Unbelievable Survivals: 70 Patients Defied All Odds Against Grim Medical Diagnoses
The answer: It was DNA from the products of **molar pregnancy**, which I highly encourage no one to read more about, as it’s pretty f*****g creepy.
Not a doctor. But March 2018 my father, who is a type 2 diabetic, ended up in the ER because of high blood sugar. Don’t remember the exact number, but his blood sugar was over 1000. Handfuls of doctors and nurses told me that was easily the highest blood sugar reading they’d ever witnessed. They couldn’t believe he was alive or at least not in a diabetic coma. His blood was the consistency of syrup.
Not a doctor, but I once was visiting a friend in hospital and saw ambulance bring a dude with cut off arm and lumberjack axe stuck in head. Think he was assaulted by some drunk lumby dude in local bar. Apparently he survived.
Geneticist here. A healthcare company in our field sent us a sample for genetic testing of a certain gene, the paperwork said the patient was ~35 male. We found a mutation in the gene of interest which was squarely in the category of “this person shouldn’t be alive, this is a prenatally lethal disorder.”
Also we noticed the sample had no Y chromosome marker. *Facepalm*. The provider had put the patient label on the wrong sample before mailing it to us. This s**t happens way too much at some companies.
Not a doctor but every time I see My 600lb Life I wonder how the hell those people are surviving.
Followed this patient with my attending. 19/20 year old african american with sickle cell anemia. Stroked out and was in a coma. Intubated and put on a ventillator because they couldn’t breathe on their own. MRI was bad, looked like somebody emptied out a shotgun shell and scattered the pellets around the brain. Still haven’t seen another MRI like that one. With the brain, there is a essentially a 3 day rule. If you have little change 3 days after a neurological injury, the chances of meaningful recovery are slim. Week one goes by, daily spontaneous breathing trials (test to see if they can breathe on their own) failed, so the patient is kept tubed/vented. Second week goes by and we hit Thursday with no change in status. My attending and I are reviewing after we see the patient, and we make the decision that the next morning we are going to encourage the family to withdraw care. Friday morning, we go in. Spontaneous breathing trial has failed but the patient’s eyes are open and following us around the room. Their eyes hadn’t been open over those prior two weeks. My attending and I were absolutely shocked. We were convinced this kid was essentially brain dead but now we’ve been proven wrong. Still, we didn’t hold out much hope for more improvement. I mean, two weeks and they can open their eyes and follow people around the room? You can say we’re pessimistic about chance of recovery but experience does speak for a lot in these situations. It’s Saturday or Sunday, we can safely remove the breathing tube. Another week goes by, the patient is able to move their head around and starts to move the arms/legs. Another week goes by, they are able to sit at the edge of the bed.
During this time of rapid improvement, they still lacked fine motor skill and could not produce coherent speech. The patient would get frustrated, tearful, and despondent. In discussion with the family, I make the comment to my attending in private that the patient appears depressed. My attending brings up the likelihood of depression and mom just snubs that. “X has nothing to be depressed about! X is alive!” We argue our case for depression with her, “A month ago, X could walk, talk, and eat without assistance. X cannot do any of those things now. X’s life won’t ever be the same. X has every reason to be depressed.” She was still in denial about the prospect of her child being depressed in that situation.
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