I’m a doctor – I’ve seen two ‘dead’ patients wake up – here’s how it happens
WAKING up inside your own coffin is the stuff of nightmares and good horror films
And for the few unfortunate souls, this grisly film trope becomes a reality.
Just this month, a woman in Ecuador woke up and knocked on her coffin hours after being pronounced dead following
Bella Montoya, 76, has suffered a cardiac arrest before waking up at her own funeral.
In February, a similar event took place, in which an 82-year-old woman was pronounced dead at a New York nursing home and later discovered to be alive by funeral home staff.
Before that, a 66-year-old woman with early-onset dementia was declared dead by a nurse, only to be found gasping for air when funeral home staff unzipped the body bag.
In medical school, doctors are taught no breath or heart rate, fixed, dilated pupils, and a failure to respond to any stimulus should mean that the person is deceased.
But in some cases, where death has been confirmed by this process, the patient has shown signs of life afterwards.
Dr. Stephen Hughes, senior lecturer in medicine at Anglia Ruskin University, UK, said such events are “very rare”;
But in The Conversation wrote he has witnessed them twice in his 20-year career as a consultant in emergency medicine.
The first time it happpened, a woman with epilepsy had taken an overdose of phenobarbital — an old-fashioned barbiturate drug used to treat the condition.
Drugs can sometimes reduce responsiveness and slow down breathing and circulation.
He couldn’t hear the patient’s heartbeat, couldn’t feel a pulse, or detect any breathing – so pronounced her dead.
On arrival at the mortuary, one of her legs was seen to be twitching.
“Excruciating embarrassment all round. And if I recall correctly, she recovered,” he said.
The other incident happened when an elderly woman was pronounced dead, but a short while later, she started breathing again and her pulse was briefly restored.