Never Give Up - How cold is too cold? The Christine Newman story

[pureantigravity]

This happened a few years ago in our beloved Garibaldi Provincial Park near the Elfin Hut point along the Neve Traverse.

I always wanted to know what happened to this young girl. Frozen, almost dead, actually dead, then revived. Foaming at the mouth, saved by trekkers with medical experience and creative use of what little equipment they had.

An article was just posted in Outside. A look at the role cold plays in keeping people in frozen state. A look back at the Christine Newman story.

http://www.outsideonline.com/2046306...ce-of-freezing

Christine 'Tink' Newman's medical miracle: Revived from near death
'The stars were aligned' says Squamish Search and Rescue's John Willcox
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/britis...eath-1.2591379

Her recent conference video.

[old goat]

As the article points out, ECMO rewarming has been done for a long time in Europe, with sporadic incidents of survival after prolonged avalanche burial where there was enough air that the victim froze before they suffocated. I wonder how many avalanche victims found dead might be saved; unfortunately not many--most die from suffocation or trauma. Has any North American avy victim ever been treated with ECMO?

Some years ago a man was buried up on Donner Summit by a roof slide. After being dug out he was up walking and then collapsed and died. The heart gets very irritable when the body temp is down in the 80's. I wonder if he could have been saved by ECMO.

When I was a med student 40 years ago we had a 2 year old who had drowned in a swimming pool in Michigan in November. After an hour of unsuccessful CPR in the ER the resident in charge went to tell her parents, but couldn't bring himself to do it. He went back into the girls room and found her heart had started and she was breathing. She went home in 2 weeks. This was the first case of survival of cold water drowning that the attending, Dr. Marty Nemiroff took care of, and he subsequently published a series, which led to the saying quoted in the article--"you're not dead until you're warm and dead".

I wonder what the lowest survivable body temp is. Theoretically it seems to me that anything above the freezing temperature of normal saline--when the water in the cells freeze and the cells explode--would be survivable. As long as you have good health insurance.

[XXX-er]

Some paddle buds revived a member of their group who had been stuck in an underwater cave Hi by for 7 or 8 minutes in a very cold river, fortunately one of the crew was an er/anestitist so they got the drowning victim breathing & long lined out and buddy lived ... Very lucky. I heard he needed 1.5 years of pt to get back to work

[goldengatestinx]

Instructor at Holiday Valley years ago had way too much to drink, started walking home, fell down and passed out. Didn't have any permanent damage...but never lived down her nickname....Freezer Queen.