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Dead—Not Dead! (Mistaken Reports & Declarations Of Death)

Pensioner declared dead by a doctor is found to be alive by undertaker as he was about to seal the coffin
By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 3:12 PM on 25th January 2010

A Polish beekeeper pronounced dead after he suffered a suspected heart attack was about to be sealed up in a coffin when a funeral director miraculously discovered a faint pulse.

Jozef Guzy collapsed as he started work among his beloved hives near the southern city of Katowice.

An ambulance was called and an experienced doctor declared that the 76-year-old had died.
Jerzy Wisniewski, a spokesman for the Regional Ambulance Service in Katowice, said: 'The patient was not breathing, there was no heart beat, the body had cooled - all are the characteristics of death.

Three hours later, an undertaker arrived to take Mr Guzy's body away.
Funeral director Dariusz Wys?uchato placed the man's body in a coffin and was about to seal the lid when his wife, Ludmilla, asked him to remove his watch.
As Mr Wys?uchato fiddled with the watch chain he happened to touch Mr Guzy's neck and detected a pulse.
He said: 'I touched around the neck artery and suddenly realised he asn't dead after all. I checked again and shouted, "It's a pulse!"
'I had a friend check and he noticed the man was breathing. God, it was a miracle!"

The ambulance was called again and the same doctor returned. He confirmed the pensioner had 'come back from the dead'.
Mr Guzy was taken to hospital where puzzled doctors failed to find anything wrong with him.
After a few days rest, he was sent home.

Mr Wys?uchato said: 'Thank God I did not close the coffin - if I had done that it would have been a tragedy.
'Something touched me to touch his neck - I'm so pleased he's alive.'
His wife, Ludmila, said: ‘I could not believe it when they said he was dead. The doctor put a white sheet over him and three hours later local undertakers pulled up.’

Mr Guzy added: ‘The undertaker saved my life. The first thing I did when I got out of hospital was take him a pot of honey.’ :)

It comes just weeks after a hospital in southwest China prematurely sent a man injured in a motorbike crash to a mortuary.

Zhang Houming, 46, was found breathing and with a faint heartbeat in his coffin by his family.

He was taken back to hospital, but died an hour later.

His family, from the city of Neijiang in Sichuan province, are now claiming £136,000 in compensation.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldne ... z0diEevcz4
 
Confusion in China as murder 'victim' reappears after 11 years
Police in central China are re-examining the case of a man convicted of murdering his neighbour 11 years ago after the "victim" suddenly reappeared in good health.
Published: 7:00AM BST 07 May 2010

Zhao Zuohai was convicted and sentenced to death by a court in Henan province on charges of killing his neighbour Zhao Zhenxiang in a 1999 dispute over a woman they both were seeing, the Beijing News said.

His sentence was commuted to life in prison and later reduced to 20 years.

Zhao Zuohai confessed to the killing after a headless body was found in a local well in Zhecheng county, where he lived.

However, his "victim" suddenly returned to the area this week after an 11-year absence, stunning police, the report said.

It said Zhao Zhenxiang apparently fled the county after the 1999 dispute and relocated without telling anyone, leading to his being listed as missing.

Police were now looking into whether the "killer" should be freed - and also trying to ascertain the identity of the headless corpse.

The report said it remained unclear why Zhao Zuohai had pleaded guilty to the murder in the first place but added that there were suspicions police had tortured the confession out of him.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... years.html
 
Mother's cuddle brings baby 'back to life'
An Australian woman has told how she apparently brought her premature baby son back to life with two hours of cuddles after doctors had declared him dead.
By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor
Published: 9:45PM BST 26 Aug 2010

Jamie Ogg showed no signs of life when he was delivered along with a twin sister at just 27 weeks gestation and weighing 2lb at a hospital in Sydney.

Doctors said they had lost him and he was given to his mother, Kate, who unwrapped his blankets and placed him on her chest so she and her husband, David, could say their goodbyes.

Following two hours of cuddling and being spoken to by his parents, Jamie began to gasp. Doctors initially claimed it was a "reflex" but the baby began gasping more often and then opened his eyes.

The family have spoken of their experience for the first time since Jamie was born five months ago. They told of the importance of "skin-to-skin" bonding between mother and baby in a technique also known as the "kangaroo touch" in Australia because of the way the animals held their newborns close to the skin in their pouch.

Mrs Ogg said: "I thought, 'Oh my God, what's going on?' A short time later he opened his eyes. It was a miracle. I told my mum, who was there, that he was still alive.

"Then he held out his hand and grabbed my finger.

"He opened his eyes and moved his head from side to side."

The survival of Jamie, whose twin was named Emily, has baffled doctors.

Mr Ogg said: "Luckily, I've got a very strong, very smart wife. She instinctively did what she did.

"If she hadn't have done that, then Jamie probably wouldn't be here."

Mothers are encouraged to have skin-to-skin contact with their babies as much as possible in Britain as it helps with feeding, bonding and settling the child. But often this is not possible when babies are born prematurely as they need to be cared for in an incubator.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -life.html
 
Not so much a strange crime as a strange criminal:

FBI: Man declared dead arrested in kidnapping
A man declared legally dead 16 years ago was arrested for the kidnapping of a girl whose body was found in some woods.
9:36PM GMT 15 Nov 2010

FBI spokeswoman Sheila Thorne said Thomas Steven Sanders was arrested on Sunday at a trucker's stop in Gulfport, Mississippi, after a massive manhunt in a bizarre case that stretched across the country.

Court documents obtained by The Associated Press show Sanders abandoned his family in 1987 and was declared dead by a Mississippi court 1994. He lived unnoticed for years despite being arrested several times.

Sanders, 53, was wanted in the kidnapping of 12-year-old Lexis Roberts, of Las Vegas, whose skeleton was found by hunters early last month. Her 31-year-old mother, Suellen Roberts, is missing. Officials say she is not a suspect in her daughter's death.

