43 Doctors Share The Wildest Cases That Made Them Say “How Are You Still Alive?”

I was the patient. I drove myself to the hospital after having bacterial meningitis for 5 days. Had flu like symptoms Tuesday and got a bad headache Saturday evening. Drove myself to the hospital very early Monday morning. The doctors were absolutely amazed I was alive let alone checked myself into the ER.

spank_my_taco:

That is amazing. I did the same thing except with viral meningitis. Obviously my chances of survival were way higher than yours, but the ER docs were still amazed that I had the wherewithal to drive myself in. They weren't clear on the viral diagnosis until the CSF cultures failed to grow anything. Worst flipping pain I've ever been in.

I was on a rotation in a rural place where I met a guy who had been out in the woods somewhere when he felt suddenly faint, sweaty with severe pain in his belly. He collapsed but somehow managed to crawl out toward the main road where he got the attention of a passing car that brought him to the hospital. He had an abdominal aortic aneurysm that had ruptured with all his blood pumping out into his belly and somehow survived till he got to a hospital and had emergency surgery. When I met him he had recovered and was nearly being discharged home. He showed me his scar telling me how he didn't know how he made it either except that he knew he wasn't going to if he didn't keep crawling. They were really made tough out there.

(Not a doctor, but I'm a nurse and my story is good too.)

I had a college student come into the unit on the night of their 19th birthday. They wanted to party, but had a test the next morning. One of their "friends" told them that if they took one adderall for every drink that they had, they'd be sober by the morning. They had 15 shots and 15 20mg adderall tablets.

If you were wondering, no, that does not make you sober. It does, however, make you rip off all your clothes in a hallway, spit at the nurse that is trying to help you, s**t all over everything, and then literally f*****g d*e. Luckily for them, they weren't d**d for good. We got them back and they spent most of their sophomore year of college in a hospital, with a hole in their neck, learning how to walk again.

I live in an underdeveloped country, and a man had fallen of a tree trying to collect fruits, 9 years ago...

He had discal hernia for 9 years and didn't even care to go see a doctor.

Beecakeband:

What's... What's a discal hernia?

dosetoyevsky:

You know how there's those discs of cartilage between your spine bones to keep them from rubbing each other? One of those slipped out of place and pinched a nerve between it and the bone.

Paramedic here, so many but two come to mind.

Responded to a well being check (basically check on someone no one has heard from in a while). Get there and police advise the woman is d**d and appeared to be so for a while (middle of summer). Can smell her before getting close to house, put on protective gear and airpacks to move the body. She is rotting, maggots and flies, can see organs. We go to carefully move her into body bag and she opens her eyes and gasps. She was alive and rotting alive, we got her to the hospital alive and she lived for several days more.


Second was a s*****e, s**tgun to the face. He held it under chin but it slipped and he blew off front of face except one eye. He was awake and tried to talk but obviously couldn't. We ended up sedating and entubating but he lived and walked out of hospital after tons of reconstructive surgery.

Not a health professional but once had to take a girl I knew to the ED - she had been prescribed psych medication that had caused her to have a psychotic break. She was hearing voices that were telling her they would k**l her boyfriend and family and the only way she could prevent this happening was by carving great hunks of flesh off herself. Her boyfriend couldn't get near her and eventually ended up tackling her with a blanket, hog tying her and putting her in the back of my car so I could drive them to the ED. I was six years younger than them, this was almost 18 years ago - I think he didn't call the emergency services because he was worried they wouldn't make it in time. She was absolutely covered in blood and shrieking in tongues and tried to attack the nursing staff when we got there. I was only 17 and utterly terrified. Thankfully, she got the help she needed and last I heard was living a productive healthy life.

Not a doctor....but my best friends BIL during the superbowl this year was acting totally normal until about halfway through and started talking gibberish, walking into walls, taking all his clothes off, and generally being NOT himself.

It took about 5 EMT's to even get him in the ambulance because he was fighting them all off, and he continued to do so until they took him to the local hospital where he was put into a medically induced coma and airlifted to 'The S**t Is Real Hospital'. Turns out he had bacterial meningitis and he had been acting like that because his brain was had gotten so swollen.

Everyone was convinced he was going to d*e because of how severe it had gotten before he presented any symptoms. It took him weeks to recover, relearn how to talk, understand where he was, etc...but he did. He completely 100% recovered. Doctors think it was caused by a dog bite. Which I've never heard of...his wife and kids also tested negative thankfully.

