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Cryonics: Kim's plan for life after death

It has been three years since Kim Souzzi lost her battle with brain cancer but incredibly, her grieving father and boyfriend carry with them the hope that she could return to them one day.

Kim's 23-year-old brain remains intact in a cryopreservation facility in Arizona.

A radical movement that asserts death is merely a condition that will one day be curable caught the science student's attention after she was given little more than a year to live.

In 2011 Kim, a 21 year-old college student, was diagnosed with an incurable and aggressive brain cancer.

It shocked and devastated devoted boyfriend Josh Schisler and her father Rick.

Kim's boyfriend Josh has kept a 'time capsule' of her belongings
Kim's boyfriend Josh has kept a 'time capsule' of her belongings

Kim underwent surgery to successfully remove the tumor but a new one appeared, and this time it was inoperable.

Josh was by her side as she underwent grueling chemotherapy and radiation therapy to buy time then, eventually, at her deathbed.

"There were really no treatment options left for her so at that point the only tangible thing that we could really think to do was cryonics," Josh said.

"I just want her to be happy and to be able to have a shot to enjoy life again"

Faced with her limited time, Kim broke the news to her family — she wanted her head frozen and stored with a hope to one day have her brain mapped and digitally revived.

"I think there is a one or two percent chance of this working," she said before she passed away.

"This is really the last thing I could do to try to live longer um, it’s not that I’m scared of dying but I, I don’t want to die knowing that I could have done something more,"

The procedure at cryopreservation company Alcor costs $270,000 for a body and $110,000 to preserve a brain.

To afford the procedure many patients use life insurance, but 23-year-old terminally ill Kim Souzzi had no such fund.

The storage device used for a neuropatient
The storage device used for a neuropatient

She crowd sourced fundraising through social networking site Reddit and was overwhelmed with the result. She was able to finalise her Alcor membership on October 12, 2012.

Kim used social media site Reddit to raise the money
Kim used social media site Reddit to raise the money

Kim's condition deteriorated over the next few months and she was admitted to hospice care on January 5, 2013 here she voluntarily gave up eating and drinking.

She lost 10 kg in 10 days, varying from awake and active to comatose and unresponsive. On January 17 Kim was pronounced dead and the clock started on the brief window available to preserve her brain.

Kim is what's called a neuropatient but Alcor also offers full-body cryopreservation and to date has 145 'patients' stored in its walls.

"We do refer to them as patients as we hope one day they will be revived," Alcor president Max More told Sunday Night on a tour of the facility.

"Right now we are disposing of people who aren’t really dead."

This line of thinking comes from the changes we have already made to the definition of 'deceased' — 50 years ago doctors didn’t know how to restart a heart but today it's a common and simple procedure.

Kim on her deathbed with boyfriend Josh
Kim on her deathbed with boyfriend Josh

"When you reach the limits of today's capabilities let us take over, lets stabilize the patient, lets stop them getting worse and then we can wait for decades, as long as it takes, until we can develop the technology that can in face rescue the person." More said.

Once a patient is pronounced dead they are taken to the Alcor headquarters in Arizona and the blood is removed and replaced with a cryoprotectant solution,

"The goal is to remove as much bodily fluid as possible and replace it with the cryoprotectant solution, our medical-grade antifreeze."

For neuropatients like Kim, the head is removed and placed in a special box and after treatment all patients are stored at minus-196 degrees Celsius.

"It is quite difficult to remove the brain from the skull without damaging it so why not just keep it there, it provides extra protection," More said.

"We end up storing the patients at minus 196 degrees Celsius. At that point there is no metabolic activity whatsoever so whether they're in there for a day or a hundred years really doesn't make any difference."

Patients leave instructions on how they want to be revived.

Cloning or regenerating a 25 year old human is a long way off but there is also the possibility of what's called trans-humanism, which is downloading your consciousness for use in a computer or robot.

But to regenerate a human brain in any way we first need to be able to map it, a feat that with today's technology would take thousands of years.

Kims family have begun putting together a time-capsule of memories, recordings and mementos, should she return after they have passed away.

"If this does come to be a reality she is going to be all by herself in the future and these voices will be her family," her father said.

"I hope that leaving the messages, that she will know that we didn't forget her."