Pod Insights Real Survival Stories Walk in the Woods: Submerged in Icy Water About this episode Winter 2011 in New Hampshire. David Dwyer is at home in his study when he notices that his wife Kelly hasn’t come back from her walk in the woods. Strapping on his snowshoes, he heads out to look for her. The situation will prove far worse than David’s fears. Kelly isn’t merely lost or injured; she’s unconscious, clinging to life, submerged up to her neck in freezing water. Can she, quite literally, come back from the dead?
A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins.
Written by Joe Viner | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Production Assistant: Chris McDonald | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound Supervisor: Matt Peaty | Sound design by Jacob Booth | Assembly edit by Dorry Macaulay, Rob Plummer | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Ralph Tittley.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:31 Speaker 01 From the creators of Zootopia and Frozen comes Disney's Hext. Welcome to Hext and enter the world of witchits, where it was foretold that an ordinary girl would become an extraordinary witch and save the world of magic. Disney's Hext arrives in theaters this Thanksgiving.
0:53 John Hopkins? It's February 13th, 2011.
0:57 John Hopkins? In the woods of New Hampshire, just outside the town of Hooksett, the beam of a flashlight weaves through the trees, making fleeting incisions in the darkness. Ranks of densely packed evergreens appear in its glare, their trunks slender and pale, their slumped boughs stiffened with frost.
1:17 John Hopkins? Forty-three-year-old David Dwyer, flashlight in hand, staggers through the snow, his eyes scouring the slivers of shadow between the pines.
1:27 John Hopkins? His voice resonates through the dark forest, echoing the same two syllables: Kelly.
1:36 John Hopkins? Eventually David emerges into open space, a circular clearing covered in a blanket of pillowy white. Though it's not immediately obvious, this clearing is in fact a pond, frozen over and buried by snow.
1:51 John Hopkins? David stands at the pond's edge, his breath fogging the frigid night air.
1:56 John Hopkins? He points his torch beam towards the opposite bank, where the black mass of the forest stands out against the darkening sky. David calls out again.
2:10 John Hopkins? Once the echo of his own voice has faded, he listens, his ears pricked, his senses sharpened to a fine point.
2:19 John Hopkins? And then, he hears something.
2:24 John Hopkins? It sounds like a wounded animal ensnared in barbed wire, a throaty, feral groan.
2:32 John Hopkins? His pulse quickening, David directs another yell into the dark void that surrounds him.
2:38 John Hopkins? Again, he waits, and again.
2:42 Speaker 03 Whatever that noise was, it didn't sound human, but it's not like I'm making a noise and then howl is, you know, calling back, or a coyote's howling at the moon. There was a rhythm, something is answering. Me yelling Kelly, something is answering back. Something, someone.
3:01 John Hopkins? The sound is primal, an expression of pure animal distress. But it also seems to be answering him.
3:10 John Hopkins? Whenever David shouts Kelly's name, the sound comes back.
3:15 John Hopkins? David starts inching his way along the edge of the pond, following the direction of the sound.
3:20 Speaker 03 I just kept walking and trying to follow this animalistic noise. And enough time went by that, all of a sudden, my flashlight picks up this black hole in this frozen white landscape.
3:37 John Hopkins? David stares.
3:40 John Hopkins? It looks like a blot of ink on a pristine page, a little circle of black against the surrounding white expanse.
3:49 John Hopkins? A hole in the ice.
3:52 John Hopkins? He trains the flashlight on it. And there, staring out from the hole, surrounded by freezing black water, her face like a ghost, is David's wife, Kelly.
4:05 Speaker 03 Her eyes look like you would think, if you can envision an animal caught in a trap. This frantic, wild, animal-looking eyes. And she opened her mouth, and that noise that I've been hearing came out of her.
4:29 John Hopkins? Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives.
4:53 John Hopkins? In this episode, we meet husband and wife David and Kelly Dwyer.
4:58 John Hopkins? On a winter's evening in New Hampshire in 2011, David is at home in his study when he notices that Kelly hasn't come back from her walk in the woods. Strapping on his snowshoes, he heads out to look for her.
5:09 Speaker 03 My mind is thinking, it's odd that she's not here. It's odd she's not on the path walking back, meeting me. So, something is now wrong.
5:22 John Hopkins? But the situation is even worse than David fears. Because unbeknownst to him, Kelly isn't merely lost or injured. She is unconscious, barely clinging on to life, submerged up to her neck in freezing water.
5:36 Speaker 04 And I remember screaming, screaming, screaming for help. And that's really all I remember. That's my last memory of that day.
5:45 John Hopkins? As Kelly slips into a hypothermic stupor, David will have to perform heroics to reach her in time. How will he get her out without risking his own life too? What will be the consequences of Kelly's hours spent trapped beneath the ice? Can she quite literally come back from the dead?
