Surviving six hours at -22 degrees Fahrenheit with the peripheral freezing she experienced and recovering without major organ damage or loss of digits is remarkable by any measure.

The remarkable thing does not need to be exaggerated.

Similarly, some accounts of her recovery have described it as more dramatic and more instantaneous than it appears to have been.

Recovery from severe hypothermia, even when successful, is a slow process measured in hours.

Jean Hilliard’s transition from the frozen state in which she arrived at the hospital to the point where she was talking and cognitively present took hours of gradual, careful warming.

The medical principle “No one is dead until they are warm and dead” — which her case is often used to illustrate — is real and important.