\u201cNothing burns like the cold. But only for a while,\u201d wrote George RR Martin in A Game of Thrones.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen it gets inside you and starts to fill you up and, after a while, you don\u2019t have the strength to fight it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Freezing to death is one of the most frightening ways the body can silently die.<\/p>\n
In those final moments, you experience a feeling of intense heat as though the heart is fighting its most ferocious battle. Unfortunately that\u2019s not the case.<\/p>\n
The body\u2019s survival temperature at its core is about 37C. Once that drops below 35C, hypothermia sets in. Violent shivering is the brain\u2019s attempt to produce heat, but this zaps the energy supply. As the core heat falls, the heart slows and blood pressure drops.<\/p>\n
Around 32C, the brain mistakes the freezing sensation for intense heat. This causes victims of hypothermia to remove their clothing \u2014 a sensation known as paradoxical undressing.<\/p>\n
Extreme cold is now crippling the brain\u2019s electrical functions. The body can no longer shiver. Heat loss accelerates uncontrollably. Temperature starts to drop rapidly. Heart rhythm is now too slow. Breathing is suppressed and oxygen deprivation sets in.<\/p>\n
As the core drops below 28C, death is moments away. Heartbeat and breathing cease. At that point, the victim is already unconscious. Our bodies are helpless in the face of extreme cold \u2014 like the type we felt last week.<\/p>\n
Given the right conditions, anyone can die of hypothermia. I\u2019m reminded of this whenever I come face to face with someone who is homeless, someone who asks me for the price of a cup of coffee.<\/p>\n
It happened on a sunny afternoon last weekend when the mercury had dipped to -5C.<\/p>\n
I asked him his name. Tom. He had one mother of a chest infection. Despite his shivering, he was polite and chatty. I could also see he was exhausted. Questions flash through my mind on these occasions. How did he end up here? Who are his family? Do they worry about him? Does he care about them?<\/p>\n
Of course, it\u2019s none of my business.<\/p>\n
But then I pause for a moment and imagine we had swapped places, and I was the one asking the stranger for the price of a coffee.<\/p>\n
\n Yes, it is my business. If it\u2019s not, then it should be\n <\/p>\n
Two weeks earlier, I was waiting for a bus close to Dublin city centre.<\/p>\n
In the corner of a doorway behind me lay a body in a filthy wet sleeping bag. I call it a body because it wasn\u2019t moving. Nobody else in the queue seemed bothered.<\/p>\n
I knelt down and asked if whoever was inside was ok. A pale face with blotchy red eyes appeared. A young man with fair hair. He focused on me for a moment, then asked me to go away. He pulled the duvet back over his head.<\/p>\n
For whatever reason \u2014 call it helplessness \u2014 I took a photo of the sleeping bag and posted it on Facebook later that evening. Perhaps my reason was because this was someone\u2019s son.<\/p>\n
Within hours, I had been contacted online by three different families, each asking me if I had a name or a description of the young man.<\/p>\n
Their sons (or siblings) were missing, possibly out on the streets, hopefully alive.<\/p>\n
‘Lost boy’<\/p>\n
Each of them explained how their own lives had been shattered \u2014 taken apart by their \u201clost boy out there somewhere on his own\u201d, as one mother described it.<\/p>\n
Why couldn\u2019t I have just asked him his name? That question has haunted me ever since. I stood at the bus stop the next morning. The sleeping bag was gone.<\/p>\n