6:05 John Hopkins? I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories.
6:34 John Hopkins? It's the afternoon of Sunday, February 13, 2011. In a sprawling area of woodland about a mile outside the small town of Huxit, New Hampshire, Kelly Dwyer happily picks her way along a path through the evergreens. A bright winter sun slants through gaps in the trees, dappling the forest floor with shifting patterns of light and shade. Kelly, a dark-haired woman of 46, breathes in the cold, pine resin-filled air and listens to the sound of the wind stirring the branches.
7:07 Speaker 04 Trees are very symbolic to me because in the winter here, the shadows in February are beautiful, incredible lighting. It does something different to the bones of the trees, the deciduous trees when they've lost their leaves. You can see their skeletal structure and I would always look out at that and just marvel.
7:28 John Hopkins? Kelly walks slowly, methodically lifting each snowshoe before placing it back down with careful precision. She takes periodic breaks, holding on to tree branches for support while she stops to recover strength, her body racked with deep, heaving breaths.
7:46 John Hopkins? There was a time when Kelly wouldn't have struggled with exercise like this. But for the last few years, she's been battling a health condition whose symptoms—fatigue, muscle pain, nausea— have made it difficult for her to lead a normal, active life.
8:01 Speaker 04 For about three years prior to 2011, I had started to develop really mysterious physical symptoms. Slowly, over maybe a year, I became really ill. And this was from someone who was extremely energetic, very strong, determined, very healthy. And then things just started to slowly deteriorate.
8:26 John Hopkins? As the months passed, Kelly's health continued to decline.
8:31 John Hopkins? She and her husband David spent countless hours meeting with various specialists, but nobody seemed able to identify the cause.
8:39 Speaker 03 She was tested for MS. She was tested for cancer. She was tested for other neurological diseases, diabetes. She had monitors and halter monitors. And every diagnosis seemed like, well, maybe that that sounds logical, only to have it ruled out and only to her to keep getting sicker and sicker.
9:00 John Hopkins? About a year ago, after endless consultations and misdiagnoses, a doctor finally identified the mystery ailment. It was Lyme disease, a bacterial infection transmitted via the bite of a tick and which, if left untreated, can develop into a long-term chronic illness.
9:20 John Hopkins? Now, with a correct diagnosis and an intensive course of antibiotics, there is finally light at the end of the tunnel for Kelly. But there are still good days and bad days. Today started off as a bad one. Earlier this morning, she barely had the energy to get dressed, let alone go outside.
9:39 John Hopkins? So it seemed like a positive sign when, in the early afternoon, she came to David and told him she felt strong enough to take a stroll through the woods.
9:47 Speaker 03 So for her to, in the early afternoon, to say, I'm going outside. I'm strapping on my snowshoes and I'm going to the beaver pond. I'm going for a hike was excellent news. That was exciting. That's great. She's feeling good enough to just get out there and enjoy the sun and enjoy the day.
10:10 John Hopkins? David and Kelly have been married for almost 20 years. When they first met at a work conference back in the early 90s, David was a fresh-faced, recent college graduate from small-town New Hampshire. Kelly was three years older, an ambitious young professional from Boston embarking on a career in social services. Their spark was instantaneous.
10:35 Speaker 03 For me, I walked in and it absolutely was love at first sight. She was actually working the registration table and when I approached her, I actually stumbled on what my name was, to give her my name, to get my name tag. I was just struck by her. And throughout the conference, as she spoke and she did various things, and I realized, wow, she's not only beautiful, but she's intelligent.
11:01 Speaker 04 I was struck by how his eyes first looked almost like deep, soulful eyes, but he also was so kind. And there was just something about him that seemed to be in alignment with how I want to show up, is being kind, to be empathetic and to be sort of insightful regarding people.
11:23 John Hopkins? Despite the mutual attraction, the timing proved problematic.
11:28 John Hopkins? Both were seeing other people and they left the conference with nothing but a sense of what might have been.
11:34 John Hopkins? Six months later, fate handed them another chance.
11:39 Speaker 03 I went back again for another conference in September. And as fate would have it, we were both single at that point. So we ended up hanging out outside of the conference, going out to dinner. It was at Hampton Beach in New Hampshire. So the second night, we were walking on the beach. And I told her I was already falling in love with her.
12:08 John Hopkins? Fortunately, David's forwardness didn't scare Kelly off, and it didn't take long before the feeling was reciprocated. The pair got married, had two daughters, Laura and Catherine, and moved to the town of Hooksett, New Hampshire, just north of where David grew up in Manchester.
12:25 John Hopkins? They built their home from the ground up after purchasing a plot of land that abuts a large wooded conservation area.
