The man who died the most number of times

The Norwich Evening News reported on 23rd December 2006 that Derek Jones (centre in the pic below), 55, died 31 times on 21 November 2006 and is still alive as of the time of the newsreport.

The electrician from Norwich, United Kingdom was brought back from the dead an unbelieveable 31 times in less than an hour. He is only alive because the paramedics refused to let him die.

He was on his way to work when he began to feel pain down the front of his chest and felt very hot. He still got to his place of work, but feeling terrible, asked a colleague to send for an ambulance.

The paramedics arrived quickly (within 6 minutes, God knows how long it would take here) . They immediately took an ECG (electrocardiogram) reading to confirm that Derek had suffered a heart attack. It was affirmative.

The nearest hospital was 27 miles away. 5 miles into the journey, his heartbeat slowed to a dangerous level. Defibrillation necessitated, it was done for the first time.

What is amazing is that for the rest of the way to hospital, Derek had a heart attack about once every minute and required an unprecedented 30 further defibrillations.

It is unusual for a patient to remember the electric shocks, but Derek does. However, he thought he was in the middle of a nightmare and so tried to fight the paramedics off.

One of the paramedics mentioned that normallt if you gave someone more than 3 electric shocks it’s unlikely that they’re going to live. Derek had 10 times that amount! Plus, according to ambulance figures, fewer than one in four patients are successfully revived after suffering a heart attack.

Once at the hospital, everything was not A-OK. Derek’s heart failed again, and revived a further five times!

Derek spent a relatively short week at the hospital before cleared to go home, carrying with him a collection of drugs to regulate his heart.

Tags: heart attack, heart attacks, defibrillation, defibrillator, defibrillators, shocks, electric shocks, medical equipment, heart