Getting trapped under ice is a nightmare. Imagine being immersed in freezing water, frantically trying to surface and futilely bashing against the solid wall of ice above you, desperately looking for a way out, knowing you have mere seconds before you drown.
Now imagine if someone were under the ice for 40 minutes. They should be dead, right? If they didn’t drown from lack of oxygen, the icy water would surely freeze their body into a human icicle. But, as the case of Anna Bågenholm proves, human beings can survive what should be certain death.
On May 20, 1999, Bågenholm was skiing in the mountains outside Narvik in northern Norway and lost control while heading down a steep mountainside. She crashed headfirst into a layer of ice on a frozen stream and was pulled under. Now she was beneath almost 8 inches of ice, her horrified friends seeing only her feet and skis. Anna was briefly able to breathe in an air pocket, but Death was now impatiently tapping his scythe.
Her friends frantically attempted to free her but couldn’t. Emergency services were contacted seven minutes after she fell into the water at 6:27 PM, and an on-foot rescue team and a second in a helicopter were summoned. At 7:40 PM they arrived and were able to cut Bågenholm free of the ice.
What they pulled out looked like a corpse. Bågenholm’s pupils were dilated, her blood was still, and she wasn’t breathing. Doctors began giving her CPR until the helicopter arrived and ventilated her with oxygen. Then they got out the defibrillators and shocked her icy body, still no heartbeat.
She was rushed to Tromsø University Hospital, where horrified doctors recorded her temperature as 56.7 °F (13.8 °C), the lowest ever recorded in a human. Dr. Mads Gilbert began trying to resuscitate her and hooked her up to an electrocardiogram, showing no signs of life whatsoever, as he later said:
“She has completely dilated pupils. She is ashen, flaxen white. She’s wet. She’s ice cold when I touch her skin, and she looks absolutely dead.”
But, refusing to write her off before they’d warmed her up, a team of over a hundred doctors and nurses spent nine hours operating on her to drag her back to the world of the living. Her blood was warmed up outside her body and reinserted, and as her body temperature rose, her heart finally, weakly, beat.
A grim awakening
10 days later, Bågenholm woke up and realized to her horror she was paralyzed from the neck down. Her first reaction was anger, wishing she’d been left to die rather than having to live like that. As she said:
“I was very irritated when I realized they had saved me. I feared a meaningless life, without any dignity.”
But, as her body slowly and painstakingly recovered from her ordeal, she began to regain control of her limbs. A decade later, doctors confirmed she was practically fully recovered, with the only lasting injuries being minor symptoms of nerve damage in her hands and feet. And her annoyance at being saved? She’d like to retract that: “I am very happy to be alive and want to apologize.”
Dr Gilbert later explained how her survival was physically possible:
“Her body had time to cool down completely before the heart stopped. Her brain was so cold when the heart stopped that the brain cells needed very little oxygen, so the brain could survive for quite a prolonged time.”
He underlines to other doctors never to write off patients suffering from extreme hypothermia, even if they appear dead, have no heartbeat, and an electrocardiogram flatlines:
“The key success factors of such marginal resuscitation efforts are early bystander actions with vigorous CPR and early warning of the emergency system, early dispatch of adequate rescue units (ground and air-ambulances) and good co-ordination between the resources outside and inside the hospital, aggressive rewarming and a spirit not to give up.”
So, if you’re ever faced with a similar situation, you too could save a life by beginning “vigorous CPR” to try and force some oxygen back into the brain. Don’t give up on someone, even when it appears all hope is lost!
