Two-year-old survives after heart stops beating for an hour

http://www.ksdk.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=217105

NBC -- A remarkable story of survival about a toddler who came back to life, after his heart stopped for nearly an hour.

It was supposed to be a fun Fourth of Julyvacation for the Otteson family, way up in the Colorado mountains. But when their two-year-old son Gore wandered away, everything changed.

"Absolute panic. I was crying so hard I couldn't even run anymore," said Amy Otteson, Gore's mother.

Just a few hundred yards from the family cabin was an irrigation ditch. They little Gore inside. He had been underwater almost half an hour.

His grandfather, a retired orthopedic surgeon, frantically started CPR. Ten more minutes past and still nothing. Gore's grandfather said he was pale, like somebody that was already dead.

After nearly an hour, doctors finally got Gore's heart going again, but that was it.

That water was unrelenting. But there is one element that the Colorado Rockies give to almost every drop of water that rolls out of them, that in this case was potentially life-saving: the water was cold. Gore's temperature had dropped to just 87 degrees. In a last ditch effort, doctors decided to keep him that way-stone cold-in hopes of protecting his brain.

"They pumped ice cold fluids into him, they put him on a cooling blanket," Amy said.

For two days, the family sat huddled by his chilly bedside, themselves frozen in fear. Then doctors slowly started to raise his body'stemperature.

"All I ever really ever hoped for was to be able to hold him again, and here, he's waking up," said Dave Otteson, Gore's father.

He was rushed in for an MRI and the results shocked everyone.

"It came back no abnormalities not one single thing in his brain MRI that was wrong," Amy said.

Doctors aren't sure if the cold therapy is what saved him or not. No matter. For Gore it was the end of a big adventure; for his family, it was faith renewed.