Unbelievable Survivals: 70 Patients Defied All Odds Against Grim Medical Diagnoses
Then he’s put on ECMO without any lungs in his body and his infection clears.
About 10 days later a lung donor becomes available and he gets transplanted.
Wakes up about three days later, very sick, but very much alive. Lived without lungs for 10 days.
I helped take care of an old dude who had one leg amputated, and had broken his other leg so he was seeing us because of that. He was on oxygen and not being very compliant with using his wheelchair. We were talking with him and he was getting really argumentative.
“How am I supposed to chop wood in a wheelchair?” Was what he kept demanding. When asked how he was chopping wood with one leg in the first place he responded that he’d crawl into the woods and hop up to chop the wood. This was even more concerning.
When the doctor asked how he was carrying his axe, oxygen, and the wood he chopped he looked him straight in the eye and said: “I carry ‘em on my back.”
Not sure if he was serious, but he was pretty dang grizzled and looked like he may have been crawling through the woods.
Med Student here. My most memorable patient was a particularly pleasant middle-aged man who was flown back to my hospital in the Midwest after suffering a 6 story fall from a hotel balcony in the Caribbean.
The story goes this poor fella just arrived at his hotel planning to spend a week in paradise. Immediately upon arriving to his hotel, he stepped out on his balcony to watch the sunset and leaned on the railing only to have it collapse underneath him. He fell 6 stories straight down and suffered bilateral open tibial pilon fractures (which are particularly high energy and difficult to heal). The poor guy apparently fell into a locked backyard and his wife and kids had to listen to him screaming in pain and bleeding for over 2 hours before they could get the fire department to break down the gate. He was taken to the hospital on the island he was staying where he was stabilized and they recommended he have both legs amputated. He begged to be shipped back to the United States, and apparently, the government got involved and flew him to Miami where he was [externally fixated](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_fixation#/media/File:Ilizarov_Apparatus_External_Fixator.JPG) and transfused several times. I guess he had some internal trauma as well. About a week later, he was shipped up to the midwest to my hospital. Literally blew my mind the s**t this poor guy went through just because he wanted to enjoy a vacation.
Sadly, I think that he ended up losing one of his legs anyways because his wounds wouldn’t heal and he ended up with osteomyelitis (bone infection).
Vet here. Dog walked in, still eating and drinking that morning but acting lethargic. Had a ruptured splenic tumor with an abdomen full of blood and a red blood cell count of 4.1 (normal 35-55). No idea how he was still getting around.
Not a doctor, but I do have a story. Friend of a friend. She was hiking and got a scratch on her leg. Later that night she wasn’t feeling well, so she went to the hospital. They said it was flu and sent her home. She went back the next day and was diagnosed with sepsis. She wound up in a medically induced coma and had to lose all four of her limbs and have a lot of internal issues as well. She’s doing great now with prosthetics and an amazing attitude.
Not a doctor, but my former step uncle used to work on towers (like cell phone towers), his harness broke and he fell, landed straight on his back. Doctors said he was lucky to make it to the hospital alive and wouldn’t live.
Six months later he’s walking and talking again, he just has short term memory issues and his speech is slowed down. But he can still function and be a dad.
I had a dog brought in that had eaten a bunch of anticoagulant rat poison about a week prior. They didn’t think anything of it at the time because the dog was “fine” immediately after. If a dog gets into anticoagulant poison, and you catch it right away, you can decontaminate them, and give vitamin K, and they’ll usually be fine. By the time they decided their dog should see the vet, it was dripping blood from every orifice, in shock, and had a packed cell count of 6%. For some reason, they’d let me hospitalize, and start vitamin K, but they would not let me transfuse that dog. It was bleeding from its freaking tear ducts, too weak to lift its head, and I was so convinced it was going to bleed out in front of me if I couldn’t buy it some time with some donor blood. That stubborn little pup pulled through, and was going strong when I saw her a year later for her regular checkup.
Not my story but my sister’s. She had an infamous d**g a****t in her 50s admitted for endocarditis (heart infection) who had multiple previous admissions in the same hospital. During her stay the patient went through withdrawal and had not one nor 2 but 3 cases of torsades de points that needed defibrillation. Where most people dont survive not even one of these arrhythmias this patient quickly recovered and was asking not a week later to be diacharged cause she was ready to party again.
My story would have to be a drunk 20 something that came after being stabbed on the forehead. We worked him up in casualty and found a large amount of air that had been sucked in his skull from the open wound. Patient clearly needed neurosurgical intervention but got impatiet and decided to abscond. We searched for patient and tried contacting him but couldnt find him. Patient returned a week later being brought in by his mother because he kept complaining of headaches.
A year ago, I was involved with treating a 65 year old lady, walking across the street to get lunch one day, she got hit by a semi truck doing 45. Broke all the bones on the left side of her body, some of them in multiple places. She also had a Morell-Lavalee (skin separates off the underlying tissue) that involved about 70 percent of her left leg, from hip to ankle. Had a pelvic fracture that was open into her r****m with a large perineal wound. Took multiple surgeries over several weeks, but at her most recent follow up (accident happened a year ago), she was walking and basically back to normal.
When I was at work someone pointed out this lady walking down the hall. They told me she was shot seven times in one go and survived.
Edit. Some context. I was told the lady was in a stolen car and they opened fire on the police. The police returned fire.