Ms Thorne said Sanders was alone when he was arrested at the Flying J Truck Stop by FBI agents and Harrison County sheriff's deputies. She would not release other details about his arrest.

Despite being declared dead, Sanders had been able to move about the country easily. Investigators know he lived in Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia and Nevada. He worked as a labourer, a welder and a scrap metal collector.

According to records obtained by the AP, his arrests included possession of drug paraphernalia and a number of traffic and motor vehicle incidents, all in Tennessee. He was sentenced to two years in Georgia for simple battery. State and federal authorities have said some of the charges involved minors, but they refused to elaborate.

In Nevada, Sanders met Suellen Roberts and her daughter Lexis a few months ago, the dead girl's grandmother told investigators. The trio were in Arizona in September, authorities said.

Hunters found Lexis' remains in Catahoula Parish, Louisiana, on Oct. 8. There was evidence she had been shot.

Officials said security cameras showed Sanders buying ammunition on Sept. 3 at a Walmart in Las Vegas. The bullets he bought were consistent with the weapon used to kill Lexis, police said.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... pping.html
 
Man declared dead 25 years ago discovered working as Las Vegas bookmaker
A man from Chicago who was declared dead 25 years ago, after disappearing amid heavy debts and alleged links to the mob, has been discovered working as a bookmaker in Las Vegas.
By Jon Swaine, New York
12:26AM BST 25 Jul 2011

Arthur Gerald Jones, a father of three, went missing in May 1979 after losing his job as a commodities broker and struggling to pay gambling losses, including $30,000 from a single basketball match.

Mr Jones, then 40, “was not himself” in the weeks before his disappearance, his wife Joanne told local reporters at the time, and was particularly “jittery” after a friend and former colleague was murdered.
The FBI later disclosed they had investigated Mr Jones for possible links to organised crime in Chicago. His wife said she thought he may have carried out errands for local mobsters.

In 1986 he was declared dead, and his wife and children collected about $47,000 in benefits. It is claimed that they never heard from him again.

But Mr Jones, 72, was found last week in a Nevada bookmakers, where he is said to have worked for a decade. He was arrested and has been charged with crimes including fraud, burglary and indentity theft.

His current girlfriend, Patricia Baal, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “We’ve been together 22 years, and he’s been very loving and respectful to me and my family. And I love him. And everything’s fine.”

State prosecutors said in an affidavit that Mr Jones had admitted that he “left in 1979 without telling anyone and has to date made no contact with anyone from his past”.
He allegedly told investigators he bought a fake identity for $800 under the name Joseph Richard Sandelli. He moved to Florida, where he was arrested three times under the name “Richard Lage”.

He is then said to have moved to California, being arrested several more times, before settling in Las Vegas in 1988. He was arrested once again in 1992 under the name of Sandelli, the affidavit states.

Mr Jones was discovered after a complaint about his potentially fraudulent use of a Social Security number was investigated by the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles.

His lawyer, Stephen Stein, has said he has been released on $20,000 bail. He is due to appear in court on August 23. Mr Jones’s wife Joanne Esplin, who has since remarried, could not be reached for comment

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... maker.html
 
South Africa: 'Dead man' wakes up inside morgue

A 50-year-old South African man woke up inside a mortuary over the weekend and screamed to be let out - scaring away attendants who thought he was a ghost. :shock:

His family presumed he was dead when they could not wake him on Saturday night and contacted a private morgue in a rural village in the Eastern Cape.
He spent almost 24 hours inside the morgue, the region's health department spokesman told the Sapa news agency.
The two attendants later returned and called for an ambulance.

The man - whose identity has been withheld - was treated in hospital for dehydration.

"Doctors put him under observation and concluded he was stable," Eastern Cape health spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo said.
"He did not need further treatment."

Mr Kupelo said the man woke up at 1700 local time (1500 GMT) on Sunday, demanding to be let out of the chilly morgue in Libode village, frightening the attendants on duty.
"At first the men ran for their lives," said Mr Kupelo.

Officials have urged the public to contact doctors or the emergency services so they can they can pronounce someone dead before calling an undertaker.
"You begin to ask yourself how many other people have died like that in a morgue," said Mr Kupelo.
"We need to [get] the message across to all South Africans that it is very wrong for them to conclude on their own that a person has died," he said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14275271
 
Harry Potter actress, 13, comes back from the dead after last rites priest puts holy water on her head
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 2:07 PM on 9th August 2011

A teenage girl who doctors believed was going to die has been hailed a real-life miracle - after she came back to life when a priest put holy water on her head.

Child actor Lucy Hussey-Bergonzi, 13, collapsed from a brain haemorrhage just days after filming a walk-on part in 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince'.
Lucy, of Hackney, East London, was rushed to hospital and had been kept alive by life support machines for five days when her parents were told she wouldn't make it.

Her collapse was triggered by a rare condition Lucy had carried since birth called Arteriovenous malformation (AVM), a cluster of abnormal blood vessels that remain undetected until they burst.
Lucy was transferred to Great Ormond Street Hospital on February 15, 2009, where she got through two operations while she was in a coma

At her bedside Lucy's mother Denise, 41, was told by doctors it was time to say goodbye to her daughter.
As the family gathered to say prayers for Catholic Lucy, the priest prepared the holy water ready to douse Lucy's lifeless forehead.
As the water splashed on Lucy's skin the stunned family saw her arm shoot up in air.

Within 24 hours of her baptism Lucy was off the machines and showing signs of recovery as baffled doctors looked on struggling for an explanation.
Mrs Hussey-Bergonzi said: ‘Nothing could have prepared me for the day she was taken into hospital.
‘We were so scared I just wanted to pick her up and run away with her, I really thought I was having a nightmare and any minute I was going to wake up and Lucy would be fine.
‘When we got to the hospital a nurse came over and told me I had to leave her room.
‘When I said 'I'm not leaving' they told me that Lucy was in a coma and they were putting her on a life support machine.
‘I had no idea it was that serious. My world just came crashing down around me.’

