“How Are They Still Alive?”: Doctors Share 50 Stories Of Patients That Survived Against All Odds

Not a doctor, but the patient.

Less than a year old, started seizing. This led to a severe case of the Not Breathing, quickly followed by everyone s******g themselves trying to get me to breathe. Two frantic rides to the hospitals later (first one couldn't take me because they didn't have machines for someone so small), and now they've got machines keeping me alive. Several surgeries solely reacting to more s**t going wrong, a month (half of which spent in a coma), and I woke up on my own. Didn't even need the machines anymore. Only lasting effect is a small scar from a machine they left on for too long, and asthma for about five years.

They never figured out what the hell happened. So, there's a chance that it could happen again some day.

Here's hoping for the same luck that got me through it the first time.

For me it was a guy who was cleaning his loaded shotgun and it blew half his face off, jaw and all. He was actually pretty good from the mid nose up. The thing that surprised me is how good of shape he was in afterwards. He didnt even go to the ICU we just admitted him to the med/surg floor. He was up communicating via whiteboard within a few hours and was adamant that he did not try to k**l himself. Got a psych consult anyway but they agreed. Another inch dorsal with the barrel of that gun and he would have been done for.

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).

Not a doctor, but firefighter. We had a 30’s year old male put a shotgun in his mouth pointing up to his nose pull the trigger and survive. We show up work him, he’s breathing, but missing most of his face and we transport him. He survives and we are all amazed. Three months later he does it again, but a .22 to the temple it bounced around and exited through his eye. He survives again. With some mental deficits and a glass eye, but still one of the craziest I’ve seen.

Oooh this is a good one for me. My roommate is a heavy drinker. He had to have some tests done a few months ago and it shows his liver function and how well it’s doing. This kid drinks himself to oblivion weekly, eats like s**t, doesn’t exercise, weighs like 350 lbs, and smokes. I’m thinking his liver, and most of his other organs, looks like a mummy’s shriveled up s*****m.

His liver function test comes back perfectly clean. He’s perfectly healthy on paper, other than being overweight. He showed me cause I didn’t believe him, blew my g*****n mind.

Any of the patients with flesh eating bacterias and massive debridements, those are always a good source of what the f**kery.

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.

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.

My wife treated a foreign student at the university she worked at who took some d**g, I don’t recall which, thought he could fly, and jumped out a third floor window, landing directly on his face. He went into a coma and when they x-rayed him (or some other scan), they found he’d aspirated all of his teeth. It took days to figure out who he was and over a week to contact his family.

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.