12:32 Speaker 03 It's a beautiful nook, this little parcel, this two acres of the world. We refer to it as our sanctuary. We just love being outside, putting in the gardens, getting our hands dirty.
12:47 John Hopkins? As nature lovers, David and Kelly have deliberately built their home to coexist with the natural environment. Their backyard slopes seamlessly into the woods, connected by a single footpath.
13:00 John Hopkins? In the winter, when the ground is covered by snow, any distinction between the dwires property and the conservation area beyond it is erased, obliterated by a single unifying carpet of white, such that it becomes impossible to tell where their sanctuary ends and where unforgiving wilderness begins.
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13:57 Speaker 01 From the creators of Zootopia and Frozen comes Disney's Hext. Welcome to Hext and enter the world of witches, where it was foretold that an ordinary girl would become an extraordinary witch and save the world of magic. Disney's Hext arrives in theaters this Thanksgiving.
14:19 John Hopkins? It's about 3:00 in the afternoon. Kelly follows a path through the woods to the edge of a frozen pond. This is one of her favorite places on earth. On days when her health permits it, she likes to come out here to watch the birds through her binoculars, the finches, robins, and woodpeckers that roost in the trees around the water.
14:41 John Hopkins? The pond itself is home to a family of beavers. Their lodges, dome-shaped dens constructed from sticks and mud, rise above the frozen surface like primitive bunkers.
14:54 Speaker 04 And I remember that day being just brilliant, brilliant sunshine on the snow over the pond, and I did not have sunglasses. And trying to look at the glare of the snow, it almost seemed like there was millions of little bright lights that were dancing.
15:13 John Hopkins? Kelly steps onto the thick ice and heads to the right.
15:18 John Hopkins? This is the route she normally takes across the frozen water. Her path of trampled snow tells her where to place her feet, where she knows the ice is strong enough to support her featherweight, 115 pounds. She knows to avoid areas of the pond where the beavers are most active, as the ice here is likely to have been weakened over time.
15:39 Speaker 04 They store or cache their food for the winter near the lodge, not right adjacent to the lodge, but usually about 10 or 12 feet away. They anchor those large branches into the mud, and I know that there's weak ice around that because of the activity of coming in and out of the lodge. So I knew to give that area wide berth.
15:59 John Hopkins? Kelly takes another few steps forward. At this point, it's hard to say exactly what happens next. Kelly herself can't say for sure. Maybe she pauses, lifting her head to admire the treetops above the opposite bank. Maybe a bird flies over, distracting her for a single, critical second, pulling her attention away from the ice beneath her feet.
16:23 Speaker 04 So something must have compelled me to either step forward or step backward off of that. I think probably about 5 feet from my usual blaze trail. Whether something flew over and I took a step forward or back to look at it with my binoculars, I don't know why I went off that safe trail.
16:44 John Hopkins? All anyone can say for sure is that when Kelly puts her foot down, there is a loud crack, a sudden lurch of weightlessness, and a paralyzing shock of cold as she plunges vertically through the ice and disappears beneath the water's inky black surface.
17:02 John Hopkins? As her muscles tighten and contract, Kelly acts quickly. She kicks off her heavy metal snowshoes and flings her forearms onto the solid ice, trying to heave herself back up. But the slippery, unstable edges, coupled with the numbing effects of the cold, make this action impossible.
17:22 John Hopkins? Kelly reaches into her coat and pulls out her cellphone, but it must have shorted out after hitting the water. The screen is black and unresponsive.
17:32 John Hopkins? She grips the edge of the hole and gasps for breath, fighting to maintain a sense of clarity against the dizzying effects of the extreme cold.
17:42 Speaker 04 I remember screaming toward a development past a wooded area near the pond. And I remember screaming, screaming, screaming for help, to the point when my voice went hoarse. And that's really all I remember. That's my last memory of that day.
18:05 John Hopkins? It's about 5:00 PM in the Dwyer household. Shafts of late afternoon sunlight filter softly through the sash windows as David Dwyer potters about his study.
18:17 John Hopkins? Somewhere, his daughter Laura is practicing her flute. In another room, 12-year-old Catherine is finishing some homework.
18:25 John Hopkins? Aside from these little pockets of activity, the house is a hush of calm.
18:31 John Hopkins? Shadows lengthen across well-worn floorboards. Warm air murmurs from heating vents.
18:38 Speaker 03 It's a normal, relaxing Sunday. Not a lot of care in the world. There was no errands to run. There was no commitments to honor. It was just a nice, relaxing, beautiful Sunday. Type you hope you get every now and then so you can just rejuvenate.
18:57 John Hopkins? David is in his study, getting some things ready for work in the morning, when his daughter Catherine pokes her head into the room. She wants to know where her mom is. Shouldn't she be home by now? David glances at the time.