Lucy had to have emergency surgery on her brain the day she was taken into Great Ormond Street hospital, two days later she had another operation.
‘It was the day after her second operation when I turned to my husband Robert and said 'we have to get her baptised' said Denise.
‘At that point I really thought she was going to die and I wanted to give her the best chance in the next life.
‘We had no idea what we were doing but the hospital were brilliant and organised the whole thing for us in two days.

‘So five days after Lucy was first taken into hospital we were by her bedside saying prayers watching her about to be baptised.
‘Then the moment the priest put holy water on Lucy's head, her arm suddenly moved up. At first I thought she might be having a fit but within 24 hours she was taken off all the life support machines and tubes.
‘It could be she was recovering anyway, but the way it happened, even the nurses said it was a miracle.

‘When I asked the doctors why she had come back to us they said they can't explain how it happened and to this day they don't know how or why she recovered.’

Despite her incredible come back from death's door, a determined Lucy still had to learn how to talk, walk and even eat and drink again.
For nearly four months she battled her way back to health, having been moved to the children's unit at the Royal London Hospital.

Today, aged 16, Lucy is slowly rebuilding her life despite suffering with severe headaches and numbness down her right hand side.
She said: ‘I do have headaches and there are side-effects to my medication which have made me lose a lot of weight but other than that I feel fine.

‘Learning to walk and talk again must have been difficult but I don't remember much of it. I just remember my friends and family being really supportive and kind.
‘There was one day when I was asked what I wanted for lunch and I couldn't say that I wanted a Subway so I had to make a train with my hand and say 'choo choo', it was quite fun making my family guess what I meant! 8)

‘I don't know what to make of the way I came out of the coma. I'd never heard of anything like this before.
‘The doctors were saying it was a miracle, people who have brain haemorrhages usually don't survive them.
‘I think it was a miracle, I can't think of any other explanation.'

Lucy’s mother said she was thankful for the support given by the surgeons and Lucy's teachers at Bishop Challenor Secondary, in Shadwell, London.
She said: ‘Lucy has never said to me, 'why me?' she just gets on with her life, and we have never said why us or anything like that, we are just happy she is alive.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1UZ5dbna4
 
Chinese woman, 95, comes back to life by climbing out her coffin six days after she 'died'
By Chris Parsons
Last updated at 7:36 PM on 3rd March 2012

A 95-year-old Chinese woman thought to have passed away stunned her neighbours - after waking up six days after she had been placed in a coffin.
Li Xiufeng was found motionless and not breathing in bed by a neighbour two weeks after tripping and suffering a head injury at her home in Beiliu, Guangxi Province.

When the neighbour who found her could not wake the pensioner up, they feared the worst and thought the elderly woman had passed away.
She was placed in a coffin which was kept in her house unsealed under Chinese tradition for friends and relatives to pay respects.
But the day before the funeral, neighbours found an empty coffin, and later discovered the 95-year-old, who had since woken up, in her kitchen cooking.

Neighbour Chen Qingwang, 60, who originally found Mrs Xiufeng, said: 'She didn't get up, so I came up to wake her up.
'No matter how hard I pushed her and called her name, she had no reactions.
'I felt something was wrong, so I tried her breath, and she has gone, but her body is still not cold.'

As Mrs Xiufeng lived alone, Mr Qingwang and his son made preparations for her funeral, and the 'dead' woman was left in her coffin two days after she was discovered.
The day before she was due to be permanently laid to rest, however, Mr Qingwang arrived at his neighbour's property and found her 'corpse' had disappeared.
Mr Qingwang added: 'We were so terrified, and immediately asked the neighbours to come for help.'

Neighbours searched her property before finding the pensioner in her kitchen cooking.
She reportedly told villagers: 'I slept for a long time. After waking up, I felt so hungry, and wanted to cook something to eat.
'I pushed the lid for a long time to climb out.'

Medics said Mrs Xiufeng had suffered an 'artificial death', when a person has no breath, but their body remains warm.
A doctor at the hospital was quoted as saying: 'Thanks to the local tradition of parking the coffin in the house for several days, she could be saved.
Despite cheating death, however, the same Chinese tradition left Mrs Xiufeng without any possessions, according to ritual, after a person dies, all their belongings must be burnt. :shock:

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1o945ZBJs
 
Can you be 'dead' for 78 minutes?
By Nick Triggle, Health correspondent, BBC News

The more details that emerge about Fabrice Muamba, the more amazing his story becomes.
The latest has seen the Bolton footballer labelled the "miracle man".

The 23-year-old collapsed on the pitch during the FA Cup tie against Tottenham at 18:13 GMT on Saturday, but it was not until 19:31 that his heart started working again.
He was - according to Bolton's club doctor - "in effect dead" during that 78 minutes.
But how is this possible?

The full details of what happened to him have yet to emerge.
But the most likely explanation - and one suggested by those involved in his care - is that while his heart stopped working, it retained some form of life.

The cardiac arrest he suffered meant his heart was not contracting and therefore pumping blood around his body.
However, even when this happens, some electrical activity can still be taking place within the heart.
If this was the case, one of several things could have been happening.
The heart could have developed a severely abnormal rhythm, known as either ventricular fibrillation - where it shakes like a jelly - or ventricular tachycardia - where it is out of control.

The third explanation is that it has developed pulse-less electrical activity whereby there is an organised rhythm but no heart contractions.
In some cases, the state of the activity can interchange between the three.
The important thing in such cases is to start CPR quickly.
This artificially pumps the blood round the body, buying medics time to work out how to get the heart working properly.
Every minute delay in starting CPR reduces the chances of survival by 10%.

In this respect, the 23-year-old was lucky.
Pitch-side at White Hart Lane were a team of fully-trained and equipped medics.
What is more, a cardiologist was in the crowd and was soon by Muamba's side lending help.
It meant he received almost immediate attention.

