Woman comes back to life after being dead for 17 hours
Woman comes back to life after being dead for 17 hours
A 59-year-old American woman who was presumed dead after her heart stopped and she was taken off life support came back to life, stunning her doctors and family.
After Velma Thomas, from Nitro, West Virginia, went into cardiac arrest at home, medics managed to establish a faint pulse after eight minutes of CPR. But at hospital, her heart stopped twice more and she was placed on life support.
For more than 17 hours doctors failed to detect any brain activity, despite extensive attempts to revive her, including pioneering treatment to lower her body's temperature in a bid to stimulate the brain.
Family members braced themselves for the worst. Tim Thomas, Velma's son, said he and two dozen relatives and friends gathered at the hospital and “prayed and prayed and prayed” before starting to accept Mrs Thomas would not survive.
”I came to the conclusion she wasn't going to make it,” Mr Thomas, 36, told the Charleston Daily Mail. “Her skin had already started hardening, her hands and toes were curling up, they were already drawn. There was no life there.”
Doctors told him there was no pulse, blood pressure or measurable brain activity. “There were really no signs she had neurological functions,” Kevin Eggleston, a internal medicine specialist, told ABC News. The family decided to turn off life support and say their goodbyes.
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