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Posted: 15-01-2008 22:13 Post subject:

From Breaking News:
http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_2251984,00.html

Posted: 18-01-2008 09:32 Post subject:

Revived swimmer was dead for an hour
By Sebastien Berger in Johannesburg
Last Updated: 2:06am GMT 18/01/2008

A man has survived after his heart stopped beating for up to an hour when he drowned while swimming in the sea near Cape Town.

John Deeks, 35, who was born in South Africa but has British citizenship, got into difficulties while swimming in unusually heavy seas off Glencairn.

A shark spotter on shore raised the alarm when he saw Mr Deeks's lifeless body floating face down.

Two men, who have not been identified, brought Mr Deeks back to the beach.

He was not breathing and had no heartbeat, but a volunteer doctor with the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI), South Africa's lifeboat service, began cardio-pulmonary resuscitation and advanced life support paramedics took him to hospital.

His heartbeat was only restored almost an hour later, and he spent several days on a ventilator before making an apparently full recovery.

Mr Deeks, an architectural technician, from Colliers Wood, south London, returned to his mother's house in Glencairn, yesterday.

He said that being brought back from the dead "feels great".

"From the point of surviving something like that it's fantastic. They said I was clinically dead. Apparently people in these situations do survive, but you have got about a four per cent chance, so I was very lucky.

"Actually I don't remember anything of the event. Basically I went out for a swim and the sea was very rough and the tide was very high and I got into difficulties. I must have got pulled over by a wave and caught in a current."

He put his survival down to being a healthy person with a healthy lifestyle "and a bit of luck".

Craig Lambinon, a spokesman for the NSRI, said resuscitation efforts began between 20 and 30 minutes after Mr Deeks's heart stopped beating.

Mr Lambinon said that a woman in Alaska was known to have been revived after spending 40 minutes under water, but Mr Deeks's survival was at the extreme end of human possibility.

"It's not unheard of but to recover to that extent that quickly, it's very seldom that that happens.

"There's normally some sort of therapy that's needed, for things like slurred speech, muscular abnormalities, neurological problems, sometimes for weeks, sometimes for months, sometimes for years."

He put Mr Deeks's survival down to a combination of factors. "It's assumed that the cold water plays a part. It would have been relatively cold, 14 or 15 Celsius," he said, adding that the expert care he received the moment he left the water was vital.

"All of those people and all of those systems all worked the way they would in an ideal world. He had luck on his side, that's really what saved his life."

Mr Deeks's girlfriend, Rosie Avalon, 21, from Southend, Essex, has flown to South Africa to be with him.

http://tinyurl.com/22le66

Posted: 18-01-2008 23:38 Post subject:

Around a decade ago a local street person was killed by a speeding automobile in downtown Cincinnati.

At least that's what I was told by his best friend, plus an elderly woman who had acted as his surrogate mother, plus my own girlfriend, plus almost all the shopkeepers in my neighbor.

More than a year later I took a shortcut through an alley and discovered the "dead man" sitting on a trash can and reading a day-old newspaper.

I blurted out: "I thought you were DEAD!"

He replied, calmly, "That seems to be a widely-held opinion."

No, he wasn't a ghost, because he again became a regular neighborhood fixture.

Posted: 11-03-2008 08:50 Post subject:

I've spent ages scanning the papers, and had almost decided this must be a 'No News' day when I came across this:

'Dead parents' show up at press conference about their murders
By RICHARD SHEARS
Last updated at 15:51pm on 10th March 2008

Searching for the bodies of the owners, police dug into the garden and tore up the verandah of a country house.

Then they called a press conference to announce their concerns that Dr Roy Ostell, 63, and his wife Heather, 58, had been murdered.

But just as TV crews were setting up their cameras and reporters were opening their notebooks at the couple's home north of Melbourne, a Volkswagen campervan rumbled up the driveway.

Dr Roy Ostell and wife Heather burst into tears of laughter when they were told police thought they had been murdered

At the wheel was the "dead" doctor and his "murdered" wife.

"What on earth is going on?" asked Mrs Ostell.

"Never mind that," exclaimed her daughter, Angela, who had contacted police to report her fears that something terrible had happened to her parents. "Where have you been?"

On hearing police fears that they had been murdered, the couple - who had merely been away for a short holiday - burst out laughing.

Their daughter had raised the alarm when she called at the home, near the small town of Narre Warren, to find the campervan missing, the front door wide open and no sign of her parents.

"That was my husband's fault, leaving the door open like that," said Mrs Ostell. "He's always doing it. Rolling Eyes

"It was very much a spur of the moment thing to go away to the coast last Friday.

"We told our other daughter, Melanie, about our plans but we couldn't contact Angela. It seems that nobody could get in touch with her, so she didn't know we'd taken the unusual step of of taking an instant short holiday."

The couple had arranged for their dog and ponies to be cared for by a neighbour, but Angela had not thought to check with neighbours about her parents' possible whereabouts.

