Doctors are calling it a miracle recovery.
On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a 14-year-old boy, John Smith, fell through ice on a lake in Missouri as he walked across with two friends. He was trapped under water for fifteen minutes.
By the time doctors were performing CPR, he had been clinically dead for 45 minutes. When they brought in his mother, Joyce, to tell her the bad news, she began to pray.
"I don't remember what all I said, but I remember Holy God, please send your Holy Spirit to save my son. I want my son, please save him. And they hadn't been getting a pulse at that time, so all of a sudden I heard them saying, we got a pulse, we got a pulse," she said.
"Everybody says the cold helped him. He was dead for 45 minutes," said Dr. Kent Sutterer, St. Joseph Hospital West.
Doctors knew John's body would physically survive the ordeal, but they didn't know how much brain function he would have. Within 48 hours, John was opening his eyes and talking about basketball.
"To watch your son sit up and amaze the doctors, the neurologist come in and say, 'We don't know what to do next because we've never seen this before,'" said Joyce.
"I'm surprised I'm alive but it's a real miracle that I'm alive, and I thank God I'm alive and there's a reason I'm alive. So I'm just going to kind of follow what God has in store for me throughout my life," said John.
Just three weeks later John is able to walk and talk. He needs some therapy to restore full use of his hands.
John could be out of the hospital by the end of the week.
