If People Can Die And Come Back, Often Hours Later, Then Death Is No Longer The Absolute Ending We Once Believed.

I first read about the strange phenomenon during the Ebola crisis in Africa. World Health Care team members were carrying bodies in body bags away to the fires. Suddenly, and without explanation, one of them started kicking around. The dead had risen...from the grave?

Like the Phoenix rising from the ashes to live anew, not everyone that goes onto the great beyond seems to stay there. From moments, the hours, the dead have risen, time and time again. It’s happened around the world. It’s called the Lazarus Effect or Lazarus syndrome.

The Lazarus syndrome refers to blood beginning to circulate again, spontaneously, after your heart stops beating and failing to restart despite CPR. In the short version, you’ve come back to life after dying. The syndrome was named after the biblical Lazarus, who emerged out of his tomb alive and well four days after dying. The syndrome is also known by other names.

Lazarus phenomenon

Lazarus heart

Autoresuscitation

Autoresuscitation after CPR fails

Delayed return circulation after CPR failed

What is Lazarus Syndrome?

Your heart pumps and pushes blood through your blood vessels, feeding the organs and tissues in your body. When your heart stops, your blood stops circulating and your organs begin to fail because they’re no longer getting oxygen. Normally, your heart stops and the reasons can’t be corrected or reversed, leading to death soon after. Sometimes, CPR is done and your heart restarts, especially if the problem with your heart is reversible.

Rarely, a problem develops in the midst of CPR that keeps the heart from restarting. Lazarus Syndrome happens when that problem self-resolves after CPR stops, and your heart starts beginning again.

Polish Woman Spends 11 Hours Dead In Cold Storage Returned To Her Family

According to authorities and officials Janina Kolkiewicz, 91, died in 2014. However, after spending 11 hours in cold storage, mortuary staff were astonished to notice movement in her body bag. While the police launched an investigation, Ms. Kolkiewicz went home and warmed up with a bowl of soup and two pancakes.

Her family doctor examined Ms. Kolkiewicz, declared her dead, and filled out the death certificate.

The once black-and-white line between life and death is now blurrier than ever.

Mississippi Man In Funeral Home, Alive In Body Bag

In 2014 workers at Porter and Sons Funeral Home were preparing to embalm Walter Williams when he moved. He was found alive and kicking in a body bag after being declared dead. Williams lived two more weeks, until he died for the second time, on March 13th, 2014.

Was it some miracle, being granted two more weeks, as Williams got to see his sister, his grandchildren, and his family? Perhaps. Perhaps it was a mere symptom of Lazarus Syndrome.

Possible Causes Of Lazarus Syndrome

While it’s unknown what causes the Lazarus Syndrome there are theories that might explain it one day.

Air trapping

Air trapping is a common explanation for the effect. It’s most likely to occur when the victim or patient has COPD. Air, forced into the lungs during CPR builds up with no time to exhale. The pressure in the chest builds, getting so high that blood has trouble moving through the veins. When CPR stops, the trapped air starts leaving your lungs, reducing pressure in your chest. Eventually, blood can start flowing to the heart to start being pumped to the rest of the body.

The apparent irreversibility of death as we know it may not necessarily reflect true irretrievable cellular damage inside the body.

While there may be other explanations, like delayed medication delivery and action, it’s still one of those mysteries that the medical community has yet to definitively answer — what happens after these people were gone, how are they back? Temporary cardiac arrest after defibrillation, other reversible medical forms of death? Maybe someday we’ll know.

Lazarus In The Public Eye

Kate and David Ogg of Australia gave birth to twins in 2010, only they were told that one of them had passed away during the birthing process. Remarkably, this story doesn’t end tragically, is our common perception of life tells us that it should. Not breathing, unresponsive, the boy Jamie was going to be there worst heartbreak. All they wanted to do was to hold the son they were now never going to get to know.

Wrapped up in a blanket, the body of little Jamie being cradled by his loving mother’s embrace, started moving around and slowly, began to breathe. Hospital staff rushed back into the room to aid them and together the baby came back to life. Five years later little Jamie’s biggest toil in life is dealing with his little twin sister giving him grief and telling anyone that will listen that his big brother used to be dead.

Other such cases of the 70 to 80 known have made it into the news and made headlines.

A woman in Detroit who was declared dead after 30 minutes of CPR was taken to the funeral home where staff discovered she was breathing. She was immediately taken to the hospital and treated, going on to enjoy her life, but sadly for only two more months.

A 23-year-old British man was pronounced dead. A priest giving him last rights about 30 minutes later noticed he was breathing. He lived for two more days.

In Ohio, a 27-year-old collapsed at home. His heart stopped in a hospital and he was pronounced dead despite them having worked on him for 45 minutes. Several minutes later, his family noticed the machines were indicating a heart rhythm. Just one week later he was able to return home.

Things To Think About

Being prepared for your own funeral, embalmed, happens somewhere between 12 hours and a week depending on where you’re at when you’re declared dead. In India, where death preparations are different than in America, a man came back after days, at his own funeral. A case out of the Philipines has been called a miracle after a little girl wakes up, at her own funeral. And in America, 12 hours after being pronounced dead, a World War 2 veteran came back to life as funeral home personnel came for him to prepare his body for burial. Some of these are believed to be the Lazarus Syndrome, while others are don’t qualify yet because the only ones that science is certain of all happened after CPR was performed.

Death can no longer be considered an absolute moment but rather a process that can be reversed even many hours after it has taken place.

There is a challenge laying before the scientific and medical communities. The challenge is to understand how this is possible, 12 hours or longer after death, after the heart stops beating, despite what we know. The lack of oxygen flowing through our bodies causes damage to our organs and our brains shut down. The brain shuts down and it no longer should fire signals through our bodies to our organs. Yet, people who have returned from the dead, have been known to come back with full consciousness, lucid, well-structured thoughts, and their memory functions intact.

So, in conclusion, there’s no rush to call the funeral homes or mortuaries anymore and it might be better off that there’s a delay in those calls. While science starts to study more and more about awareness during resuscitation, consider that you might want a usable body if you’re coming back. Make those final arrangements accordingly!