But CPR alone is not enough. That only gives someone suffering a cardiac arrest a 5% chance of survival.
While he lay stricken on the pitch, the footballer was given oxygen and three shocks using a defibrillator.
The aim of that is to try to get the heart working again.
He was soon transferred to a waiting ambulance and rushed off to hospital.
In total he received another 12 shocks before his heart started working properly.

But was he really dead?
Clearly not in the technical sense - although his life was obviously in the balance.

Some people flatline following a cardiac arrest, which means they do not have any activity in the heart.
These cases are very hard to resuscitate people from.

But, instead, with some signs of a rhythm medics kept persisting.
In fact, experts say that even doing this for as long as they did for Muamba is not that unusual.
Cathy Ross, of the British Heart Foundation, explains: "Performing CPR early buys the time necessary. Seventy-eight minutes is a long time, but it's not unheard of."

If you want to find out how you could help someone who has a cardiac arrest, the British Heart Foundation runs a training course called Heart Start.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17474789
 
A chilling story, in more ways than one...

Mother finds 'stillborn' baby alive in hospital morgue in Argentina
A mother who gave birth to a stillborn baby found her alive in the hospital morgue half a day later, it has been revealed.
By Jonathan Gilbert in Buenos Aires
3:22PM BST 11 Apr 2012

Analía Bouter, from Argentina, insisted on seeing the body of her daughter, born three months prematurely, and was taken to the morgue by staff at the Perrando Hospital in the north of the country.
But only 12 hours after her baby was pronounced dead by doctors last Tuesday morning, Mrs Bouter found her breathing in one of the morgue's drawers.

"I went with Fabián, my husband, at around 9pm to see her body," Mrs Bouter told local press.
"We opened the drawer and I touched her hand. I felt her look at me and when I saw her alive I fell to my knees. Then suddenly she let out a cry. She was freezing in there."

Mr Bouter, who had already taken steps to obtain a death certificate, had asked to see his daughter before she was taken to the morgue, but doctors told him the drawer had already been shut and that he would have to wait.
He said: "I folded back the blanket and we saw her hands moving. I couldn't believe it. I was speechless."

The nurse in charge at the morgue then lifted up the newborn before Mrs Bouter's brother took her running to the doctors.
The young couple have named their daughter, who is healthy in hospital, Luz Milagro, which translates as Light Miracle.
"Luz is a miracle," Mrs Bouter said. "If we had left it to go and see her another day, she may not have held on."

Doctors say Luz was born without vital signs. Rafael Sabatinelli, secretary of health of the Chaco province where the Bouters live, called the events a "disgrace" and has opened an investigation for the duration of which specialists and nurses involved in the birth will be suspended.
José Luis Meiriño, director of the hospital, said: "We work under strict protocols, but there's no explanation for this."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... ntina.html
 
'Dead' boy wakes up and asks for water at funeral in Brazil

Kelvin Santos pronounced dead in hospital, given to family
Father says he sat up in coffin, asked for water, died again
Family delayed funeral in hope, but later buried Kelvin


A TWO-YEAR-OLD boy sat up in his coffin and asked for water before laying back down again lifeless, according to a Brazilian news website.

Website ORM claimed that Kelvin Santos stopped breathing during treatment for pneumonia at a hospital in Belem, northern Brazil.

He was declared dead at 7.40pm on Friday and his body was handed over to his family in a plastic bag.

The child's devastated family took him home where grieving relatives held a wake throughout the night, with the boy's body laid in an open coffin.

But an hour before his funeral was due to take place on Saturday the boy apparently sat up in his coffin and said: "Daddy, can I have some water?".

The boy's father, Antonio Santos, said: "Everybody started to scream, we couldn't believe our eyes. Then we thought a miracle had taken place and our boy had come back to life.

"Then Kelvin just laid back down, the way he was. We couldn't wake him. He was dead again."

Mr Santos rushed his son back to the Aberlardo Santos hospital in Belem,where the doctors reexamined the boy and confirmed that he had no signs of life.

He said: "They assured me that he really was dead and gave me no explanation for what we had just seen and heard."

The boy's family decided to delay the funeral for an hour in the hope that he would wake up again, but ended up burying him at 5pm that day in a local cemetery.

Convinced that his son was victim of medical malpractice, Mr Santos has now registered a complaint with the police who have launched an investigation

He said: "Fifteen minutes after rushing him away for resuscitation, they came and told me he was dead and handed me his body. Perhaps they didn't examine him properly. Dead people don't just wake up and talk. I'm determined to find out the truth."

The local state department today confirmed the boy had been admitted to hospital in a critical condition and was declared dead after suffering cardiac-respiratory failure.

LINK

Plus original Brazilian link -
http://www.orm.com.br/2009/noticias/def ... modulo=197
 
Good news, the baby is released from hoospital.

Argentine morgue baby leaves hospital

September 6th, 2012 in Other

Argentina's "miracle baby," born premature and declared dead in April and then found alive 12 hours later at the morgue, has been cleared to go home, the hospital said Thursday.

Luz Milagros, whose middle name means "miracles" in Spanish, "is stable," with a tube for feeding and respiratory assistance "to help avoid fatigue," said the director of Resistencia's pediatric hospital, Juan Mario Jacobassi.

The five-month-old left the hospital in northeastern Argentina around noon, in the arms of her mother Analia Boutet.

She remains fragile, and her care will continue at home with the help of specialized equipment installed there.

Born on April 3, some three months before her due date, Luz Milagros weighed around 780 grams (1.7 pounds).

Doctors examined her and determined she was stillborn.

But 12 hours later, when the parents went to the morgue to see the body and say goodbye, they were shocked to hear a small whimper and see the baby making small movements.

"She was all covered up and full of something that looked like frost," Bouter told the local press at the time.

The parents had planned to name the baby Lucia Abigail, but changed it to Luz Milagros after the incident.
(c) 2012 AFP

"Argentine morgue baby leaves hospital." September 6th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-a ... pital.html
 
Shock as Brazilian turns up at own wake
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-20052240

A Brazilian man shocked his family when he appeared at his own wake, police in north-eastern Brazil say.

