CI's 100th Patient

CI’s 100th patient was brought to the facility by his son.

I accompanied CI President Ben Best in preparing the cooling equipment, that is to say allowing liquid nitrogen access to the enclosed space where liquid nitrogen is sprayed over the patient (who is protected by a thermally insulated sleeping bag). During the preparation stage, liquid nitrogen is sprayed through the space the patient will soon be occupying. The temperature is carefully continuously monitored throughout this process, and also throughout the later cool-down of the patient.

The son brought the patient in; the patient had been cooled already to below -83˚C, and was now lying in a body bag in a Ziegler container, the space between the two being filled with many blocks of dry ice. The son had stopped on the way up to pick up more, to guard against the sublimation of dry ice compromising his father’s safety. The Ziegler container itself was insulated by thick foam blocks that had been fastened around it.

Upon arrival, we removed the outer casing of foam and the lid of the Ziegler container, and took out as much of the dry ice as possible without moving the patient. We then transferred the container to a fork lift truck, and from the fork lift truck to the ground.

A back-board with an insulated sleeping bag on it was produced, and we set about the task of transferring the patient from the container into the sleeping bag. To do this, we first took out as much of the remaining dry ice as possible (although we had removed all the blocks already, there were very many small pieces between the patient’s body and the bottom edges of the Ziegler container), and then adjusted his position along the horizontal plane, so as to ensure he was in no manner attached to the base of the container, before lifting him out, which was accomplished by inclining the container somewhat and transferring him manually to the sleeping bag. We then zipped the sleeping bag up, and placed some dry ice around the patient’s head while Andy (CI Facility Manager Andy Zawacki) ran a cord in a criss-cross fashion around the sleeping bag and back-board, once they had been placed on a gurney.

We then wheeled the patient around to the cooling apparatus, from which position he was lifted by winch, and then lowered into place, for the lengthy process that would be his cool-down from dry ice temperatures, to liquid nitrogen temperatures, before being placed in an LN2 cryostat.