Mike Couillard and his son endure the agony of the cold at 7000 feet when they get lost for ten days on a ski trip in Turkey. What happens to the body in these extreme conditions?
Mike Couillard and his ten-year-old son Matt are on a ski trip in Turkey, when they get lost in heavy snow, 7000 feet up a mountain. After a long trek through deep snow trying to get off the mountain, Mike realises they need to spend the night in the open and they rig up a bivouac. But Mike and Matt would have to survive ten more days in the cold before being rescued. In that time, with only a handful of sweets to share between them, and with nothing to drink but melted snow, Mike and Matt had to endure the hope of rescue as they saw search helicopters overhead, and then the agony as they werent spotted. They also had to suffer the pain and the effects of frostbite.
Realising they would never be found, Mike had to make the hardest decision of his life. Should he stay with his son and wait for inevitable death, or leave his son on the mountainside, and set off on his own to get help. He left his son, and forced his body down the mountain. Eventually he came across a hut but his hopes were dashed when he found it empty. For two days Mike lay in the hut, crippled by the agony of his frostbite, unable to get back to his son because of exhaustion. Finally, woodsmen discovered him, and quickly scrambled up the mountain to find Matt, amazingly still alive. How much longer could they have survived?
Dr Michel Ducharme from the Climatic Facility at the Canadian Defence Research and Development Centre runs experiments into the effects of hypothermia. After wiring up our volunteer, Danny, to blood pressure and heart rate monitors, Dr Ducharme subjects him to a cool 46 degrees Fahrenheit (8 degrees Celsius), a 10 mile an hour wind, and a downpour.
Very quickly Danny starts to show signs of hypothermia, with his body temperature dropping from 37 degrees Celsius or 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit to around 35 degrees Celsius, 95 degrees Fahrenheit. At this temperature his brain ability begins to tail off and he shakes so violently, if he were out on a mountain, it would be almost impossible for him to put on a pair of gloves, let alone light a fire. He would be dead very soon. The dangers of hypothermia are clear.
But doctors are now beginning to discover how useful the cold can be in medical emergencies. In the Falklands, many soldiers wounded by mines and mortars were saved by the extreme cold. Their bodies became mildly hypothermic, allowing them to survive on lower blood volumes and oxygen levels. David Gray, who lost his foot in a mortar attack, should have bled to death, but owes his life to the fact that he was left in freezing conditions on the Falklands moorland, slowly becoming hypothermic. Now this idea has been developed by some hospitals who use it to treat trauma victims.
But cold therapy has gone beyond being used to limit damage. It is now being used to prevent damage. Ross Walker, a two-year-old boy who had a very difficult birth, was starved of oxygen, which set off a chain reaction in his brain, leading to seemingly inevitable brain damage. To stop the damage, doctors cooled his whole body, for almost two weeks, slowing down the reactions in his brain. The treatment worked. Today he is a normal healthy toddler.
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