| | Her body was 'ice cold' and her heart stopped, but Duluth woman survived
A
Duluth woman falls in the snow on a cold night and slips into
unconsciousness. Hours later, her body temperature falls to a dangerous
60 degrees, and her heart stops beating. But she survives, amazing her
doctors.
Janice Goodger’s body temperature had fallen to 60
degrees – as cold as Dr. Chris Delp has ever seen – and so cold that it
appeared as if she couldn’t possibly survive.
Instead, the
64-year-old Duluth woman will walk back into St. Luke’s hospital for a
simple checkup today, just days after what Delp, an emergency room
physician at the hospital, called an “amazing” medical journey to the
brink of death and back.
“I’m not aware of anyone at this age to have survived [being so cold] and to have done this well,” he said.
And
Goodger, who returned to her apartment just days after her heart
stopped beating for at least an hour as her body temperature fell,
seems to have suffered no ill effects.
“I don’t feel any different, except I can’t yell anymore,” Goodger said.
Goodger,
who has had rheumatoid arthritis for the last 24 years, was caring for
her daughter’s dog on Anderson Road in Duluth on the afternoon of Dec.
27. As Goodger walked through her daughter’s back yard, she slipped on
a slick patch of snow and landed hard.
Goodger’s stiff, swollen
joints made it impossible for her to get up off the ground, leaving her
few options. She ended up scooting along the ground towards where her
car was waiting, only to find that she couldn’t get in the vehicle,
either. She was stuck.
She wrapped a long scarf around her legs,
pulled her long red coat snugly around her body, reclined in the
snowbank, and waited as darkness fell. The night was cold but not
frigid. But as Goodger lay in the slushy snow, she grew colder and
wetter.
She offered one last thought – “well, God, it’s up to you” – and waited. Some time later, she slipped into unconsciousness.
Goodger’s
daughter found her around 9 p.m., after the family returned from a trip
to St. Cloud. Goodger was still alive, still breathing, and her heart
was still beating, but just barely.
“When a heart gets that cold, the electrical activity is so fragile, that anything you do will just stop it,” Delp said.
It’s
called hypothermia-induced cardiac arrest, and it’s fairly uncommon,
said Dave Johnson, operations manager for Gold Cross Ambulance of
Duluth and Superior. Simply moving a severely hypothermic person can
cause cardiac arrest, he said.
Delp praised Gold Cross
paramedics and the Duluth Fire Department crews that arrived at the
scene for recognizing that. The heart muscle must be warmed before
there’s even a chance of getting it beating again, Delp said. Shocking
a chilled heart, or dosing a patient with cardiac drugs, won’t make a
difference.
Once in the St. Luke’s emergency room, doctors worked to bring Goodger’s cold body back to life.
“She was ice cold,” Delp said. “She felt, literally, like a corpse.”
As
doctors set up heated IV drips and a machine to pump heated air into
Goodger’s body, her blood began flowing to her extremities again.
Extremely
cold temperatures can protect some body functions – particularly brain
activity, Delp said – but are damaging to others. After about 20
minutes in the emergency room, Goodger was transferred to the operating
room, where cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Mary Boylan used a special
machine to drain Goodger’s blood out of her chilled body, warm it and
pump it back in.
Emergency responders kept up CPR on Goodger’s
body for at least an hour before she was warm enough to make an attempt
to start her heart, Delp said. Surgeons shocked the muscle, and it
began beating normally.
From there, Goodger’s recovery was quick and, apparently, complete.
The first thing Goodger can remember after the ordeal is her daughter whispering in her ear on the morning of Dec. 28.
“She said, ‘You can go and see your sister in heaven, or you can stay and watch your grandchildren grow up,’” Goodger said.
Soon enough, Goodger was sitting up in her hospital bed and licking an orange Popsicle to soothe her throat.
“I
went and visited her the next day, and they had already taken her off
the breathing machine,” Delp said. “I did not expect her to be able to
talk to me; my jaw hit the floor when she smiled at me.”
Delp
said that “everything came together perfectly” to help Goodger make her
recovery – from the paramedics and firefighters who treated her just
right, to the constant CPR she received, to the care from Boylan to
help warm her heart.
___________________
http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/108944 |
| | Posted 1/7/2009 5:19 PM - 6 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
- recommend
  - recs0
- share
- email
 - sent0
|
