A British woman whose heart stopped beating for more than six hours says her survival is a "miracle".
Audrey Mash was hiking in the Pyrenees mountains in Spain with her husband when the weather took a turn for the worst.
After sheltering from the increasingly dangerous conditions the two decided to keep walking, despite white-out conditions, reports the Telegraph.
Then, Mash started acting strangely, before falling unconscious.
"Her eyes rolled and she sighed what seemed to be her last breath," her husband, Rohan Schoeman, told The Telegraph. "I looked for her pulse and to see if she was breathing, but there were no signs of life. I thought she was dead."
The pair were eventually rescued by a helicopter three hours later after friends reported them missing.
By the time Mash arrived at the hospital, her body temperature had dropped to 20C.
Doctors then used a state-of-the-art ECMO machine to warm and oxygenate her blood, before managing to restart her heart with a defibrillator almost seven hours after she had stopped breathing, reports The Telegraph.
Doctors credited her survival to the fact that she had hypothermia.
"Because her brain was cold, there is no damage," said Jordi Riera, the director of the ECMO team at Vall D'Hebron hospital, where Mash was treated.
Mash told the paper she doesn't remember a single thing but is glad to be alive.
"I am ok. I can go back to work, go back to my life. I am not a religious person, but it's like a miracle," she said.
She also expressed her gratitude to all those involved in the rescue effort.
"The amazing thing is the work the doctors and also the firefighters and the medical team that brought me to the hospital did. I am lucky they all realised there was something they could do and not give up on me."
