Unbelievable Survivals: 70 Patients Defied All Odds Against Grim Medical Diagnoses
The patient was discharged to rehab a few days after that conversation, and I don’t know what happened to them after that. That case really is one of those cases that qualifies as a “miracle” to me. I don’t believe in a higher power but that was a very significant and completely unexpected recovery. Everybody involved in the care of that patient was sure that the patient was going to die, and we were all proven wrong. It’s a nice reminder that there are outliers.
Not a doctor (or a patient) but my SO and his mom were in an accident a few years back and was t boned by a drunk kid speeding home from prom. His mom broke her pelvis (and more but i cant remember what else she broke exactly) and she is now curruntly running marathons and my SO on the other hand broke the top vertebra in his neck, crawled out of the wreck, somehow didnt die from breaking his neck and on top of that he isnt even paralyzed and apparently he was doing push ups with the neck brace on
Alright the SO is here to fix my story because i did it wrong, here we go
First kid wasnt drunk, just stupid. He was going to prom and tboned us at 55 mph. My mom, in the drivers seat, had broken her pelvis, various ribs, blood filled her lungs, and has metal in her arm abd pelvis. My sister lacerated her spleen and my ex broke her pelvis. I broke a rib and the c4 bone in my neck. My mom was hospitalised for 5 months and is running and living, not as well as she used to but she doesnt quit for anything. As for me I was hospitalized for 3 days and wore a neck brace for two months. Later I would break my leg going down a half pipe on a ripstick but thats a story for another day.
When my dad was in residency, he was helping deliver babies. One came out stillborn. It was a rough time for everyone. Dad had to carry the baby away, and the entire time he carried the body away he did chest compressions. The baby started to breathe again. Dad had to bring the baby back. By all accounts, the likelihood of that working was EXTREMELY low, as they had already done everything they were supposed to for longer than they were supposed to do it.
The parents had to go through some trauma therapy after that. That’s all I know about that story.
I was a resident at the time, it was the end of my shift, and I walked past a guy walking to the front desk with a g*****n harpoon in his head. It came in from below the chin, and got out through the top of the skull.
Dude wanted to go harpoon fishing, there was an accident in the boat, and he shot himself, so he turned the boat around, sailed to shore, got into his car and drove to the nearest hospital, where he parked, and walked into the reception. He was completely conscious, and couldn’t speak for obvious reasons, but he wrote down eloquently.
I heard he was sent home the very next day, with no complications.
Had a patient who was out having drinks and fishing at night. Well a wave hit and he stumbled right onto his pole, somehow impaling it through his eye and touching the back of his skull. Amazing that he survived it given the fishing pole sized crater through his brain on the mri.
I know a gentleman who has both of his carotid arteries completely blocked off. He obviously gets enough blood flow from other vessels to keep going, and I’m sure these other routes have developed over the years, but still. I remember reading the scan results and having to go over them more than once, like,”100% blockage, ok that’s bad. Wait, on the left AND the right?? D**n.”.
A twenty something boy got shot in the head, straight on mind you. Dude came to the hospital awake and talking. I personally saw the CT scan with the bullet still in his skull. My favorite part was he claimed it was a drive by shooting; I have never seen anything more centered on someone’s forehead, dead center no joke, seems highly unlikely that it was random.
I had a friend who got ~.23BAC drunk and stole his friends car around 2 a.m. He went for a drive way out in the country and lost control while speeding, hit a tree, basically broke the car in half and rolled 5 times. He got ejected and ended up pinned under the car when it came to rest. He laid under the car for several hours until someone going to work early in the morning spotted him and phoned EMTs.
After a week in a coma, he woke up and did months of physical therapy to get back to walking and eventually made a full recovery to the point that he was squatting almost 400lbs.
Then he died of a Fentanyl o******e.
I’m an ER doc and went to see a hall patient with a complaint of “toe pain”. Sat down to really talk with the guy since it was a lull in my shift. Said his toe hurt because he dropped a knife on it. Asked him, “were you cooking, or what?” He looks up from his foot and I notice a thin red line on his neck, below his Thyroid cartilage (Adams apple). My heart sank, then started pounding. It’s *really* hard to slit your own throat without bleeding to death, but not impossible if you hit the trachea just right and it lines back up when you look down…which is what this guy had done. He had cut nearly all the way through his trachea (windpipe), and just the muscle in the back was preventing it from falling into his chest causing him to die by suffocation. Once that happened, I wouldn’t be able to help him, not with intubation (breathing tube) or cricothyroidotomy (cutting into neck) since his trachea would be retracted into his chest.
VERY CALMY I call cadiothoracic surgery and ENT and got the guy to the OR (still looking at his toe to maintain the seal) for a tracheal repair. He was discharged to the psych floor 3 days later, since this was a s*****e attempt, but did well. I knew he had already decided to live, since we had about a half hour to calmly talk to each other waiting for the OR to be ready. If he wanted to finish himself off, he would have just need to look at the ceiling!
