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“It was frozen like a piece of meat that had just been taken out of the freezer.” That’s what the doctor described George Satherfrom the hospital fosston municipality, Minnesota the young woman’s way Jan Helyar19, arrived at that health center on that winter morning in 1980. The girl had spent part of the previous night outside in the snow, and her appearance, completely immobile and with few vital signs, resembled a statue made of ice.
But despite the initial pessimistic prognosis, the young woman began to improve, which surprised even the doctor himself, who declared to the media: “I cannot explain how she is alive.”
It was cold, very cold on the night of December 20, 1980, when Ms Hillard He was driving on a gravel road in the rural area of his village, Lingby Minnesota. He had had dinner with his friends and was on his way home.
But an accident separated her from her fate. His car skidded, lost control and ended up in a ditch. Those were times when cell phones did not yet exist, and a girl had to decide whether to stay in the car and wait for someone to pass or get out to get help.
Fearing that she would end up freezing if she stayed in the car, the young woman decided to resort to her second option. His idea was, if he did not find anyone on the way, to reach his home or a neighboring house.
The young woman’s calculations were not entirely correct and the prevailing weather was the worst ever. It was already past midnight when he left the car. It was snowing hard, there were strong winds, and the thermometer read 30 degrees below zero.
Despite all these events, the hero of the traffic accident continued walking. She felt the cold wind hitting her legs and every step made her more exhausted.
He walked two miles, just over three kilometres, and saw a friend’s house in the middle of the white storm. But his body had said enough and he collapsed onto the snow. She tried to complete the meters that separated her from the entrance to the house by crawling, but she collapsed and lost consciousness.
At around 1 a.m., which was already December 21, Jan was left lying face up at the mercy of incessant snowfall and strong winds. He was in this harsh position for about six hours.
Fortunately for her, at seven in the morning, her friend came out of the house she was about to reach and saw her.
“I thought she was dead. Her face looked like a ghost.“..his face was lethargic and his eyes hardened,” he later recounted. Willie Nelsona friend and neighbor of the young woman he will end up saving.
The man saw some bubbles coming out of his girlfriend’s nose and knew that there was still a breath of life in her. He then picked up the girl “as solid as a frozen board” and put her in the back seat of his car to take her to the hospital.
At eight o’clock in the morning, the frozen woman, thanks to her rescuer, was admitted to the municipal hospital in the neighboring town of Foston. There, she was immediately treated by Dr. Sather, who told the Montreal Gazette: “She was stiff like a piece of meat that had just been taken out of the refrigerator. I thought she was already dead, but when we moved her we heard a very weak moan.”
The recently hospitalized young woman’s vital signs were truly alarming: her temperature was 26 degrees — 10 degrees lower than normal — she was breathing very poorly, two or three times a minute, and her heart was beating only eight beats a minute, when the normal range for a woman is between 60 and 100 beats.
In addition, the girl’s pupils were dilated, her eyeballs also froze, and the hardened skin due to frostbite prevented intravenous assistance. He added: “The body was so frozen that it was impossible to find a vein to measure the pulse.” Edgar Satherbrother of the first doctor.
The doctors immediately provided the young woman with oxygen and wrapped her in heating pads, whose temperature reached 38 degrees. By 1 p.m., the young woman had responded. He can make sounds and ask for some water. “When he submitted his application, I realized that a miracle had happened,” he said. George Sather.
That same night, the young woman’s feet and hands began to melt. “At first the doctors told me there wasn’t much hope,” his mother later told the press. Jan“They told me that if he survived, his legs would probably have to be amputated,” recalls another dire prognosis that doctors expected.
But none of that happened. Little by little Jan He improved and regained his mobility. The doctor said at the time: “If she maintains this recovery rate, she will not suffer permanent consequences of frostbite. She may or may not lose some of her toes.” George Sather.
The young woman spent six days in intensive care, and was constantly improving, then she moved to a common room. After 49 days, he left the hospital. With a few blisters on her feet, but other than that, completely whole and reshaped. “She’s the same normal, carefree girl she was before,” her mother said. Jean HilliardFull of happiness for her daughter’s salvation.
Although the doctors who treated this frozen young woman considered her return to normal life a “miracle,” or at least something completely unusual, there are also other points of view from a medical standpoint that do not qualify her for this method.
Following this case, the newspaper said Herald Journal He conducted a report with medical professionals who stated that “in the medical literature there are cases of people surviving severe cases of hypothermia, with internal temperatures reaching around 20 degrees.”
Doctors explained in the article that the body reacts to extremely cold temperatures like an animal in hibernation: internal activity slows down, which reduces the cells’ demand for oxygen from the blood. In this case, brain tissue can survive for several minutes after the heart stops beating.
“The freezing temperatures protect some people, such as those who appear to have drowned, but recover after being rescued from the icy waters without a pulse or breathing,” he told the aforementioned media. “These survivors sometimes show temporary mental deterioration, but they recover without permanent damage.” Richard YoungMD, Hershey Medical Center, Pennsylvania.
The idea of slowly recovering someone with severe hypothermia is to increase the intensity of blood flow at the same time as the body warms up.
What happened with Hilliard It was news that spread throughout his state and then spread to the entire United States. Despite the opinions of specialists, many continued to attribute what happened to the young woman to a miraculous event.
In this sense, the prayer chain started by his parents and circulated throughout the state was believed to be vital to Jan’s recovery.
After the painful accident, the young woman continued her life, although her fame did not last long when she appeared on the most famous television programs in the United States narrating her case. She became known in her country by the nickname “The miracle girl from LingbyMinnesota.”
His case even made it to Unsolved Mysteries
After a while, he will say that his frozen experience did not actually change his life. “It was like I fell asleep and woke up in the hospital,” she said, then added somewhat disappointedly: “I didn’t see the light or anything like that. It was a bit disappointing. “A lot of people are talking about it, and I haven’t gotten anything.”
The last we heard about this woman was a few years ago. He married, had three children, divorced, and worked for many years at a Walmart in the city where he currently lives. Cambridgein the state of Minnesota. In addition, women are said to avoid driving on gravel roads, especially late at night.