19:12 Speaker 03 Kelly had a routine where she'd walk out to the beaver pond and go for a hike around the woods and would try to always end around dusk to see all the various birds that would roost for the night. She came to know which birds were going into which tree at night. So she would stay with her binoculars until, you know, everybody went into their hole and roosted for the night and then she'd come back home.
19:37 John Hopkins? David reassures Catherine that he wouldn't expect Kelly home before dusk, but he turns back to his computer.
19:44 John Hopkins? But a short while later, Catherine comes back into the room, her forehead creased with concern.
19:50 Speaker 03 Catherine came in and said, "Well, shouldn't mom be home by now?" And when I looked, it was dark. And yes, she should have been home by now. Now this is odd.
20:03 John Hopkins? The sky beyond the window is a deep indigo, slowly transitioning into black. David tells his daughter not to fret. He's sure everything's fine, but he'd still better go out to look for Kelly. She may have lost track of time.
20:19 John Hopkins? David puts on his coat, hat, and gloves. He straps on his snowshoes and grabs a flashlight. Then he opens the door and steps out into the gathering gloom.
20:31 John Hopkins? David walks purposefully, but not with any great urgency. There is no immediate reason to be concerned for Kelly's well-being. But as he steps into the shadows of the trees, night seems to steal over him all at once.
20:47 Speaker 03 By the time I got of our yard into the woods, it was dark now. There's no fooling myself that the sun is going down and there's a little light. It was downright dark.
21:01 John Hopkins? The beam of David's flashlight probes the darkness as he trudges deeper into the snow-laden woods.
21:08 John Hopkins? Slender trunks and spindly branches loom on either side of the footpath. Any second now, Kelly will surely appear around a corner, apologizing for causing any unnecessary concern.
21:21 John Hopkins? But the further David walks, the less sure this becomes.
21:26 Speaker 03 Halfway from our house to the beaver pond, I started yelling her name just in case she had fallen somewhere. And again, my mind is thinking, it's odd that she's not here, she's not on the path. It's odd she's not home yet, but it's odd she's not on the path, walking back, meeting me. So something is now wrong.
21:49 John Hopkins? Could she have tripped and sprained an ankle? Kelly's battle with Lyme disease can leave her feeling weak and unsteady on her feet.
21:58 John Hopkins? David quickens his pace until eventually he reaches the pond.
22:03 Speaker 03 It wasn't until I got all the way to the pond's edge that, no, Kelly. And this is not good. It makes sense she's on the path. My brain is thinking logically, she's on the path, she's walking back. Even if she broke her leg, she's on the path. So now that I'm at this pond, surrounded by woods, where is she? Where could she be?
22:31 John Hopkins? David stands at the edge of the pond, shining his lights beam out across the frozen surface. He shouts Kelly's name, his voice gruff with anxiety.
22:41 Speaker 03 And it's pitch blackout. So as I'm yelling, I yell her name again, this noise to the right, way off in the distance, comes back. It's hard for me to describe. I can't describe it, I can't mimic the noise. The best I could describe it was an animalistic noise coming from the dark, over to the right on the pond.
23:10 John Hopkins? He strains his ears.
23:13 John Hopkins? It sounds like a wounded animal, except it seems to be answering him, calling back whenever he shouts Kelly's name.
23:22 Speaker 03 Whatever that noise was, it didn't sound human. But it's not like I'm making a noise and then howl is calling back, or a coyote's howling at the moon. There was a rhythm, something is answering. Me yelling Kelly, something is answering back. Something, someone.
23:43 John Hopkins? With shaky hands, David takes out his phone.
23:48 Speaker 03 I called the house. Laura picked up and I told Laura, call 911. And Laura, the poor 14-year-old, is, what's wrong? I said, I don't know. I haven't found Mom yet, but something's wrong. Call 911. When they get to the house, tell them how to take the path down to the pond, and I'm going to the right. Tell them, when they get to the pond, to go to the right. And she said, OK. And we hung up.
24:17 John Hopkins? David slides the phone back into his pocket. Then, flashlight poised and ears pricked, he starts edging carefully around the snowy bank.
24:29 Speaker 03 I just kept walking and trying to follow this animalistic noise. And enough time went by that, all of a sudden, my flashlight picks up this black hole in this frozen white landscape.
24:45 John Hopkins? It looks like a blot of ink on a white page, a six-foot-wide hole in the ice. And staring out from it, a stricken face ghostly pale, is Kelly.
24:59 Speaker 03 Her eyes look like you would think, you can envision an animal caught in a trap. This frantic, wild, animal-looking eyes. And she opened her mouth, and that noise that I had been hearing came out of her. So it was her. It was just awful to see, to see her and see, hear that noise come from her. She was conscious. Obviously, she's making this noise. But she wasn't there. She wasn't looking at me. She was an animal caught in a trap.
