A 26-year-old man from Pennsylvania froze after falling during a snow storm. Justin Smith is now dubbed by doctors as a medical miracle. His tale of survival is drawing attention to the potentially-fatal effects of being exposed to extreme cold temperatures.
Justin was walking home in below freezing temperatures after going out with friends last winter on Feb. 21, 2015. The extreme cold temperature left him unconscious as he fell in the sidewalk near his home. His father, Don Smith, found him nearly frozen to death the next morning.
"I held him and sobbed, 'Justin, don't leave me'," Don Smith said.
"Then I called his mother and told her, 'Justin's dead,'" he added. He immediately called paramedics to the scene.
Paramedics conducted CPR for about two hours. They brought Justin to the Lehigh Valley Hospital Cedar Crest but doctors can't pronounce him dead since he was frozen.
"You're not dead until you're warm and dead," Dr. Gerald Coleman, an emergency medicine physician at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, said. Frozen people can be revived even if they do not have vital signs.
This phenomenon is called forced hibernation through suspended animation. This happens when there is a sudden stop of chemical reactions in the body due to the lack of oxygen, which happens in extreme cold temperatures.
Doctors used an ECMO (Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) machine that will drain the blood from the vein, add oxygen, remove carbon dioxide, warm the blood and return to the artery through a pump that will distribute the blood throughout the body. He survived but doctors say that they still need to wait until Justin wakes up.
"With very low temperatures, it can preserve the brain and other organ functions," Dr. James Wu, a cardiothoracic surgeon at Leigh Valley Hospital at Cedar Crest said.
Despite the miraculous survival of Justin, he did not wake up until about 30 days after he was found frozen. Justin woke up with his family around him.
"Next thing, I know I'm waking up in Cedar Crest Hospital. Family was all around me. I was shocked. I knew my pinkies were gone, it could have been a lot worse. They went the extra effort and I can't thank them enough. They're amazing and I can't thank them enough," Justin said.
Justin went back to his normal activities and continued his degree in Psychology.
