Doctors in the US are hailing a 22-month-old’s recovery as ‘extraordinary’, after he survived falling into an icy river and needed 101 minutes of CPR to be revived.
Little Gardell Martin, from Pennsylvania, left his parents fearing for the worst after he fell into the stream that runs through his family’s five-acre property. He was then swept away by the fast-moving current.
It was Gardell’s seven-year-old brother Greg who raised the alarm, running into their house and telling mum Rose that he couldn’t find his little brother. A frantic Rose contacted emergency services while her two teenage daughters began walking downstream of the river to see if they could find Gardell.
It was a neighbour who discovered the child, nearly a quarter of a mile away, caught up in a tree branch.
When the ambulance crew arrived shortly after, they found no pulse in little Gardell. Regardless, they continued on with their resuscitation attempts for a staggering 101 minutes, until they were finally able to bring him to hospital.
There, in the paediatric wing of Geisinger Medical Centre, a team of 30 doctors and nurses got to work on Gardell, whose body temperature was more than 20 degree below normal when he arrived at the hospital.
The team continued CPR and warmed his body slowly and, amazingly, his heart restarted.
Referring to it as “an act of God”, Gardell’s relieved mum Rose paid tribute to the staff at the hospital for their “wonderful job”.
Attending physician Dr Richard Lambert commented on the astonishing turn of events, saying: “It provides us with a smile on our face, knowing you were part of something this wonderful and amazing.”
Despite the fact that Gardell was in a “rare, rare, extreme category for recovery”, he is now back at home with his family, and walking.
What an amazing story. Thank heavens he was okay.