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26:12 Speaker 01 From the creators of Zootopia and Frozen comes Disney's Hext. Welcome to Hext and enter the world of witchits, where it was foretold that an ordinary girl would become an extraordinary witch and save the world of magic. Disney's Hext arrives in theaters this Thanksgiving.
26:34 John Hopkins? David stands at the edge of the frozen pond, his torch beam aimed at a six-foot-wide hole in the ice. Kelly stares into the glare like a deer caught in the headlights, her shockingly pale face framed by the dark water that surrounds it.
26:51 John Hopkins? The cold has drained the blood from her skin, leaving it mottled and translucent as tracing paper, revealing the blue veins and arteries beneath.
27:01 John Hopkins? Her sodden hair is plastered against her skull in lank, oil-black strands.
27:07 John Hopkins? Her eyes are wide, but they're vacant, unseeing.
27:12 John Hopkins? David fumbles for his cellphone.
27:15 Speaker 03 I called the house real quick, and Laura said, "I called 911, they're on their way." I said, "Call them back." She goes, "But I already called them." I said, "Just call them back and tell them Mom's in the water. They've got to be prepared to water rescue. They've got to get her out of the water. They've got to come prepared."
27:34 John Hopkins? He hangs up. While on the phone, David has managed to unbuckle his snowshoes. Now, he steps gingerly onto the pond's frozen surface and inches towards Kelly. The ice creaks menacingly beneath his weight.
27:53 Speaker 03 I'm now standing on ice. I could fall through ice too. And how am I gonna get to her? So I just laid down, put my body flat, and then slowly inched over towards the hole.
28:08 John Hopkins? David spreads his weight as evenly as he can. He calls out reassurances to Kelly, letting her know that he's coming. The deep snow piles into David's face as he bellies his way across the ice, squirming and wriggling, dragging himself by the elbows. Eventually, he reaches her.
28:29 Speaker 03 I reached down into the hole and just grabbed her by the back of the collar, by her coat. She still had her red winter coat on. I could see it sticking out of the water. So I just grabbed the collar of her coat and had her, grabbed her.
28:45 John Hopkins? David pulls Kelly to the edge of the hole, his gloved hands gripping the saturated fabric of her coat. The freezing water soaks through the down of his winter jacket. Within seconds, his blood has turned to ice. It raises a terrifying question. How long has Kelly been submerged? How could she have survived more than a few minutes in water this cold? David wraps his arms around Kelly's chest and tries to hoist her out. But it's no use.
29:17 Speaker 03 You can't reach in a hole, lying down on snow, and magically pick somebody up and pluck them down. So I couldn't get her out that way. I didn't know what to do.
29:29 John Hopkins? He lies there, prostrate on the ice, his wife a dead weight in his arms. Since David reached her, Kelly seems to have lost whatever remnant of consciousness she had left and is now threatening to slip out of his grasp.
29:45 Speaker 03 She's totally unconscious now, and she would have just slipped under, under this black, this black ink, and just disappeared. So I had to pull her up because her head is now passed out, tilting forward. I had to hold her out of water higher to keep her face from pitching forward into water.
30:10 John Hopkins? David holds on tight, constantly shifting and readjusting his grip as his wife's head flops around limp.
30:19 John Hopkins? Having established that pulling Kelly out from this position is physically impossible, David must come up with another solution. He soon arrives at a radical one.
30:30 Speaker 03 I thought, alright, I'll slip into the hole. I'll go in and I'll push her out. That would have been a very bad plan, but that's what I was about to do when I could see in the woods and hear. I could hear voices and flashlights.
30:48 John Hopkins? David looks up. Beams of light weave through the trees as a team of firefighters barrel through the forest towards the pond.
30:57 John Hopkins? It's hard to say how long it's been since he spoke to Laura, but it can't be more than 15 minutes.
31:03 John Hopkins? The firefighters soon reach the spot on the bank where David dropped his flashlight. You can see that one of them is dressed in what looks like scuba gear, a full-body dry suit.
31:13 John Hopkins? Three firefighters make their way over to David and Kelly. The one in the dry suit slips into the water and wraps Kelly in a bear hug. There is a rope tied around his waist and the two firefighters on the ice hold the other end of it. The next step is to pull them out.
31:30 Speaker 03 The firefighter in the water is looking at me saying, "I've got her, you can let her go." He had to say it again, he might even had to say it three times. And the third time was very kind and gentle, looking at me saying, "Trust me, I have her. You can, you can let her go." So I did.
32:03 John Hopkins? It's a few minutes later.
