X-Message-Number: 29365
From: "marta sandberg" <>
Subject: My journey to cryonics   Part II
Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2007 14:37:33 +0800

The police came knocking at my door and told me to phone the hospital. He 
had collapsed with a scream and had been taken into emergency surgery. They 
operated on him through that long night. In the morning he came out of the 
operating room and I saw him in the intensive care ward. He was simply lying 
there, like a beached blue whale, surrounded by machines that kept him 
alive. He couldn't even breath, but was attached to a ventilator that pushed 
air into him with a soft rhythmic "whoosh...click...whoosh...click..."

That is one sound I will never forget. Nor will I forget when the doctors 
told me he was brain-dead. He had lost too much blood, too quickly. During 
the night-surgery, his heart had stopped four times and now they couldn't 
find any sign of brain activity. He had died and it was only the machines 
that kept his body functioning. They would turn off those machines as soon 
as they could legally establish death; that takes about forty hours. 
Although they couldn't declare him death yet, they didn't give me any hope. 
This time they were sure of their diagnosis. He would not recover. Nobody 
could survive what he had been through.

. . .that was when I thought about cryonics again. My beloved Helmer could 
not be dead. I wouldn't allow him to be dead. If the only chance was 
freezing, then I would do it.

I don't know if I could have carried it through. I was in shock. I couldn't 
walk down a corridor without drunkenly reeling from wall to wall. Even 
breathing was difficult. I tried to collect myself enough to recall the 
relevant phone number, but it was like swimming through treacle upstream.

I never had to make that phone call. Helmer, my magnificent stubborn 
bastard, refused to stay dead. After a few hours his hand started to twitch 
- a voluntary movement that proved that he wasn't brain-dead.

He had survived.

The recovery, such as it was, was slow. It was almost three months before he 
left the hospital. And that was only the beginning of a long protracted 
healing process.

I forgot about cryonics again. It was a decision born out of desperation. 
Once I knew that Helmer was alive, it slid from my mind.

All my energy was focused on making Helmer well again. It took almost a year 
to get him out of wheelchair and walking under his own steam. Inch by inch 
we built up what had been lost in a single night.

When we thought we where over the hump we decided to celebrate and booked 
into a resort hotel for a week. It was the most luxurious and idyllic place 
I have ever stayed in - cottages built out over a lake on stilts so you 
could fish trout from your balcony or simply sit and relax. As fate would 
have it, it turned out to be a total waste of money.

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