IN a survival story his doctors call extraordinary, a 22-month-old American boy whose lifeless body was pulled from an icy creek was revived after an hour and 41 minutes of CPR and has suffered virtually no lingering effects.

    Gardell Martin came home from the hospital in Pennsylvania on Sunday, and his doctors said Thursday he has made a full recovery.

    “It’s not only extraordinarily rare that we got the kid back, but what’s even more extraordinary is the rate at which he recovered and the completeness of his recovery,” said Dr. Frank Maffei, director of the pediatric intensive care unit at Geisinger’s Janet Weis Children’s Hospital in Danville. “The stars and moon aligned, and he had an angel on his shoulder.”

    Gardell and two of his brothers had gone outside to play March 11 when he fell into the stream that runs through their 5-acre (2-hectare) property near Mifflinburg and was swept away by the fast-moving current.

    His 7-year-old brother, Greg, ran into the house and screamed that he couldn’t find Gardell.

    Their mother, Rose Martin, did a quick search of the property before realizing her young son had likely fallen into the creek, which was swollen because of melting snow. She called 911 while her two teenage daughters began walking downstream in a frantic search for the toddler.

    A neighbor found Gardell nearly a quarter-mile away, caught up in a tree branch and water gushing around him.

    An ambulance crew arrived moments later, found no pulse and began CPR. Resuscitation would continue, unbroken, for 101 minutes — in the ambulance, at a community hospital, aboard a medical helicopter and, finally, in the emergency room of Janet Weis, the pediatric wing of Geisinger Medical Center, where a team of some 30 doctors and nurses sprang into action.

    (SD-Agencies)