You didn't die. You weren't dead and you aren't now resurrected. You experienced a very serious medical event, and you almost died, but didn't. Even metaphorically, you didn't die: you're still around. Robert Pirsig can claim that Phaedrus died; you cannot, because you're still here.
I don't know why this small untruth bothers me so, but it really does.
There's clinical death, which the author of TFA very likely did experience. If VF continues for anything longer than a few seconds, asystole frequently occurs. Among other things, asystole is definitive of "clinical death."
On the other hand, there's death death. This is the one where we bury you and mourn you and so-on.
Yes, they're very much not the same thing. Yes, the author is probably equivocating between them, at least a little. But no, his describing what he experienced as "death" is not hyperbolic — at least not according to the clinical definition.
This isn't true. VFib can persist for a long time (at least 20 minutes, maybe more). Furthermore, defibrillators aren't applied to an asystole heart. Nor do practitioners typically continue working after clinical death has been declared.
vs.
"VFib can persist..."
How are these incompatible?
vs
"Ventricular fibrillation (V-fib or VF) is a condition in which there is uncoordinated contraction of the cardiac muscle of the ventricles in the heart, making them quiver rather than contract properly."[2]
By definition, if vfib is occuring, asystole isn't.
In fact, quoting from the linked Wikipedia article on VF, "If this arrhythmia continues for more than a few seconds, it will likely degenerate further into asystole ('flatline')."
Wikipedia seems to be missing an "eventually" in the sentence you quoted. The arrhythmia can persist for several minutes, but if it persists for more than a few seconds it will likely eventually generate into asystole without medical intervention.
How many more? If it's less than, say, 60 or 70% or something, then I don't think "frequently" is terribly inapt. One-in-three is pretty damned frequent, when the one, you know, dies.
This shouldn't be a long, drawn out battle. You said something that was incorrect--perhaps even dangerously so, since your misreading of Wikipedia could lead people to respond inappropriately in an emergency. Ventricular fibrillation is not a death sentence, but your claim made it out to be so, and needed to be corrected.
At this point I think the facts have been sufficiently cleared up and you're just being unnecessarily defensive and argumentative. Please stop.
People have arrhythmias all the time and they autocorrect, but if a VF doesn't autocorrect in relatively short order, it will usually, eventually, end in death (or asystole). It's not about one rhythm versus another, it's about one rhythm leading to another, with no set timeline.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information-theoretic_death
The other "deaths" are just technical shortcomings due to lack of research.
They claimed in the early 1800's people would be brought into large rooms after they had passed, and were put on tables until the corpse was literally rotting before burying them. This had to do with cultural fears of being buried alive and having people who were supposedly "dead" waking back up in their coffins.
It was a rather long, but very interesting discussion. I'll try and find the podcast.
You walk out your office because you were fired, your boss calls you at night because it was a mistake, you go back to work in the morning.
I'm not saying I disagree with your point. I don't think your analogy fits.