"We're very sorry for all the trouble we've caused," Mrs Ostell told the police and the crowd of journalists who had turned up to hear details of what they expected to be a murder mystery.

The couple now plan to spend a few days filling in the holes in the garden and repairing the verandah. Very Happy

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=529269&in_page_id=1811

Posted: 25-03-2008 08:39 Post subject:

Man who was declared dead feels 'pretty good'
By Megan Levy and agencies
Last Updated: 1:57am GMT 25/03/2008

A man who was about to have his organs removed after doctors pronounced him brain dead says he now feels "pretty good" just four months later.

Zach Dunlap was injured in a quad biking accident in the United States and was pronounced dead at United Regional Healthcare System in Texas on November 19.

But as Mr Dunlap's family gathered to pay their last respects to the 21-year-old, they were shocked to see him moving his foot and hand. He then reacted when a pocketknife was scraped across the bottom of his foot.

After just 48 days in hospital, he was allowed to return home.

Appearing on NBC's Today show in New York, Mr Dunlap said he had no recollection of the crash.

"I feel pretty good, but it's just hard ... just ain't got the patience (for the long recovery)," he said.

Mr Dunlap said one thing he does remember of his time in hospital was hearing the doctors pronounce him dead.

"I'm glad I couldn't get up and do what I wanted to do," he said.

Mr Dunlap's father, Doug, said he saw the results of the brain scan which showed "there was no activity at all, no blood flow at all."

His mother Pam said it was a miraculous feeling when she discovered her son was still alive.

"We had gone, like I said, from the lowest possible emotion that a parent could feel to the top of the mountains again," she said.

As a reminder of his close call, Mr Dunlap has kept the pocketknife that was scraped across his foot.

"Just makes me thankful, makes me thankful that they didn't give up," he said. "Only the good die young, so I didn't go."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/24/wdead124.xml

Posted: 26-05-2008 11:15 Post subject:

The mother who came back from the dead - ten minutes after her life support machine was turned OFF
By Paul Thompson
Last updated at 11:11 PM on 25th May 2008

A mother of two has stunned doctors by apparently coming back from the dead.

Velma Thomas's heart stopped beating three times and she was clinically brain dead for 17 hours. Her son had left the hospital to make funeral arrangements, having been told she would not survive.

But ten minutes after her life support system was shut down and doctors were preparing to take her organs for donation, the 59-year-old woke up.

Heart specialist Kevin Eggleston said: 'There are things that as physicians and nurses we can't always explain. I think this is one of those cases.'

He said Mrs Thomas had no pulse, no heartbeat or brain activity after her admission to hospital. She had been found unconscious after suffering a heart attack at her home in West Virginia.

While at the Charleston Area Medical Centre she suffered two further heart attacks and was placed on a life support system.

About 25 family members and friends gathered inside the hospital waiting room. 'We just prayed and prayed and prayed,' said her son Tim, 36. 'And I came to the conclusion she wasn't going to make it.

'I was given confirmation from God to take her off the ventilator and my pastor said the same thing. I felt a sense of peace that I made the right decision. Her skin had already started hardening, her hands and toes were curling up. There was no life there.'

He said after he left the hospital he was called and told she had shown signs of life.

By the time he got to her hospital room, Mrs Thomas was alert and talking. 'She had already asked, "Where's my son?",' he said.

Dr Eggleston added: 'It's a miracle.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1021818/The-mother-came-dead--minutes-life-support-machine-turned-OFF.html

Posted: 11-06-2008 07:18 Post subject:

'Dead' man wakes as transplant surgeons prepare to remove his organs
By Henry Samuel in Paris
Last Updated: 9:35PM BST 10/06/2008

A man whose heart had stopped beating woke up just as surgeons were about to remove his organs for donation, it was disclosed yesterday.
Doctors in Paris earlier this year called in transplant surgeons after failing to resuscitate a 45-year old man believed to have suffered a massive heart attack in the French capital.

According to a report by the Paris university hospital's ethics committee - seen by Le Monde newspaper - doctors continued providing a heart massage for an hour and a half while they waited for the surgeons to arrive.

When the surgeons began operating on the man to remove his organs, he began to breathe, his pupils became responsive and he reacted to a pain test.

"After a few weeks chequered with serious complications, the patient is now walking and talking," said the report. It is not known whether the man is aware of how close he was to losing his organs.

The incident highlights the ethical problems doctors face in deciding when a donor is really dead.

Emergency service staff interviewed in the report said they knew of other situations where "a person who everyone was convinced was dead survived after prolonged re-animation moves well beyond usual timeframes or even those considered reasonable."

They pointed out that if they had followed the rules to the letter, such patients "would probably have been considered deceased."

In particular, the case is likely to ignite public debate over so-called controlled non-heart-beating organ donation (NHBOD) – retrieving organs when the heart stops, which has only been legal in France since last year. Before then a patient had to be declared brain dead before transplant could occur. NHBOD is legal in the UK.

