An English teacher survived after her heart stopped beating for more than six hours in a case dubbed ‘exceptional’ by doctors today.
Audrey Schoeman, who uses a British passport and is thought to have been born in the UK although she moved to South Africa as a child, has made a near full-recovery after her remarkable brush with death on a Spanish mountainside last month.
She had lost consciousness and developed hypothermia when she and her husband, Rohan, got lost in a snowstorm on a mountain near Girona on November 3.
The 34-year-old had been ‘talking nonsense’ and acting strangely before her eyes rolled back into her head and she stopped breathing, her husband said.
When rescuers arrived she was airlifted to hospital, where doctors said her heart wasn’t beating, she wasn’t breathing and her kidneys had stopped working.
But determined doctors put her on life support and gradually warmed up her body and her blood before they restarted her heart with a defibrillator later that evening.
Her astonishing rescue, and her incredible fightback against all the odds, were revealed today at a press conference at Barcelona’s Vall d’Hebron Hospital, which she and her husband attended.
English teacher Audrey Schoeman (pictured) survived after her heart stopped beating for more than six hours in a case dubbed ‘exceptional’ by doctors today
Audrey, pictured with her husband, Rohan, was rushed to hospital by air ambulance after rescuers managed to reach her and discovered she had severe hypothermia and her body temperature was down to just 18 degrees Celsius (64.4 degrees Fahrenheit)
A hiking route in the Vall de Nuria valley near Girona, Catalonia, Spain. Barcelona-based English teacher Audrey Marsh’s heart stopped beating after she suffered severe hypothermia during a hike in the mountains on Tuesday
Audrey, who lives and teaches in Barcelona, admitted she remembered nothing about her November 3 rescue in mountains near Girona close to Spain’s border with France.
But she admitted: ‘The more I learn and read about it, the more miraculous it seems that I have survived.’
Dr Eduard Argudo, who led the hospital’s successful attempt to save her life: ‘This is an exceptional case on a global scale.
‘It is the longest cardiac arrest ever recorded in Spain.
‘There are practically no cases of people whose hearts have stopped for so long and have been able to be revived.’
Audrey, who moved to Barcelona with her husband two years ago, got into difficulties when the couple got lost during a snowstorm on a mountain peak.
They took shelter behind a rock to get out of the wind and cold, but Audrey started to become delirious and struggle to breathe. She eventually lost consciousness.
Rohan called emergency services and then started to send photos to their friends in a panic about what was happening.
Audrey was rushed to hospital by air ambulance after rescuers managed to reach her, and they discovered she had severe hypothermia and her body temperature was down to just 18 degrees Celsius (64.4 degrees Fahrenheit).
A medical evaluation at 3.30pm confirmed she had no vital signs.
Her heart is thought to have stopped beating around three hours before she finally reached Vall d’Hebron, the hospital where the world’s first full face transplant took place, at 5.45pm.
Audrey admitted that she and her husband had been ‘careless’ and weren’t as prepared as they should have been for the excursion.
Dr Argudo, an expert in dealing with hypothermia victims, told Spanish press Thursday: ‘The person that reached the hospital was a young girl who was in cardiac arrest and showed no sign of life.
‘She was pale and blue, with a body temperature by that time of 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit.
‘The only good thing was that she was very cold. Everything else looked very bad.’
Medics at the hospital revived her with a defibrillator after raising her temperature using a life support machine known as an ECMO.
The ECMO machine, connected to a patient through plastic tubes placed in large veins and arteries in the legs, neck or chest, replaces the function of the heart and lungs.
It pumps blood from the patient’s body to an artificial lung that adds oxygen to it and removes carbon dioxide and then sends the blood back to the patient via a pump.
Audrey Schoeman pictured with her husband. Audrey, 34, admitted she remembered nothing about her November 3 rescue in mountains near Girona close to Spain’s border with France
The details of Audrey’s case were revealed at a medical press conference today in Spain
At 9.46pm on November 3, after Audrey’s body temperature had gone up to 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) a defibrillator was used on her and her heart started beating again on its own.
Audrey lost a large amount of blood the first night she was in hospital because her heart was not working as it should and she is understood to have had several blood transfusions.
She was heavily sedated for 48 hours while she was given a full body scan to see if her brain had been damaged by her extended period of cardiac arrest.
But three days after her brush with death she was awake and talking. And she left hospital 11 days after being rescued with no neurological scars, only problems related to mobility and feeling in her hands from the hypothermia she suffered.
Dr Argudo, in quotes carried by respected Spanish regional daily La Voz de Galicia, said: ‘The hypothermia almost caused Audrey’s death but at the same time it saved her because her body and above all her brain, did not deteriorate.
‘If she had suffered cardiac arrest this long with a normal body temperature, we would have certified her death by now.
‘But we knew that with such severe hypothermia she had a chance of survival.’
Audrey Schoeman pictured with her husband. She was heavily sedated for 48 hours while she was given a full body scan to see if her brain had been damaged by her extended period of cardiac arrest
He told Catalan daily La Vanguardia: ‘Her brain became very cold very quickly and her need for oxygen reduced before her heart stopped beating.
‘When your heart stops beating first and the drop in body temperature occurs after, as happens for instance with the victims of landslides, the outlook is very bad.
‘But when it’s the hypothermia that causes the cardiac arrest, as in Audrey’s case, we must try to save victims because survival without serious side-effects is possible.’
Audrey, a keen mountaineer whose maiden name is Mash but now uses her married surname, is believed to have moved to south Africa from Britain as a child.
One local report said she had left the UK aged 10. Her husband is understood to have been born in South Africa.
Rohan Schoeman told Spanish media Audrey lost consciousness as they tried to crawl down the mountain they got lost on during the snowstorm in their bid to make it back to safety after she ‘began to stay strange things’ when her body temperature started dropping.
He revealed she didn’t have a pulse when he checked before rescuers reached them after a two-hour search for their position.
The alarm was sounded around 1.30pm on November 3 – some two hours before rescuers reached them.
Rohan sent firefighters photos of the area they were in, a key factor in helping rescue teams locate them because they discovered they were not in the spot they thought they were and had been looking in for the first hour.
Audrey, who has already visited the Himalayas twice, admitted today she was already looking forward to getting out into the mountains again despite her close brush with death.
‘It’s incredible I’ve survived,’ she admitted. I didn’t realise my life was in danger until I woke up in hospital.’