The family was gathered around the body of what they believed to be 41-year-old car washer Gilberto Araujo when the man himself showed up, causing some relatives to faint.

The body in the coffin is believed to be that of another car washer, who relatives say looked like Gilberto.

Gilberto's brother said he had misidentified him in the morgue.

'Overjoyed'

Jose Marcos Araujo said he had not seen his brother in four months.

He had heard news of the killing of a car washer, and when confronted with a body in the morgue, which he said looked very much like his brother, he assumed it was Gilberto.

The family took the body to his mother's home in the town of Alagoinhas where they mourned the death.

Gilberto Araujo said he was told about his own death by an acquaintance in the street.

"A friend told me there was a coffin and that I was inside it," he said.

"So I said: 'But I'm alive, pinch me!'"

His mother told reporters she was overjoyed when her son showed up alive. "What mother wouldn't be after being told that her son is dead and then sees him alive?" she told reporters.

Police inspector Roberto Lima said the confusion surrounding Mr Araujo's presumed death was "understandable".

"The two men closely resembled each other and both worked as car washers," he said.
 
How easy is it to diagnose death?

In April it was reported that a Chinese woman climbed out of her own coffin six days after she was declared dead following a fall.

In 1996, Daphne Banks, a farmer's wife from Cambridgeshire, was pronounced dead at her home by a doctor after an attempted suicide overdose on New Year's Eve - only to be found alive in a hospital mortuary when undertakers spotted that she was still breathing.

etc

Meant to put this up last week when someone started a thread about spurious diagnoses of death but I can't find it now so I've tagged it onto here.
 
Fabrice Muamba recalls the day he 'died' and tells how grateful he is to the people who brought him back
The last thing Fabrice Muamba recalls hearing on March 17, as Bolton played Tottenham in an FA Cup quarter final, was his colleague Zat Knight screaming at him to “come back”.
By Jim White
6:00AM GMT 09 Nov 2012

He tried to do as Knight had suggested, to back-pedal and fulfil his defensive duties. But, gripped by an inexplicably severe headache, he found he couldn’t run. He felt horribly confused; his head spinning, his vision scrambled, he saw two Scott Parkers ahead of him.

And then he just went down. He doesn’t recall collapsing. But one thing is certain: by the time his head hit the White Hart Lane turf, technically he was dead.
It was one of the most shocking things seen at a football ground: a young player dying in plain sight.
In front of 35,000 spectators and millions watching on television, Muamba, a player renowned throughout the game for his fitness, had suffered a massive cardiac arrest.

As the Bolton and Tottenham medical teams, augmented by a leading heart specialist leaping from the crowd to help, attempted to resuscitate him, for over an hour his heart did not function. He was gone.
Nothing sparked it back into action: adrenalin injections, massage, the vigorous application of a defibrillator, he was not responding to anything.

But then, in the hospital operating theatre to where he had been rapidly dispatched, the doctors tried one last thing. Under an electrical stimulus, fully 76 minutes after it stopped, his heart burst back into a beat. As inexplicably as it had stopped, it started again.
Those words of Knight’s were prophetic: Fabrice Muamba did come back.

And here he is, eight months later, in the players’ lounge at Bolton’s Reebok Stadium, tall, slim, healthy and definitively returned.
“I feel great,” he says. “I have good body shape, I’m not getting fat, which is good.”

Not many of us are granted a reprieve from death, let alone one played out on national television.
“I’ve watched it once,” he says of the footage of his collapse. “It was tough to watch.” You would imagine, after watching it, he must feel the luckiest man alive.
Except Muamba is quick to dismiss any idea that his survival was down to good fortune.
“For me there is no such word as luck in the dictionary,” he says. “When it happened, the right people were there for me. They did an unbelievable miracle on me. If this could have happened in any place for me, it was a football pitch because I had the right people there to help. The ambulance, the doctors and the machine. If it happened to me in my house I don’t think we would be having this conversation.”

Muamba does not remember a single second of the 76 minutes his heart had stopped.
But he recalls his remarkably rapid recovery, the excellence of the medical care, the astonishing support he received from those within the game (he cherishes a picture of Lionel Messi wearing a T-shirt before a Barcelona game bearing the legend “Fabrice!!!! We are behind you”).

All of it is detailed in a book he has written about the experience – and the life he led before it as a young refugee from Congo – called appropriately I’m Still Standing.
“I wanted to put a good closure to the situation I had over the last year,” he says of the book. “To be able to stand here just shows the amount of effort people put in to my health and I thank God that I am able to be here.”
Unlike watching the tape of his collapse, Muamba says compiling the book was not difficult. “It was not really an emotional strain,” he says, “because I have already changed my life.”

The book suggests that Muamba’s recovery has been something of a medical marvel. Despite being deprived of oxygen for so long, his brain is not damaged.

At first difficult, his physical movement is now once again that of the athlete. Yet the condition which caused his attack has not gone away. His heart is still prone to an irregular beat. To counter it, he was fitted with a pacemaker which has already kicked in a couple of times.
“Wow, it hits you,” he says of the device he calls his physical seat belt. “You start to feel a bit low then bang it’s like being kicked in the chest and you’re OK again.”

But it has meant that he has been advised a comeback is impossible. While that has its compensations – “I don’t have that worry of not knowing if I’m going to start, or being on the bench, I don’t have to get up early for extra training” – he admits that has been the most difficult part of his recovery: he has yet to find a purpose. Some have suggested that a man as academically sharp as him might be drawn to coaching.

“Nah,” he smiles. “My heart is very small, I don’t need another heart attack. Coaching can wait. For me it is best I take care of my heart first before I go on to something else.”

