Man Comes Back to Life After Being 'Dead' for an Hour

Discussion in 'World Events' started by sandy, Jan 17, 2008.

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  1. sandy

    sandy Banned Banned

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    Boy, would I like to interview that guy.

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    A U.K. man came back from the dead after nearly drowning and having no pulse for up to an hour. Architectural technician John Deeks, was dragged from the water by two bathers after his body was spotted off of South Africa's Cape Town coast.
    A doctor who was sunbathing on the beach began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation until rescue workers arrived.

    "We don't know how long he was in the water but he must have been without a pulse for between 40 and 60 minutes," said Darren Zimmerman, station commander at the nearby National Sea Rescue Institute office.

    Deeks, a South African native who now lives in Colliers Wood in south London, was put on a ventilator after the accident last Thursday. He was taken off the machine Saturday and was released from the hospital Wednesday night.

    The 35-year-old said he does not remember what happened to him, but thinks a large wave may have dragged him into a whirlpool. "It's a miracle I survived," he told the Daily Mail. Ya think?

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    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,323416,00.html
     
    sandy, Jan 17, 2008
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  3. spidergoat

    spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    That sounds impossible, how does his brain still work?
     
    spidergoat, Jan 17, 2008
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  5. ashura

    ashura the Old Right Registered Senior Member

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    I wonder, how did they determine the time he was without a pulse?
     
    ashura, Jan 17, 2008
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  7. sandy

    sandy Banned Banned

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    I don't know but I have read about people surviving this. The doctors around here would know better than I would. Somer super-hypothermia (stage 3?)where pulse and respiration rates drop way off but the heart keeps beating? Because of decreased cellular activity in stage 3 hypothermia, the body takes longer to undergo brain death, no?

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    sandy, Jan 17, 2008
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  8. spidergoat

    spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    How cold is the water off of Cape Town? I imagine it's warm, but I could be wrong.
     
    spidergoat, Jan 17, 2008
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  9. sandy

    sandy Banned Banned

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    10 degrees (C) on the surface. Colder below.
     
    sandy, Jan 17, 2008
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  10. ashura

    ashura the Old Right Registered Senior Member

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    That's pretty incredible. Do you know what the possible negative side effects are to being in such a condition?
     
    ashura, Jan 17, 2008
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  11. sandy

    sandy Banned Banned

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    I'd guess brain damage but the guy is supposedly ok.
     
    sandy, Jan 17, 2008
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  12. spidergoat

    spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    50 degrees F. That's pretty cold. Similar to the waters off Maine, it will take your breath away.
     
    spidergoat, Jan 17, 2008
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  13. orcot

    orcot Valued Senior Member

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    You know I once ripped of a grizly bear head right off, with my bare hands

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    Do you know how I did it?

    by lying offcourse nobody dies for a hour and get's back unscratched with only the help of some doctor on vacation.
     
    orcot, Jan 17, 2008
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  14. Nickelodeon

    Nickelodeon Banned Banned

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    With your bare hands.
     
    Nickelodeon, Jan 17, 2008
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  15. sandy

    sandy Banned Banned

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    I thought he was gonna say "bear" hands.

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    sandy, Jan 17, 2008
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  16. orcot

    orcot Valued Senior Member

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    No offence but I can't take that article seriously

    I'm not that hairy
     
    orcot, Jan 17, 2008
    #13
  17. Fraggle Rocker

    Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    People, even professional rescue workers, do not have accurate memories of time spans. When something is going terribly wrong and time is of the essence, it appears to pass very quickly. Five minutes can feel like forty and people will swear forty minutes passed.

    Furthermore, a very weak pulse can be enough to keep the brain oxygenated, and a very weak pulse can go unnoticed, even by a professional rescue worker.
    The story as told is indeed impossible. People will quibble over how long a brain can survive without oxygen, but an upper-bound estimate that absolutely no one will dispute is ten minutes. It's more likely closer to five, and even then you would surely lose fifty IQ points or possibly be just a vegetable with only autonomic functions. After half an hour synaptic degradation would be total and irreversible and all that would be left of you is a corpse.
    Exactly. First-person accounts of emergencies are notoriously inaccurate.
    One of the most common phenomena in these cases is called the "mammalian diving reflex." Mammals that have a partly-aquatic lifestyle have muscles that shut down the blood flow to their extremities when they're underwater, reserving as much oxygen as possible for the brain. Human babies--who are not yet completely evolved but retain some of the lower-animal physiology they had as fetuses--have been documented to survive something like ten minutes in ice-cold water. The reflex seems to require the water to be cold in order to be triggered in humans. So occasionally the same thing happens to an adult. A remarkable story but not miraculous. (This is yet another bit of supporting evidence for the Aquatic Ape Theory; none of the other primates have any decent adaptations for swimming, yet we have several such as buoyancy, those little vestigial webs between our fingers, and the mammalian diving reflex.)
    I haven't seen the temperature readings for the surviving-baby stories, but I'd guess that 50F (10C) would be low enough to kick in the reflex.

    So the story becomes an exaggeration. He wasn't underwater for as long as people thought, he had a weak pulse that no one could detect without sensitive hospital equipment--especially when they didn't really expect the poor fellow to have one--and/or his heart stopped but not for very long.

    Again, this is remarkable but it's no miracle.
     
    Fraggle Rocker, Jan 18, 2008
    #14
  18. spidergoat

    spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Ah. Note that if you come back to life again, you were never really dead.
     
    spidergoat, Jan 18, 2008
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  19. Asguard

    Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    Spidergoat what is dead?
    clinically dead?
    brain dead?

    Your right if you were refering to brain death but that cant be assessed clinically
    clinical death however symply means your heart has stoped and you can be revived from that

    The water temp you quoted was that C or F?
    I have heard of cases of people (esspecially) children being revived after 2-3 hours on in VF or VA (Ventricula, Fribulation, Asistoly, will explain what they are if asked) if the body temp is cold enough. The ambo's have a saying "your not dead until your warm and dead"

    EDIT TO ADD: oh and if the doc was doing CPR the man could have lasted longer as CPR maintains oxygnation to the heart and brain until a pt can be Defibed
     
    Asguard, Jan 19, 2008
    #16
  20. cosmictraveler

    cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    I died for about 3 minutes once because I was given medicine that I was allergic to. I was given a great blow job by the nurse their and became animated right away!

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    cosmictraveler, Jan 19, 2008
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  21. spidergoat

    spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Dead is when you cannot come back to life.
     
    spidergoat, Jan 19, 2008
    #18
  22. cosmictraveler

    cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    I've been feeling that way for years! Maybe that's my problem, I'm really dead walking around with the living.

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    cosmictraveler, Jan 19, 2008
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  23. spidergoat

    spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    It's pretty common.
     
    spidergoat, Jan 19, 2008
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