A Pennsylvania toddler left doctors dumbfounded when he came back to life after going almost two hours with no heartbeat, according to CBS News.
Gardell Martin, 22 months old, is currently recovering from the terrifying March 11 incident when he fell into an icy stream while playing outside his Mifflinburg home. Not only did the toddler survive a full hour and 41 minutes without a pulse, but doctors are also stumped by his full recovery.
"What's even more extraordinary is the rate at which he recovered and the completeness of his recovery," Dr. Frank Maffei, a pediatrician from Geisinger's Janet Weis Children's Hospital, told CBS News.
Gardell was playing outside with his two brothers when he fell into the stream behind his parent's home and was swept away by the current. The boys alerted their mother, Rose Martin, who called 911 and immediately began searching the stream for her missing son.
The toddler was found in the water by a neighbor less than a mile from where he went in, the station reported.
Paramedics arrived and administered CPR on the unconscious kid, whose body temperature plummeted to 77 degrees on account of the water. From then on rescuers conducted CPR nonstop- from the ambulance to a nearby hospital and then to a helicopter before he arrived at Geisinger Medical Center's pediatric intensive care unit.
While the CPR helped, Maffei said Gardell's body temperature- over 20 degrees below normal- naturally slowed his body's metabolism and therefore protected him from cardiac arrest.
Maffei and the unit's attending physician, Dr. Richard Lambert, worked tirelessly to warm Gardell up. Once his body temperature reached 82 degrees, doctors noticed a change.
"Right before, we did one last pulse check and Dr. Lambert and I were checking pulses simultaneously and we looked at each other and said he's got a pulse," Maffei told CBS News.
It wasn't long before Gardell's brain activity returned and he regained consciousness. He was released from the hospital a week ago and is said to be walking and talking again.
"It was an act of God," his mother told the station. "There is no doubt in my mind it's a miracle. God had the right people in the right place at the right time and they did a wonderful job."
Gardell's dramatic rescue comes weeks after a Missouri teenager went 45 minutes without a heartbeat after he was pulled from an icy lake and survived.