Not that his heart was the reason he refused an offer to go on ITV’s I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. He said he baulked at the idea that dying on a football pitch somehow made him a celebrity.
“I’d have been on the plane there right now,” he says. “But I told them I’m not into that sort of thing. You have to parachute in. Nah. I can’t swim. What would I do? You have to know yourself. No thank you.

"People may have seen what happened to me, but I’m the same old Fabrice, buying my orange juice at the supermarket, looking forward to the new ‘Call of Duty’ coming out. I’m not a celebrity.”

He certainly does not exhibit any of the desperate need for attention of the has-beens, never-will-bes and Tory MPs heading to the jungle. He seems centred, happy, philosophical.
As he says, there is nothing like a close brush with death to make you appreciate life. But when he is asked about his future and if there was one thing he would like to do, for a moment his smile disappears.
“One thing?” he says. “Put my boots on and go out training. If I knew that the doctors gave me the all-clear to go out training tomorrow that would be great.” Then he pauses.
“But hey,” he says, grinning widely once more, “there’s more to life than football, right?”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/footba ... -back.html
 
Kondoru said:
I like this guy, dont you?

Yes, I think he's quite an inspiring fellow.
 
He has unwittingly stepped into the spotlight. But its a type of phenomenon that brings out the good in people. Hence Liobel Messi wearing a t shirt saying "Muamba we're with you".
 
Sam Ledward turns 106 after being declared dead in 1936

Sam Ledward is more grateful than most to celebrate his 106th birthday given that he was declared dead 76 years ago.
The former joiner crashed his motorbike in 1936 and says he was in a coma so deep that doctors ordered his body to be taken away.
He was being taken to the mortuary when a hospital porter noticed his "corpse" move and returned him to the ward.

Mr Ledward, of Flintshire, puts his long life down to "sheer luck" - as his fortune all those years ago suggests.
As he celebrated turning 106, he said: "I'll be all right for a while yet. You don't get rid of me like that." 8)

He said: "I was riding on 500cc Triumph. I hadn't had it more than two months. I bought it off a farmer. One of his sons had come to grief on it.
"I just tuned it up and put a new rear tyre on it. I thought the front tyre would be okay but it wasn't. It bust."

He was thrown into the road and his coma was such that doctors concluded that he had died. So they gave the order for the body to be taken away.
Mr Ledward said: "They put me on a trolley and this chap saw something move and took me back. I came to five days later.

"My first recollection of anything was seeing someone stood round the bed and me knocking something out of someone's hand.
"I had knocked a feeding cup out of a nurse's hand."

He was carried back to the ward where he stayed unconscious for another five days. His head and face injuries took six months to heal.

"I've had a good life since," he added.
Most days he catches a bus into town with his companion Millie Minshall, 90, the cousin of his late wife, from the house they share in Gwernaffield, near Mold.

Born and brought up in Cheshire, Mr Ledward and his late wife, Edith, lived in Blackpool. Mrs Ledward died in 1993 but not before telling her husband that her cousin would look after him.
He said: "She said 'go to our Millie,' I'm well treated every day.
"We're doing very well. We knock about together. We used to go abroad a lot but I think I'm too ancient for that now.
"But I'm not too bad for an old codger."

Mr Ledward celebrated his 106th birthday last Friday with Mrs Minshall and her daughter's family.
Mrs Minshall said: "He's not bad, not bad at all."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-20295971
 
Grandmother 'comes back from the dead just minutes before post-mortem' after spending THREE DAYS in the morgue
By Anna Edwards
PUBLISHED: 16:19, 29 December 2012 | UPDATED: 16:45, 29 December 2012
A grandmother has been brought back from the dead twice - and has even survived spending three days in a morgue.
The 61-year-old Russian woman has been declared dead twice by doctors, but each time has come back to life - and once was minutes away from being cut open for her autopsy. :shock:

Hardy Lyudmila Steblitskaya spent 3 days laying in a freezing cold morgue, while her family mourned the retired cook.
The mother's eery habit of returning to life has not only left her family torn between grief and hope that she may come back to life, but perplexed doctors too, The Siberian Times reported.

She has scared both doctors, friends and family once in November last year and in October this year.
The initial confusion began last year, when Lyudmila was taken to Tomsk Regional Clinical Hospital and spent days in hospital because she felt unwell.
When her 29-year-old daughter Anastasia, who has a daughter Nelli, nine, called on a Friday evening to ask about her mother's condition, she was informed by doctors that her mother had died.

The devastated woman began planning her mother's funeral and breaking the bad news to friends and family.
She spent 60,000 roubles (£1,223) buying flowers, a casket, arranging for a grave to be dug, and buying food for the mourners who planned to attend the funeral on the Monday morning, according to the newspaper.
On the Monday, she went to the hospital to collect her mother's body - only to be told to wait as doctors had not performed an autopsy.

She told the newspaper that a startled doctor then approached her and said that her mother was not dead, but was in her bed breathing and alive.
A disbelieving Anastasia went in to the room to find her mother calling her name, and screamed and dropped her bag.
She told The Siberian Times: 'My head was so fuzzy that I didn't even think about getting back into the room, and hugging mum. Or asking her about what happened.
'Instead I started calling everyone, saying things like "Er, sorry. Can you please stop digging the grave. Ah, is it done? OK... well, there won't be a funeral, my mother is alive".' 8)

Her mother cannot remember what happened, only that she was in hospital on the Friday and then woke up in a morgue on Monday to discover that her skin was peeling off from the cold.
Mostly, she is just grateful to be alive and be able to see her friends and family.
In October 2012, Lyudmila - who has a history of heart problems - had another 'apparent death' during a hospital stay but this time doctors brought her back to life after several hours.

On the morgue incident, chief doctor of Tomsk Regional Clinical Hospital Maksim Zayukov, said: 'As of now I cannot explain why this mistake happened,' The Siberian Times reported.
'This sad procedure has always worked in our hospital like clockwork: the moment of death is always registered by the intensive care doctor.
'Proper checks are always conducted. This all happens before the family are informed about the death'.
A hospital spokeswoman said: 'The checks were carried out and she was dead - or so it seemed.
'The papers could not have been signed unless this is what the doctors establish. We are still trying to understand what went wrong in Lyudmila's case'.
Ms Steblitskaya is not the only person to be given a second chance at life.