"All specialised medical literature on the subjects allows one to conclude that a person who has suffered cardiac arrest and has had proper heart massage for over 30 minutes is, for all purposes, brain dead," said Professor Alain Tenaillon, in charge of organ transplants at France's biomedical agency. "But one must acknowledge that exceptions do exist ... there are no hard and fast rules on best practice," he told Le Monde.

Some 13,000 people are awaiting organ donations in France, a far higher number than in Britain, with 7,700 awaiting organs, despite France's a so-called opt-out system. This means everyone gives their "presumed consent" to having their organs removed after death unless either they have refused permission or if their family objects.

In the UK, people "opt in" to the donation system by carrying a donor card or signing the Organ Donor Register. A Department of Health task force is currently looking into the opt-out system.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2106809/%27Dead%27-man-wakes-as-transplant-surgeons-prepare-to-remove-his-organs.html

Posted: 12-06-2008 19:40 Post subject:

Mange Ram, 19, lost consciousness in the stampede triggered by rumours of a landslide that caused panic among thousands of people climbing a steep mountain path, the Times of India reported.

Mr Ram told the newspaper that he awoke in a hospital morgue after Sunday's tragedy at the Naina Devi shrine in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh.

"When I woke up, I was in the middle of a row of bodies waiting for postmortem," he said.

"My throat was parched and I asked for water. Towering over me the doctors and nursing staff at Anandpur Sahib Civil Hospital looked dazed.

"They must have been surprised to see a dead man come alive like that," he said.

Sat Pal Aggarwal, a doctor on the pilgrimage, said few checks were carried out to see if victims were alive and might have been saved.

"People were dumped quite haphazardly into trucks without following any procedure or checking if they were alive," he told the paper.

Despite the mass deaths, the pilgrimage continued only hours after the corpses had been cleared.

The temple, devoted to the goddess Naina Devi, sits on a hilltop in the Himalayas and devotees must climb a narrow stairway to reach it. It has been the site of previous deadly accidents.

Crowd control is poor in India and stampedes are common. Three years ago, 257 Hindu devotees, mainly women and children, were crushed to death in a stampede at a religious pilgrimage in western India.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/2510044/Dead-Indian-stampede-victim-wakes-up-in-morgue.html

maximus otter

Posted: 06-08-2008 18:38 Post subject:

He might not be well recieved when he comes back. I think people who come back from the dead are viewed with a lot of suspicion in India.

Posted: 07-08-2008 12:43 Post subject:

thats quiet worrying that no one really bothers to check if your alive beofre sticking you in a morgue read yto be cut open Rolling Eyes

it would not take more a minute to check if someone is breathing or has a pulse two really good signs not to be stuck in a morgue and signs you are alive albeit unconcious main part being "alive" Laughing

i know things like these in india are very common because of their religion, but goes to show you cant believe everything you hear!!!

could there not be some knid of safety measures put into place especially an area where alot of small children are?

Posted: 07-08-2008 20:32 Post subject:

Posted: 08-08-2008 08:30 Post subject:

This is nothing new. I find myself uncomfortably reminded of the Belgian artist Antoine Wiertz' famous mid-19th Century painting of the "dead" cholera victim waking up in his coffin.

Posted: 19-08-2008 07:55 Post subject:

Dead baby 'comes back to life'
An Israeli baby who was pronounced dead by doctors "came back to life" on Monday after spending hours in a hospital refrigerator.
By Our Foreign Staff
Last Updated: 10:58PM BST 18 Aug 2008

The baby, weighing only 600 grams at birth, spent at least five hours inside one of the hospital's morgue refrigerators, before her parents, who had taken her to be buried, began noticing some movement.

"We unwrapped her and felt she was moving. We didn't believe it at first. Then she began holding my mother's hand, and then we saw her open her mouth," said 26-year-old Faiza Magdoub, the baby's mother.

The baby was pronounced dead several hours earlier, after doctors at Western Galilee hospital in northern Israel were forced to abort her mother's pregnancy because of internal bleeding. Mrs Magdoub was in the fifth month of her pregnancy.

"We don't know how to explain this, so when we don't know how to explain things in the medical world we call it a miracle, and this is probably what happened," hospital deputy director Moshe Daniel said.

"We've informed the Health Ministry and I guess they'll appoint a commission of inquiry. The hospital will ask for an external investigation of the case."

The baby has been taken to the hospital's neo-natal intensive care unit for further treatment, but doctors were not sure how long she will live.

Hospital director Dr. Massad Barhoum told Israeli media that her chances of survival are "very, very slim" because she was born so early.

Motti Ravid, a professor of internal medicine, told Israel's Channel 10 that the low temperature inside the cooler had slowed down the baby's metabolism and likely helped her survive.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2581775/Dead-baby-comes-back-to-life.html