He's only *mostly* dead...
 

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/West/05/2....ap/index.html

You see, mostly dead is still slightly alive.

But with all dead...well, with all dead, there's usually only one thing you can do.

;)

Wow. Could they have a lawsuit? Also I wonder how many people has this happen too....

Probably more often than one would think, or hope. Hence all the legends about zombies and the walking dead and such...

Also, FWIW, in French, an undertaker is called a 'croque-mort', which translates directly to 'dead-biter'. In the past, the guy would actually bite the dead person's big toe to check if the person was fully dead... Talk about a nice job, eh ?

This doesn't sound like it's going to end too well, though.

What if the dude hadn't any feet?

I don't even want to think about that one... *shudders*

(I don't want to go on the cart...)

Reminds me of the Simpsons "...he was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead. He was then taken to a better hospital where his condition was upgraded to 'alive'."

I thought the same thing. Assuming the other details in the article are accurate (notably the time underwater, and length of oxygen deprevation), this is probably only going to give the family false hope or a functional recovery. They might have to go through the grieving process a second time.

Of course, I hope I'm wrong.

Wrong movie! *WHAP*

Go through his pockets for loose change.

Is that the first tihng that came to your mind.... a lawsuit?

You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.

Hmm no... but this is America.

Even worse. They might have to decide when it is over now. I do also hope I am wrong. It is just the 30 minutes without air thing that makes me think the nurse should have just left the room. Then again I know there is no way I could have done that.

Didn't another situation similar to this happened recently? Where everybody pronounced some baby dead then somebody prepping the scene found the kid alive?

Agreed. Can you say vegetable? I'll be amazed if the kid has close to normal brain function after all of this. That would be a true miracle.

There have been some unusual instances of recovery from long-term submergence in cold water. Given the location (Boise), maybe this is another?

It's actually not that unusual. One of the first things you learn in wilderness EMT school is that even if a person SEEMS dead (without signs of life) in the field, in the case of freezing and drowning, this can be misleading, and the patient should be taken to a hospital and properly re-warmed and THEN the life/death status evaluated. Kids, it seems, do quite well with "coming back to life" and not necessarily losing much function or having many problems related to the oxygen deprivation because kids' brains are still developing and are quite resiliant/can re-build new pathways in cases.

~tk, the fofc pre-med dork