Earlier this year, mourners in Egypt cheered when the ‘dead’ body they were burying woke up. Hamdi Hafez al-Nubi, a 28-year-old waiter, had been declared dead after suffering a heart attack at work.
His body was being prepared for burial when another doctor, sent to sign his death certificate, discovered he was still warm and managed to revive him.

And in April a 95-year-old Chinese woman climbed out of her own coffin six days after she was declared dead following a fall.
Under Chinese tradition, Li Xiufeng was placed in a coffin kept in her house so friends and relatives could pay their respects. But the day before the funeral, neighbours found an empty coffin and later discovered her in the kitchen cooking.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z2GX9FO33A
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

The story about the Chinese woman is also on this thread:
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewt ... 52#1193152
 
Sam Parnia – the man who could bring you back from the dead
This British doctor specialises in resurrection and insists outdated resuscitation techniques are squandering lives that could be saved
Tim Adams
The Observer, Saturday 6 April 2013 22.00 BST

Sam Parnia MD has a highly sought after medical speciality: resurrection. His patients can be dead for several hours before they are restored to their former selves, with decades of life ahead of them.

Parnia is head of intensive care at the Stony Brook University Hospital in New York. If you'd had a cardiac arrest at Parnia's hospital last year and undergone resuscitation, you would have had a 33% chance of being brought back from death. In an average American hospital, that figure would have fallen to 16% and (though the data is patchy) roughly the same, or less, if your heart were to have stopped beating in a British hospital.

By a conservative extrapolation, Parnia believes the relatively cheap and straightforward methods he uses to restore vital processes could save up to 40,000 American lives a year and maybe 10,000 British ones. Not surprisingly Parnia, who was trained in the UK and moved to the US in 2005, is frustrated that the medical establishment seems slow and reluctant to listen to these figures. He has written a book in the hope of spreading the word.

The Lazarus Effect is nothing short of an attempt to recast our understanding of death, based on Parnia's intimate knowledge of the newly porous nature of the previously "undiscovered country from which no traveller returns". His work in resuscitation has led him logically to wider questions of what constitutes being and not being. In particular, he asks what exactly happens, if you are lying dead before resuscitation, to your individual self and all its attendant character and memories – your "soul", as he is not shy to call it – before it is eventually restored to you a few hours later?

When I meet Parnia, he is not long off the plane from New York after a night flight with his wife and baby daughter, and the particular revival he is craving is the miracle of strong coffee. He is both forthright and softly spoken, full of careful zeal for his findings. As I sit across the table from him, he can make even the most extraordinary claim seem calmly rational. "It is my belief," he says, "that anyone who dies of a cause that is reversible should not really die any more. That is: every heart attack victim should no longer die. I have to be careful when I state that because people will say, 'My husband has died recently and you are saying that need not have happened'. But the fact is heart attacks themselves are quite easily managed. If you can manage the process of death properly then you go in, take out the clot, put a stent in, the heart will function in most cases. And the same with infections, pneumonia or whatever. People who don't respond to antibiotics in time, we could keep them there for a while longer [after they had died] until they did respond."

Parnia's belief is backed up by his experience at the margin of life and death in intensive care units for the past two decades – he did his training at Guy's and St Thomas' in London – and particularly in the past five years or so when most of the advances in resuscitation have occurred. Those advances – most notably the drastic cooling of the corpse to slow neuronal deterioration and the monitoring and maintenance of oxygen levels to the brain – have not yet become accepted possibilities in the medical profession. Parnia is on a mission to change that.

The one thing that is certain about all of our lives, he says, is that we will all eventually experience a cardiac arrest. All our hearts will stop beating. What happens in the minutes and hours after that will potentially be the most significant moments of our biography. At present, the likelihood is, however, that in those crucial moments we will find ourselves in the medical environment of the 1960s or 1970s.

The kind of CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) that we are familiar with from medical dramas – the frenzied pumping of the chest – remains rooted, Parnia claims, in its serendipitous discovery in 1960. It remains a haphazard kind of procedure, often performed more in hope than anticipation. Partly, this is a question of personnel. Parnia is quietly maddened by the worldwide hospital habit, in the event of death, to send the most junior of doctors along "to have a go at CPR". It is as if hospital staff have given up before they have started.

"Most doctors will do CPR for 20 minutes and then stop," he says. "The decision to stop is completely arbitrary but it is based on an instinct that after that time brain damage is very likely and you don't want to bring people back into a persistent vegetative state. But if you understand all the things that are going on in the brain in those minutes – as we now can – then you can minimise that possibility. There are numerous studies that show that if you implement all the various resuscitation steps together you not only get a doubling of your survival rates but the people who come back are not brain damaged."

In Parnia's ideal world, the way that people are resuscitated would first take in the knowledge that machines are much better at CPR than doctors. After that, he suggests, the next step is "to understand that you need to elevate the level of care". The first thing is to cool down the body to best preserve the brain cells, which are by then in the process of apoptosis, or suicide.

At the same time, it is necessary to keep up the level of oxygen in the blood. In Japan, this is already standard practice in emergency rooms. Using a technique called an ECMO, the blood of the deceased is siphoned out of the body, put through a membrane oxygenator and pumped round again. This buys the time needed to fix the underlying problem that caused the person to die in the first place. If the level of oxygen to the brain falls below 45% of normal the heart will not restart, Parnia's research shows. Anything above that and there is a good chance.

