During that time, Jean Hilliard was not conscious in any normal sense — she was responsive to stimuli, she was showing signs of increasing physiological function, but she was not aware of what was happening to her.

The nursing staff and physicians monitoring her watched her vital signs as they slowly improved: temperature rising from below measurable range to clearly measurable range, pulse rate increasing from the barely-detectable 12 beats per minute toward something approaching normal, breathing becoming regular and visible.

The return of circulation to her frozen extremities would have been accompanied by the same process that anyone who has ever badly frostbitten fingers or toes knows: intense pain.

Thawing frozen tissue is painful in a way that the freezing itself is not, because the nerves that transmit pain signals are numb when frozen and return to function as the tissue warms.