"Mom, what's dying?"

I watched a show last night on the latest research of death. It described death as a process rather than a precise moment. Throughout the program it moved through several cases in which new methods were applied to patients in various conditions which would "blur the lines between life and death", as the narrator put it.

One case dealt with a man who lived through a heart attack, but wasn't instantly recovered. Like many survivors he awoke in a coma, and was threatened with brain damage if he survived. So, a doctor took a different approach to reviving him, and intentionally induced hypothermia. Evidently once brain cells have been deprived of oxygen for too long, an instant burst of oxygen is the last thing they need. So, the doc figured if he slowed his metabolism and lowered the levels of oxygen necessary to live he could slowly revive the patient by slowly exposing him to more and more oxygen. The guy woke up a couple of weeks later wondering how he got where he was, and was perfectly fine. Check it out link