Potentially, by this means, dead time can be extended to hours and there are still positive outcomes. "The longest I know of is a Japanese girl I mention in the book," Parnia says. "She had been dead for more than three hours. And she was resuscitated for six hours. Afterwards, she returned to life perfectly fine and has, I have been told, recently had a baby."

etc...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/ ... rus-effect
 
Kondoru said:
But all of this is just common sense, isn't it?
It's not 'common' if most people don't practice it - which is what Parnia alleges:
"Not surprisingly Parnia, who was trained in the UK and moved to the US in 2005, is frustrated that the medical establishment seems slow and reluctant to listen to these figures."
 
'Dead' man comes back to life at his funeral

Mourners attending a funeral in central Zimbabwe were shocked when the man they had come to bury "returned from the dead."

Mr Zanthe told The Chronicle newspaper, that he has no recollection of how he 'died' nor how he was 'resurrected'

By Peta Thornycroft, Johannesburg4:54PM BST 14 May 2013

Family and friends were filing past a coffin with the remains of Brighton Dama Zanthe, 34, when one of them noticed the dead man's legs twitching.

One of the mourners, Lot Gaka, who employs Mr Zanthe at his transport company, said: "I was the first to notice Zanthe's moving legs as I was in the queue to view his body. This shocked me. We called an ambulance immediately. It's a miracle and people are still in disbelief."

Mr Zanthe had been unwell for some time and was laid to rest inside a coffin last Monday after "dying" at home the day before.

Mr Zanthe told The Chronicle newspaper, that he has no recollection of how he "died" nor how he was "resurrected," as his memory only returned when he woke up in a hospital in Gweru 140 miles southwest of Zimbabwe's capital Harare.

"Everything is history to me. What I can only confirm is that people gathered at my house to mourn but I was given another chance and I am alive. I feel OK now."

SOURCE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... neral.html
 
Excerpt from an obituary:

In August 1943, at a high level conference, Major General Orde Wingate won support for his plans to drop long-range penetration groups into Burma behind the Japanese lines. The objective of Special Force, better known as Wingate’s Chindits, was to cut the lines of communication serving the Japanese Army operating against the American-led Chinese forces advancing from the north.

....

It was in the nature of the Chindits’ operations that they had to strike and move on through the jungle and when they moved it was not possible to carry sick or wounded men. Lucas went down with sand fly fever, a very serious illness, and had to be left in a foxhole with just a gun and a couple of bullets and some water.

He was in a coma but when he regained consciousness a day or two later, he decided to set out alone and try to rejoin his company. After walking for several days, he eventually managed to catch up with the main body of troops. He had been given up for dead and when he suddenly appeared out of the jungle, looking like death, several of his comrades fainted. A few days later, he was back in action at Natyigon.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituar ... ement=mid2
 
'Dead body' in River Trent is actually alive

An apparently-dead woman floating in the River Trent was actually still alive, despite having been in the water for an hour.
The woman, in her 70s, opened her eyes when a police officer who waded into the river reached her lifeless form.
PC Mat Mitchell said the woman had looked dead and called it "one of the most bizarre experiences of my career".

He pulled her to the bank at Colwick Marina and she was taken to hospital where she was said to be doing well.
Pc Mitchell, of Nottinghamshire Police, had thrown a life ring to the woman on Tuesday but feared the worst when she did not respond and waded into the water.

The crew of a passing pleasure boat pulled him onboard so he could get nearer before he called out to the woman, who was floating on her back and looked "very peaceful".
"Her head was slightly submerged and she really did look dead. Then, in one of the most bizarre experiences of my career, she opened her eyes," he said. :shock:
"She had the most piercing blue eyes - it was so bizarre. I stripped off and jumped in the water, she was about 20 metres away, and swam her back to the bank.
"We were more than surprised, I don't think I can repeat what we said." ;)

PC Mitchell, who was helped by PC Katie Eustace, added: "It's certainly not every day you go wading into the water.
"I'd like to say it was like a scene from Baywatch but it was actually very cold and I'm not quite as chiselled as David Hasselhoff.
"We were preparing for the worst so it was so nice that this had a happy ending."

The woman is expected to be discharged from hospital soon.
"I have spoken to her husband since the incident and she's doing well," PC Mitchell said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-no ... e-23189453
 
So that's where Supergran ended up! :shock:
 
I went in the sea at Bournemouth this afternoon -my first time this year.
As is often the case, I was the only OAP in the water.
What a load of wimps! :)
 
Gillian Tuckman's pension stopped after death 'error'

A woman's pension was stopped when her "death" was mistakenly registered by the Department for Work and Pensions.
Gillian Tuckman, 66, from St Austell, in Cornwall, was unaware of the mistake until Cornwall Council sent a letter to her "executors" offering its condolences.
She said what has distressed her most was her "death" was registered as the date her son died in March. :(

The DWP said "human error" was responsible for the mix up.
"We apologise to Miss Tuckman for the mistakes made at this very distressing time. I can confirm that all benefit payments have now been paid," a DWP statement said.

Cornwall Council said it also offered its "unreserved apologies" to Miss Tuckman.
It said it had received two electronic notifications from the DWP advising of a death on 19 March 2013 and quoting Miss Tuckman's National Insurance Number.
"On 2 July an assessor acted on these notifications and wrote a letter addressed to Miss Tuckman's executors as is usual in such circumstances," the council said.

It said when Miss Tuckman contacted the council, it reinstated her council benefit "immediately".
"Once again, the council apologies for the distress caused to Miss Tuckman at what is already such a difficult time."

But Miss Tuckman said while both the DWP and council have apologised "to the media" they have not said sorry to her.
"But more than an apology, what I really want is an explanation as to why it happened and some reassurances it won't happen again," she told BBC News.
"I'm very much alive and kicking and I've been able to deal with it, but to find out I "died" on the same day as my son was really distressing."

Miss Tuckman said when her son, Michael Halton, died in March, she contacted the DWP to see if, as a pensioner, any funeral assistance was available.
"He's got a different surname because I reverted to my maiden name, but that's the only possible thing I can think of.
"Mistakes happen, but I've had no explanation or apology - just a rather blase 'It's just a glitch in the system'."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-23353307
 
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