Could you survive five days stuck in the Arizona desert, with nothing except your car? Eighty-four-year-old Henry “Hank” Morello did. He had to get creative during his 2011 ordeal. Some of his uses of bits of his car were ingenious, but he made other decisions doctors wouldn’t recommend in any situation.

Morello drove from his house to a restaurant for dinner one night, but never made it back home. He admitted, “I took a wrong turn, and that was the mistake.” The senior suffered from dementia (as well as diabetes), and authorities are still unclear where he made a wrong turn. But he soon found himself navigating a tiny rural road. He tried to turn his silver crossover around and got it hopelessly stuck in a ditch.

First and foremost, someone younger and more agile than Morello may have been able to get their car unstuck. Even if the task took days (or nights) of digging to get all the wheels back onto firm ground. In extreme situations, other trapped drivers have used hub caps or other bits of the car as improvised shovels.

Unfortunately, Morello had no way of getting free. So his only hope was being rescued. He said he waited all day for someone to drive by, then spent nights honking the horn and hoping someone would hear. He also removed one wheel from his car and placed it onto the roof. He hoped a passing plane would see the sun reflecting off the chrome. I have to say this is an ingenious tactic, even if it has a slim chance of working.

Morello also repurposed the car’s floor mats. He pulled them up and wrapped himself up during the freezing desert nights. This was a smart choice, because the floor mats were the thickest fabric available to him, and provided some insulation. Morello could also have pulled up the carpet beneath the mats or pulled down the vehicle’s headliner. The trunk area also contains mats and carpet which he could have repurposed into more bedding. Finally, many vehicles contain additional insulation on the underside of the hood.

Another effective way to stay warm at night would be to run the car’s HVAC system. The amount of time Morello could run his engine at idle would depend completely on his engine size and the capacity of his gas tank. But let’s say his car burned through half a gallon of fuel every hour and he had a full, 14 gallon tank. That would have given him 28 hours of total idle time. Running his car at intervals throughout the day to keep cool and throughout the night to keep warm, he might have had enough gasoline to last a week or more. This would have kept the battery charged and he could have kept his phone charged. Perhaps changing weather might have even increased cell service. Regulating his body temperature would have also slowed dehydration.

Unfortunately, Morello either did not think to do this or was unable to do this. Perhaps he ran out of gasoline or his car was damaged. He said, “My phone went dead, my battery went dead, and I went dead.” (Huffington Post).

Morello said he read his car manual from cover to cover while stranded. He knew most of the liquids in his car would kill him instantly: gasoline and the antifreeze in the radiator are both deadly. Used motor oil contains toxic metals from the engine and could also be a deadly laxative. But Morello began wondering about his windshield washer fluid. He held out as long as he could, but as freezing nights blended into boiling days he grew desperate. Morello told NBC news, “I got scared. I was cold and tired. I prayed all night.” He admitted, “I thought I was going to die. I truly did.”

The man tried not to cry, later saying, “If you start crying, it will make you weak.” But he did lose his willpower and decided to drink some windshield washer fluid. Without a straw, he had no way to get the liquid out of the reservoir under his hood, so he picked up a rock and broke the reservoir open.

On the fifth morning, Morello’s prayers changed. He said he decided that “this was it,” and he wouldn’t make it another day. Then a family scouting campsites stumbled upon him. One of the hikers told NBC, “We were just out there hiking and couldn’t believe what we saw. This man was stranded in the middle of nowhere.”

Authorities took Morello directly to the hospital. He reported, “I kept myself alive by drinking windshield wiper fluid.” But doctors disagreed. Windshield washer fluid is not just soapy water. It is engineered to not freeze in the winter, so it is actually made of a poisonous alcohol called methanol and includes multiple other toxic chemicals. Drinking windshield washer fluid not only poisons you, but it also further dehydrates you. The windshield washer fluid likely stopped Morello’s kidneys, and he had to speak to the news while in the hospital receiving dialysis.

Luckily, the dialysis machine was able to filter his blood and keep him alive. Dr. Randall Porter said, “He was severely dehydrated and his kidneys were failing, but he’s going to be okay.” You can see an interview with Morello in the video embedded below: