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In the Loop: Amazing recovery from a ‘shallow water blackout,’ worst-case scenario
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Clay Meers was in Florida for flight training when he passed out underwater. After exhausting nearly every treatment available, his Mayo care team tried therapeutic hypothermia — and saved Clay's life.
Clay Meers was winning. In Florida for six weeks of flight training, he'd joined fellow flight school students at a pool for some good old-fashioned fun in the sun. When they began challenging each other to see who could swim underwater the farthest without taking a breath, Clay seemed to have them all beat.
Then, as Denver, Colorado's 9News.com reports, the unthinkable happened.
In medical terms, what happened to Clay is called "shallow water blackout." Clay remembers none of it, including the physical and emotional energy Beth Grieninger, M.D., put into bringing him back to life after his friends pulled him from the pool, called 911, and an ambulance rushed him to the Emergency Department at Mayo Clinic's Florida campus.
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This story originally appeared on the In the Loop blog.