32:06 John Hopkins? The rescue team carries Kelly through the woods on a stretcher. David walks in front, illuminating the footpath with his flashlight.
32:15 Speaker 03 The whole walk, I have this illusion, she's gonna be fine. Because when they pulled her out of the hole and they're strapping her down, I heard one of the firefighters turn to the other two, he wasn't talking to me, he was talking to the other two. She has a pulse. So the whole walk back, I'm thinking, well, you have a pulse, right? You have a pulse, a chocolate, warm shower. We'll be laughing about this in an hour, in our house. All will be well and all will be right in the world.
32:45 John Hopkins? But when they reach the backyard, David's wishful thinking evaporates.
32:50 John Hopkins? Instead of carrying Kelly inside the house, the firefighters rush her to the driveway where they load her into the back of an ambulance. David watches, helpless, as his wife is whisked out of sight. The scene in front of the house is chaotic. There must be half a dozen vehicles parked here: police cars, fire engines, ambulances, a tumult of wailing sirens and red and blue flashing lights. Worried neighbors cluster around the foot of the drive, craning their necks.
33:20 John Hopkins? David stands in the middle of it all, in a state of shock.
33:25 John Hopkins? A firefighter comes over to him and starts asking questions about what happened. But David can't focus. He pushes past the firefighter and staggers over to the ambulance. The rear doors are closed, so he peers in through the window.
33:39 Speaker 03 And when I looked into the ambulance, there was three firefighters leaning over this naked body of white translucent human skin, giving her CPR. And another firefighter has a mask on her face pumping air into her nose and mouth.
34:03 John Hopkins? David watches horrified as the emergency workers try to resuscitate Kelly. None of this makes any sense. He heard the firefighters say that Kelly had a pulse.
34:15 John Hopkins? From somewhere nearby, he hears a voice telling him they're going to take Kelly to the nearest hospital. David asks if he can ride along in the ambulance. But the voice tells him there is no room. He'll have to drive himself.
34:29 John Hopkins? David pulls himself away from the scene in the ambulance and rushes to the house to speak to the girls. He explains that their mum is being taken to the hospital and asks if they want to come.
34:40 Speaker 03 The girls both took a step back and, "No, we'll, we'll wait here." And I could see it in their eyes, even though I, I didn't even tell them what I just saw. Basically, Kelly's dead. They're giving CPR. The only reason you get CPR is because your heart's not pumping. If your heart's not pumping, you're not alive. I can't say any of that.
35:00 John Hopkins? As David struggles to find the right words, Laura steps towards him, her voice full of comforting reassurance.
35:08 Speaker 03 Laura said, "Dad," she came, approached me and put her hands on my arms and said, "Mom's gonna be okay." And I had to decide, do I give her that big of a false sense of security or... My brain was just firing fast and making decisions fast. So I just looked at Laura and said, "I don't know. She's going to be all right. This is serious." And that's all I said. And Laura took a step back and said, "Then get going." As if she now believes I'm gonna go save her mom.
35:48 John Hopkins? It's about half an hour later. David runs through the brightly lit corridors of the emergency room at Elliot Hospital in Manchester. Eventually, he finds the room where Kelly is being treated.
36:01 Speaker 03 I just leaned against this wall staring at this room in front of me and there's Kelly on a hospital emergency room bed with 12, 15. I don't know. Lot of hospital people running around. Lot of monitors, lot of tubes in her all of a sudden.
36:22 John Hopkins? As David stands there, his back against the wall, everything becomes a blur. The blinking monitors, the tubes pumping warm water into Kelly's bloodstream, the swift, precise movements of the medical staff. The sense of powerlessness is overwhelming. But David's not going anywhere.
36:41 Speaker 03 Kelly and I know each other very well. She's been the love of my life ever since the day I met her. She would not want to be alone. It's that simple.
36:52 John Hopkins? Soon, David is joined in the hospital by Kelly's parents, who have driven up from Massachusetts. His own mother is here too. They sit in the waiting room, anxiously awaiting news.
37:04 John Hopkins? David, meanwhile, remains in the ward unwilling to part from Kelly.
37:10 John Hopkins? Hours pass, and still, the CPR continues. The heart monitor beside Kelly's bed registers an ominous flat line. No trace of electrical activity. No trace of life.
37:24 Speaker 03 She hasn't had a heartbeat for two hours. And I'm watching everybody trying everything. And this person, nurse, doctor, I'm not sure which, was approaching me out of the corner of my eye, coming up to tell me something. And I could feel dread of probably saying, "We've tried everything."
37:48 John Hopkins? As the medic approaches, David braces for the worst. But she doesn't deliver the bad news he is expecting. She explains that while they've done everything they can here at this hospital, there is another hospital nearby with a larger and better-equipped cardiac team. They'd like to move Kelly there to try one last procedure to save her life. But before they do, they need David to sign off on it.
