78 year old Mary Ann Patridge of Burton will always remember the day when she nearly froze to death in her garage, February 5th, 2010.
"I laid there for a minute and thought, oh I'm not hurt, but I couldn't get up so I kept thinking to myself I have to keep moving to stay warm," Mary Ann said. "I stopped and thought is this what its like to die and if it is I'm not scared, I'm very calm."
After 16 hours, her son Rick came to her rescue.
"Mom's stretched out on garage floor she was purple and blue no movement at all," remembers Rick.
Just minutes later she was rushed to Hurley Medical Center in Flint.
"Her body temperature was 24 degrees celsius," John Carr, MD, Hurley surgeon said. "I mean she was literally frozen, usually when someone gets this cold, they die."
External warming methods, like blankets weren't working.
Carr said, "We basically pulled some blood out of her body, warmed it up and put it back in to quickly warm her up. So in 90 minutes we took her from being frozen to warm again and then surprisingly after that she woke up she was completely awake and with it."
Michael Jaggi, DO says they see hypothermic patients all the time in the winter in the Hurley ER but never this severe.
"The miraculous thing with her is she's completely neurologically in tact and didn't suffer any other injuries like a stroke," Jaggi said.
Mary Ann now wears a life line around her neck where help is just a button push away. As for Mary Ann now, she's just thankful for the best gift of all.
"I'm thrilled to death to have another life and like I said, he brought me back for a reason and I'm going to hang around to find out what it is."