Haemoglobin of 35 (3.5)! In a 35 year old guy with a chronic rectal bleed he refused to have looked into for months because he didn't want anyone lookin' at his b*m hole. Finally brought to the ER by ambulance when he fainted (aka "started dying") in a grocery store.

Had a gentleman in his late 50s come in with multiple myeloma. Short history of progressively worsening breathlessness, turned out he had a pulmonary embolism (blood clot in his lungs). He was a good candidate for surgery, so he had the blood clot removed but unfortunately the clot had caused such bad issues with his heart (acute right heart failure) that he couldn't be weaned off the bypass machine. Instead, he went to ICU on ECMO (like a circuit for your heart and lungs outside the body to give your heart/lungs time to 'rest'). His chest was still open (cannulated centrally) but covered up with sterile stuff.

After 3 days, he was booked to be weaned off the ECMO or at least have the tubes put in peripherally so his chest could be closed. Morning of the procedure while he's waiting to be moved, somehow the tubing of the ECMO machine broke (oxygenator tube) and blood spilled all over the floor and he went into cardiac arrest. The Cardiothoracics consultant had to do internal cardiac massage (basically CPR on the heart by squeezing it via his still open chest) until the circuit got fixed and he returned to a normal circulation. He ended up going to OT and having his chest closed but he had more clots pulled out of his pulmonary arteries (clots had recurred).

At this point I thought this guy was utterly f****d. I figured if he even lived long enough to be woken up he'd have some degree of ischeamic brain injury. After about 2 weeks the guy left ICU and a week later went to rehabilitation. Speaking, walking, cognitively largely intact.

It was one of the most unbelievable things I've ever seen during my short career.

Not a doctor :
My grandfather had a heart attack . He went in for a simple stent in his heart. Hours go by and we hear code blue over the intercom. Doctor comes out to tell us his left ventricle has an inch and half tear in it. They had to transport him to another hospital ASAP. He d**d three times that night and went through 11 pints of blood. The surgeon successfully repaired the torn ventricle. They woke him up on my birthday and he sung me happy birthday. 3 weeks in Cardiac ICU my grandfather walked out. The surgeon told us for a man of 75 years to have lived through a left ventricle tear is unheard of. The doctor wrote a Journal on him as well. He's still alive today. He even got his hip replaced a year after .

A young woman came into emergency complaining about abdominal pains.She looked to be about 5 months pregnant,the nurses got her into a gown and called me.Upon entering her room she was laying on her back,I asked if she would mind putting her feet in the stirrups on the table.Then I proceeded with the examination,using a bright light,saw what looked like a tiny piece of skin way up in her v****a.Getting a pair of forceps,I stood immediately in front of her spread legs and reached up to grasp the piece of skin.It wasn't a piece of skin as it turned out.Getting a firm grip I pulled and nothing happened,so I tried to get a better angle to pull from, now with both hands.The skin like flap started to move,then all of a sudden.A 5 month old tampon burst out of her along with this huge clot of rancid smelling blood.Having come directly from a meeting with the hospital's board of directors.My brand new dress pants and best dress shoes, did a great job of sopping up the brunt of the initial dam overflow.After throwing out all my clothing,showering and putting on hospital scrubs.I inquired as to how the young woman could confuse pregnancy with a lost tampon.Apparently she and her boyfriend would go out drinking alot, and always had s*x when she was on her period.He some how had convinced her she was pregnant,and they continued to have regular s*x.Unfortunately for this pair of individuals I was sorry to tell them,that my roster was full and could not take them on as new patients.

Saw a guy with a machete lodged up into his skull. Asked him if he was ok (not sarcastically, just threw a generic question to check his ability to respond), he said "yup!".

M0N5A:

A man walks into the doctor's office with an axe lodged into his head.
"Hello, I've come for a stomach examination"
The doctor, shocked, says:
"But - But what about the axe!?"
"Yeah, actually, that bothers me quite a bit. Every time I sneeze I hit myself with the handle"

The guy who was hiking around his d**g rehab place who picked up a baby rattlesnake, which promptly bit him. When asked why he picked up a baby rattlesnake, he said (in a Russell Brand-type British accent), "It just looked so friendly.".

Presented after crashing his truck in the hospital parking lot (he was there for a wound care appointment) when his legs suddenly went numb and limp. Found to have acute aortic occlusion and bilateral saddle pulmonary emboli. Survived an aortic bypass and is still alive.