38:13 Speaker 03 If you give us permission to send Kelly over there, they're going to try to warm her heart with bypass, to try to warm her blood, to try to start her heart there. And I remember just so, what an odd question. They need my permission? I like immediately said, "Well, yes, do that. You have a plan, let's do that." And she said, "Okay, we're gonna do that right now." And as she walks around, I'm just like, "Why would they have asked that?" And I realize, because she's dead, they needed permission to keep trying.
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39:29 Speaker 01 From the creators of Zootopia and Frozen comes Disney's Hext. Welcome to Hext and enter the world of witches. Where it was foretold that an ordinary girl would become an extraordinary witch and save the world of magic. Disney's Hext arrives in theaters this Thanksgiving.
39:50 John Hopkins? It's the early hours of the morning of February the 14th, 2011.
39:56 John Hopkins? A quiet night at the CMC Hospital in Manchester, New Hampshire. Then all of a sudden, an ambulance screeches up to the entrance of the ER.
40:08 John Hopkins? A female patient is wheeled through the doors and whisked to the ICU, where a team of specialist heart doctors swarm around her. As they begin prepping the patient's unconscious body, the doctors exchange worried glances. They have already been briefed on the patient's condition. She has suffered a cardiac arrest triggered by hypothermia, and continued attempts to restart her heart have failed. Even after efforts to warm her, the patient's internal body temperature sits at an unsurvivable 27 degrees Celsius, or about 10 degrees below normal. Their last recourse is a cardiopulmonary bypass, a surgical procedure in which the blood is removed from the body, warmed up, then pumped back into the patient's veins.
40:55 John Hopkins? The chances that it will work are vanishingly slim.
40:58 Speaker 03 So she arrived at CMC with no brainwave and no heartbeat, and they're looking at the clock going, "This is over three hours. Three hours of CPR." And we're hooking her up to a bypass machine, and they were like, "Why, why are they sending this?" They questioned why they would send this poor woman over here in this condition.
41:20 John Hopkins? Despite the grim prognosis, the cardiac team gets to work.
41:28 John Hopkins? About an hour later, one of the doctors steps into the waiting room, where David and his family members sit in agonizing uncertainty. David jumps to his feet, nerves shredded. But this time, the doctor has a positive update. The bypass worked.
41:49 John Hopkins? They have warmed Kelly up, and they've got a heartbeat.
41:54 John Hopkins? It's still too soon to celebrate. The doctor warns the family that Kelly remains in a coma and will need to be kept on life support.
42:02 John Hopkins? David and the others are allowed to go in and see her.
42:05 Speaker 03 She didn't look alive. She didn't look like Kelly. But she was alive. Her heart was pumping. She could not breathe on her own, but her heart was pumping on her own.
42:18 John Hopkins? And this is how she remains, through the next day and the next. For six days, Kelly is kept in this room in the ICU hooked up to various machines and monitors.
42:32 John Hopkins? As well as raising her body temperature and restarting her heart, doctors have to pump water and pond muck from Kelly's lungs. Even if she does come out of the coma, there's a high likelihood that she will have sustained brain damage during those hours that she was medically dead.
42:50 John Hopkins? Throughout it all, David seldom leaves her side.
42:54 Speaker 03 I lived my life hearing, "She's not dead." We're happy how she's responding to this medicine, but her kidneys aren't working, and she still may not make it. And me just looking at the doctor saying, "You can finish your sentence that way all you want." She's alive, and that's all I can go with, right? I can't deal with the what-ifs.
43:27 John Hopkins? It is several days later.
43:30 John Hopkins? In a room in the ICU, Kelly is lying in her hospital bed, hooked up to a confusion of tubes and wires, when suddenly,
43:40 John Hopkins? her eyelids twitch.
43:43 Speaker 04 I remember opening my eyes and looking around and wondering, what on earth? Where am I? What happened? And I thought, my first thought was, I must have got electrocuted. I have no idea why I thought that.
44:00 John Hopkins? Slowly, Kelly returns to life. She can't speak or move her arms and legs. But as the doctors fuss around her bedside, Kelly's eyes flit around the room, alert and conscious.
44:16 John Hopkins? Later, when a medic is asking David about her medication, Kelly, who is following the conversation, tries to interject. She mumbles inaudibly through her ventilator. David repeats the names of the medications, and Kelly confirms with a movement of her head.
44:34 Speaker 04 I must have nodded. And at that time, the neurologist stepped up to David and said, I can tell you right now, I'm signing off on her. Her brain seems to be functioning fine. The fact that she can even process the question and provide a somewhat garbled answer through the ventilator. I think that we feel pretty confident that she didn't suffer any lasting neurological issues to her brain or her cognitive abilities.
45:01 John Hopkins? Soon, doctors deem Kelly well enough to breathe on her own. They remove the ventilator, enabling her to speak.
45:10 John Hopkins? At this stage, Kelly still has no recollection of falling through the ice.
45:16 John Hopkins? Not wanting to alarm her, David initially made up a story about an accident at home. But now that she's fully awake, he asks if she wants to know the truth.
45:27 Speaker 04 And so, he started to tell me how he found me in the icy hole. And the nursing team came flooding into the room, and they said, what's the matter? What's the matter? And David said, I was telling her what happened. And because my heart rate was high, the blood pressure, everything, all of my vitals sort of went off the charts with the trauma of hearing what actually happened.
45:51 John Hopkins? Kelly might not have any conscious memory of the time she spent trapped under the ice, but she still carries the trauma.
46:01 John Hopkins? After several more days of monitoring, she is discharged from hospital and allowed to continue her recovery at home.
46:08 John Hopkins? It is a long and grueling journey. She spends many hours with a physical therapist, working to regain mobility in her hands, which suffered extensive nerve damage.
46:18 Speaker 04 I'll never forget the first time, about three months after my accident, a simple thing, like crossing my fingers, and I sobbed, and I thought, "Oh my gosh." So I had adaptive utensils and things for quite a while, but I regained about ninety percent of the mobility and strengthened my hands. There's still some damage, but that's a small price to pay for being alive.
46:45 John Hopkins? Aside from some lasting nerve damage, Kelly continues to make a full recovery. It is a miraculous defiance of the odds.
46:55 John Hopkins? The medical staff estimate that she must have spent two hours in the pond and that she probably only had minutes left to live when David found her.
47:11 John Hopkins? When reflecting on her survival, Kelly maintains that dying that night was simply not part of the script.
47:18 Speaker 04 My work on this planet was not done. I had two incredible young girls to continue to raise. I had a family, my parents, my siblings. There was still a lot of fun to be had. There were still a lot of incredible experiences, and it was not my time because I still had things I wanted and had to do.
47:43 John Hopkins? Still, how differently things could have gone had David not acted so swiftly and so decisively.
47:51 John Hopkins? For Kelly, his actions that night simply reinforced something she already knew about her husband.
47:56 Speaker 04 He's somebody that really, he will have your back. He's the most trustworthy, insightful person I've ever met.
48:06 Speaker 04 And he seems to know what needs to be done, what someone's feeling, before they may even know it.
48:13 John Hopkins? There are many others who played a role in Kelly's survival. The firefighters, paramedics, nurses, and doctors. For his part, when looking back at the whole ordeal, David's main feeling is one of gratitude and appreciation for a community who rallied around when they most needed it.
48:30 Speaker 03 There's just so many beautiful people. The woman who cleaned the room every day, came in and dusted and mopped, found out that Kelly and I, whenever we're together, we have tea and toast every morning together. We make tea, we have toast with peanut butter on it. We sit, we talk, and we have tea and toast. And this beautiful, beautiful person who comes into the room every morning quietly and just cleans the room and disappears, started showing up every morning with two cups of tea and two pieces of toast with peanut butter on it for Kelly and I.
49:09 Speaker 03 She knew Kelly was in a coma. She knew Kelly's not gonna drink that tea or eat that toast. But she brought this normalcy to this awful situation.
49:19 Speaker 03 She just showed up every day. And the nurses, the wonderful people, family, medical staff, everybody. I look back at that just saying how wonderful people were.
49:34 Speaker 04 This is not a story about me. This is a story about the never-give-up spirit of a community and of a family and of people that are there to take care of each other. Nobody ever gave up on me. That's what the story is about. It's not me surviving this. I survived it because of the community and all members of my community. And that's a really a wide net that I cast. Never gave up on me. And we don't give up on each other. We shouldn't.
50:13 John Hopkins? Next time on Real Survival Stories, we meet 24-year-old park ranger Andy Peterson. On April 30, 1998, Andy wakes up late. He decides to put off his list of chores and instead heads to Colorado's Roxboro National Park for an invigorating hike. It's a decision that will change his life forever. On the forested slopes of Carpenter's Peak, Andy is stalked and then attacked by an apex predator that seems intent on ending his life. Hunted, isolated, and terrified, it appears certain that he will become the beast's next meal. That's next time on Real Survival Stories.
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51:28 Speaker 01 From the creators of Zootopia and Frozen comes Disney's Hext. Welcome to Hext and enter the world of witches, where it was foretold that an ordinary girl would become an extraordinary witch and save the world of magic. Disney's Hext arrives in theaters this Thanksgiving.
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