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Toddler survives after 101 minutes of CPR

In a survival story his doctors called extraordinary, a 22-month-old Pennsylvania boy who was pulled, seemingly lifeless, from an icy creek was revived after an hour and 41 minutes of CPR and has virtually no lingering effects.

In a survival story his doctors called extraordinary, a 22-month-old Pennsylvania boy who was pulled, seemingly lifeless, from an icy creek was revived after an hour and 41 minutes of CPR and has virtually no lingering effects.

Gardell Martin came home from the hospital 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 Frank Maffei, director of the pediatric intensive care unit at Geisinger's Janet Weis Children's Hospital in Danville.

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

A neighbor found Gardell nearly a quarter-mile away, caught up in a tree branch with 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 about 30 doctors and nurses sprang into action.