OR

Presented with abdominal pain, walked into the ED with a pH of 6.9, lactate of 24 and acute renal failure from metformin toxicity. He got a dialysis catheter placed and some idiot left the wire in, nobody realized that, got dialyzed through the line and coded in dialysis. Resuscitated, they discovered the wire in his heart on the post-code chest x ray, transferred to us for removal of the wire in IR. Walked out 5 days later.

OR

Woman had lots of kids, had terrible placenta percreta and was told she would d*e if she had another kid. Didn't believe that so she decided to have another kid. Had to have a caesarean hysterectomy, during which she bled so much she got transfused >150 units and had to be transferred in the middle of the case from one OR to a different OR that had an angiography suite in it so they could try to embolize the bleeding vessels. Went to the ICU with an open abdomen and clamps still on her vessels. Had several more stages procedures to get hemostasis and eventually close her abdomen. So technically she was right about the whole not d**ng thing.

Not a doctor, but a 3rd year med student. During my neurosurgery clerkship this year, a patient came into the ER after being hit by a car. While looking at the head and neck CT, one of the residents said "holy s**t y'all come look at this." The patient's dens of his C2 vertebra (axis) had jumped under and to the front of his C1 vertebra (atlas). Basically the guy was internally decapitated and any sudden neck movement could k**l him. Weird part is he had zero neurological deficits. No paralysis or loss of function. He should have been dead but lived with no lasting effects of the injury.

A patient I took care of had a car fall on his face. He was underneath it working when it slid off of the jack. The only reason he survived was because he broke every bone in his face (he had a Lefort III) which allowed for his brain to swell (he also needed an additional surgery to relieve the pressure of cerebral edema, but the facial fractures did allow for a great deal of "give" in his skull). I was rotating through ICU so I first saw him just a day after the accident. His head was so swollen, he didn't even look human. Fast forward a few weeks later...I was rotating through a different unit in the hospital and came across the same patient. He was quickly recovering and had minimal neuro deficits.

Edit: For patient privacy purposes, I cannot give the age of the patient or location of the accident. I'm also not disclosing how long ago this was for the same reason. (And of course I do not have photos!!)

As for "minimal neuro deficits", I saw this patient very briefly a few weeks after the accident. At that time, he still had edema and was in the process of getting better every day. I used that wording considering the severity of his injuries. He still had progress to make, but was able to walk and talk, had no memory deficits (not including immediately after the accident and his time in ICU, of course). I did not follow his care all the way through to discharge, so I don't know what he was like then or in the months following the accident. I wouldn't be surprised if he went on to go to college and is living a normal life. He was a younger patient and younger brains tend to be more "plastic" in that they can recover from injuries better than someone who is older.

Edit 2: A few people have asked why they don't break facial bones as a last-ditch effort to relieve brain swelling. They do break the skull, just not the facial bones. They can make small holes called burr holes, or if the swelling is really bad, they can temporarily remove entire pieces of skull (a craniotomy). Sometimes pieces of skull are stored in the abdomen to keep them alive so that they can put them back later.

Not a doctor or anything,but my grandmother has had 7 strokes. I couldn't help but laugh at the 7th one, she said, "Aww s**t, I'm having another stroke". She said this during a phone call abruptly. She's a very tough lady, she runs a garden and eats her in vegetables.

Also not a doctor, but my very elderly great-great uncle just had a sextuple heart bypass. Had four prior heart attacks. How he was still functioning somewhat normally before his last heart attack I honestly don't know.

Anon:

My dad too! No heart attack though. Started having angina then is immediately flown to a heart surgeon. The heart surgeon said he'd never seen anyone need so many bypasses but have no heart damage. This man though thinks he's dying from a paper cut still though.

xanthraxoid:

My grandpa had a heart attack in his 40s. Lived to be 91 while playing tennis frequently into his 90s. He just passed away about a month and a half ago.

Not a doctor but I work in cardiology, and my doctors all do rotations at our hospital. Our hospital is a level 5 trauma and it's the closest hospital to a lot of rural area, so a lot of traumas that happen way out in the middle of nowhere end up at that hospital.

This guy came in having been in a car accident; he was covered in road rash and his chest was more or less torn open. Apparently, as we all later learned, he'd been drinking and riding passenger in his friend's car. He wanted out of the car, his friend said no, so this guy (once again, very drunk) decided to try and jump out of the car window. He somewhat succeeded, but his shirt caught on the side view mirror and he got dragged until the driver stopped flipping out enough to come to his senses and stop.

My story is from a guy in the town I used to live in. Guy was working with an acetylene torch and passed out (unsure what precipitated it), falling down on it while it was still operating. Burned a huge hole in his abdomen, serious injuries.