Doesn't sound good. Any chance of posting an image or two?

There's only one degree of dead. ;-) Nick the bark, each time progressively closer to the roots as you look for green phloem tissues beneath the outer bark (epidermis). Green = viable (usually).

Al

mine always looks dead so much longer than i think it should but always comes back, usually around june! keep the faith!

My husband has a hibiscus and he is very attentive to his hibisucs. Easter we put it outdoors and on that next night it went below 35. We put 3 blankets over it for 2 nights before we brought it back in. During the day it was in the 60's. Now it's dropping it's leaves like crazy and it's been almost 2 weeks. It is still green on many of the leaves, is there anything we can do??? We've had it for 4 years and it may save my marriage if you can help me out of this one. I was the one who assured him that putting it outside was fine because we were having such warm weather up until we had 3 nights of freeze warnings. Now he's very upset and everytime he goes into his favorite room he says it makes him mad to see the leaves all over the floor and the hibiscus more and more bare. I saw where you can use coffee grounds, mist water, or seaweed spray, will any of those help me out of this mess?

I have one that left outside year round in pittsburg, ca - it goes dormant in the winter, loses nearly all its leaves and the ones that it does have, they don't grow for about 6 months. once it starts warming up, the plant comes back for me. i only water it every so often, just so the soil doesn't dry out...i do lose a branch or two here and there, but i just cut those off in the spring as it starts to wake up...the plant is about 10 years old now...