Doctors at Lehigh Valley Health Network describe the Penn State student from McAdoo, Schuylkill County, as a "medical miracle," perhaps the only person in history to survive hypothermia so extreme that he was literally frozen solid after falling unconscious in a snow bank while walking home in subzero temperatures. Somehow they got that miracle -- and Justin, who was on the verge of being declared dead, not only survived but is thriving and returned to the hospital this week to thank those who saved his life. When Don Smith called paramedics after finding his son unconscious in the snow, they did not give up on the student. When Smith was brought into the emergency room, Coleman couldn't even get an accurate body temperature reading because Smith was too cold. "I looked over and there was Justin laying there and he was laying face up there like this," Don Smith told WNEP-TV. But Coleman, an emergency department physician at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, refused to give up and had paramedics transfer Justin to Lehigh Valley Hospital Cedar Crest, near Allentown. The college student was in the snow for hours as temperatures plunged to 4 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. ECMO is used in infants who are sick due to breathing or heart problems. Dr. Gerald Coleman, an emergency room doctor at LVHN's Hazleton campus, urged paramedics to transport Smith by helicopter to LVH-Cedar Crest, where he was revived with a procedure called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation in which blood is removed, oxygenated and warmed, then returned to the body. When he finally woke up, The Morning Call reports doctors were amazed that he did not seem to have suffered any brain damage.
– When Don Smith found his son, Justin, lying in a McAdoo, Pa., snowbank on Feb. 21, 2015, after Justin had tried to walk home from a bar the night before, it was a terrible sight. "I remember holding him," the elder Smith said in tears Monday, per the Morning Call. "He was like a block of concrete." Don says his son wasn't breathing, lacked a pulse, and had limbs turned black from the cold. Doctors surmise Justin had slipped, hit his head, and blacked out, per CBS News, and he spent about 12 hours in the snow on a night that dipped to minus 4 degrees. Although ABC News says paramedics tried to revive Justin with CPR, the Morning Call notes a coroner was called and a sheet drawn over the Penn State student's head. But an ER doctor at Lehigh Valley Health Network didn't give up: He persuaded doctors to try a life-saving procedure—and thanks to that procedure, Justin, 26, was on hand with his family Monday to thank those doctors for saving his life. That procedure is called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, and it involves taking blood out of a person's body, warming it and pumping it with oxygen, then putting it back in. Dr. James Wu, the surgeon who did the procedure, says the freezing temps actually helped Justin. "Very low temperatures … can preserve the brain and other organ functions," he said at the news conference, per ABC. It took Justin 15 days to come out of his coma, per CBS, and he lost his toes and pinkies to frostbite, but he suffered no apparent brain damage. Dr. Gerald Coleman, the doctor who made the initial call to try the procedure, is thankful he did. "This case has taught me that sometimes you have to go with your gut, even when all logic demands otherwise," he said, per the Morning Call. As for Justin, he's trying to finish up his psych degree via online courses and his friends have a new nickname for him: Iceman. (A similar miracle out of Norway, where a woman's body temp dropped to 56.7 degrees.)