of the news source verbatim.

Edit to add: The headline from the Belfast Telegraph is actually ''woke up from the dead'', but it's still much the same thing.

reply to post by Sherlock Holmes


Thanks for that.

I should have said, ‘the headline is misleading,
The woman was never dead in the first place’.
Or perhaps I shouldn't have posted at all!

Regards Midicon.

Originally posted by Heliocentric

French Woman Returns From The Dead

www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk

A French woman pronounced “very certainly clinically dead” woke up 14 hours later to declare: “I had a wonderful sleep.”

(visit the link for the full news article)

After reading this story... all I can say is thank goodness for embalming fluid. To me... clinically dead means no detectable heartbeat or pulse. Brain dead is an entirely different can of worms.



I don't think I could have ever done a film like this after losing my SO under similar circumstances... and I found it quite disturbing that Liam had chosen to do just that. Out of curiosity I tried to research exactly when this movie was originally scheduled to be filmed... and when it was in post-production. Sometimes these movies can sit on a shelf for years before they're even released.

Not actually dead but in a deep coma then. I got all excited, thought we were going to get an afterlife story again.

It makes me wonder how many people wake up to find themselves trapped in coffins.
2nd

Originally posted by TrueBrit
or just a case of a lack of care on the part of the first hospital involved?

I guess I'm jadded but this is probably the case.

Why I'm jadded.

11 years ago I knew someone with cancer. When he went in for chemo, he had an alergic reaction to the anistetic. Fell into a coma and was placed on life support. He had a living will to not be on life support so the only option for the hospital was to "pull the plug". Well, the nurse wanted to shoot him full of drugs before they pulled the plug to "ease the transition". Another friend asked her not to as to give him a fighting chance. He woke up and lived for an additional 2 months. Might not be a lot but he at least got an additional 2 months to say his goodbyes no thanks to this nurse who just wanted to kill him on the spot.

Originally posted by midicon
reply to post by Heliocentric

 

I don’t think it raises any questions about our definition of death.
We know what it means when we say someone is dead.
We perhaps do however need to improve upon our methods of ascertaining actual death.

Of course it's a question of definition,

If these doctors - based on their training and protocols - can declare a person which is not dead clinically dead, then perhaps those protocols need to be re-defined?

The question of who is dead or not might be simple to you, but ask any Emergency Room doctor if you can bring a technically 'dead' person back to life (under certain conditions), and he/she will tell you yes.

Yes, we do need to improve upon our methods of ascertaining actual death, just as we need to learn more about the human body. Medical history is full of unexplicable recoveries. They're unexplicable because even though we know a lot, there's always more to learn.

reply to post by jexmo

Not actually dead but in a deep coma then. I got all excited, thought we were going to get an afterlife story again.

I just gave you an after.life story in my edit. Something to make you go... hmmmm.

previous poster was right doctors just didn't want to treat her any more plus they were probably trying to get rid of her because she went into coma through their fault in first place.

As a medical professional, the one thing we can say for certain is that we cannot rely on media accounts of what happen. The papers love the term "clinically dead" and often use it inappropriately. Even quotes from doctors are unreliable because every medical professional has different ways they dumb things down for the public. What exactly they are dumbing down can be unclear.

"Heart attack", for example is sometimes used to describe Myocardial Infarction, but also Cardiac Arrest. If a doctor says a person died of a heart attack, they are probably talking about an infarct but they may also mean that a person...say...suffered a VF arrest secondary to an electrolyte disturbance. "Life support" is also unclear. It usually means a mechanical ventilator but can include all kinds of thinks from dialysis to LVADs to ECMO.

It will be interesting to see if more accurate details about this case ever come to light.


Also, death is not a single momentary event. The cellular break down that occurs after a loss of cardiac output (effective heart beat) is a process that occurs over 5-20 mins depending on your end points. Their are four kinds (depending on how you categorize them) of cardiac arrest that lead to a loss of output, some more fixable than others, all loosely considered to be clinical death.

The more important kind of death is reached when that cellular break down has occurred in the brain to such an extent as to be mutually exclusive with life (usually that the part of the brain the makes you breath is too damaged to work). This damage can also be achieved in other ways (such as head injury). The rest of your body can continue to live indefinitely if you something breaths for you (the heart tells itself to pump, it doesn't actually need the brain), but there is no point if there is no person attached to the body.

EDIT: These doctors did probably screw up, and it may have cost this woman her life. But that happens literally everyday. We aren't perfect in health care. It just so happens that these doctors did it in a way that is particularly evident to the public and that makes good news