MYSTERIOUS HOSPITAL PATIENT RECOVERIES

The Miraculous Recovery Of Owen Thomas

In many near-death experience stories, a patient is brought to a hospital with slim expectations of survival, then makes a miraculous recovery. However, few of these recoveries are more unlikely than that of 20-year-old Owen Thomas.

On December 16, 1981, Owen saw his friend being attacked on a New York street corner and intervened to help. Stabbed three times in the chest and abdomen, Owen’s heart, liver, and gallbladder were punctured. By the time anyone ran over to help, his intestines were hanging 20 centimeters (8 in) out of his stomach. Owen was rushed to Beekman Downtown Hospital. When he arrived, his body had already lost so much blood that his chances of survival seemed nonexistent.

Owen’s heart stopped beating, and he had no pulse or blood pressure by the time doctors went to work on him. Owen’s bowels had also been severed by the stabbing, so his intestines were covered in feces. Although Owen was clinically dead for over five minutes, somehow he survived several hours of surgery.

Doctors feared that the long period of oxygen deprivation would cause serious damage to Owen’s brain, but he was completely coherent when he woke up and displayed no negative aftereffects. Owen’s recovery defied all medical logic. Everyone involved thought it was a genuine miracle.

Later, Owen described a vision of entering Heaven, where he encountered his older brother, Christopher, who had died in a car crash two years earlier. According to Owen, Christopher pushed him out of Heaven. “We don’t want you,” Christopher had said before Owen woke up. Owen Thomas’s unlikely recovery remains one of the more miraculous near-death experiences on record.

The Miraculous Recovery Of Chucky McGivern

Photo credit: kevps100

In December 1982, seven-year-old Chucky McGivern was admitted to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and diagnosed with a rare disease called “Reye’s syndrome,” which attacked his brain, liver, and nervous system. Chucky soon went into a coma, and his family was told he only had a 10 percent chance of survival.

Hoping for a miracle, Chucky’s mother pinned a medal to his bed featuring the likeness of St. John Neumann, a noted religious figure who became the Bishop of Philadelphia during the mid-19th century and was eventually canonized by Pope Paul VI. For whatever reason, the presence of this medal seemed to pave the way for a series of miraculous events.

The medal containing St. John’s likeness had been threaded to a safety pin alongside two other medals. But on numerous occasions when Chucky’s mother returned to the room, she discovered that the medal had been unthreaded and turned face down.

Things got even stranger when a picture of St. John was found taped to the wall. No one from Chucky’s family or the hospital staff admitted to doing these things. An unidentified boy also kept showing up in the ward entering Chucky’s room, and interacting with his family. Whenever security was called, they couldn’t find this boy. No one ever saw him entering the hospital, either.

Four days after falling into his coma, Chucky suddenly woke up and made a miraculous, unlikely recovery. He described a dream in which he saw this same, mysterious boy standing over him. After Chucky was discharged from the hospital, his family made a trip to the Shrine of St. John Neumann (pictured above) and saw a painting of St. John when he was 12 years old. He looked exactly like the mysterious boy everyone had seen at the hospital.

Robin Warder is a budding Canadian screenwriter who has used his encyclopedic movie knowledge to publish numerous articles at Cracked.com. He is also the co-owner of a pop culture website called The Back Row and recently worked on a sci-fi short film called Jet Ranger of Another Tomorrow. Feel free to contact him here

Janne Kouri

In August 2006, 31-year-old Janne Kouri was playing a game of beach volleyball with his friends on a California beach. Life had been good to Janne up to that point. He was a star football player on the verge of catching the eye of bigwigs at the NFL and also the director of a social network.

On that beautiful day, Janne felt like going for a quick swim between games and he ran down to the ocean. Then tragedy struck. As Janne dove into the waves, his head struck a sandbar, damaging his spinal cord and rendering him instantly paralyzed.

After Janne was rushed to the hospital, his girlfriend and family received the devastating news that he would never walk again. He would spend the next two months in ICU and almost lose his life twice, all while battling pneumonia. His bright life and future seemed dark and hopeless.

Janne told his girlfriend, Susan, that she was free to leave him, and he didn’t expect her to take care of him. Susan stuck by him no matter what and refused to give up on him getting better. After coming across many dead ends in their research, the couple finally happened upon a doctor in Louisville. Sharing the same name as Janne’s girlfriend, it seemed that providence led the couple to this doctor who proclaimed there was a chance of recovery.

Dr. Susan Harkema was right. Janne Kouri stood up on his own without a walker five years later. It was a tough road to achieving this seemingly impossible goal and involved the constant practice of a training routine called loco-motor training. The entire experience inspired Janne and Susan to start a non-profit rehab center to ensure others in Janne’s situation could also benefit from loco-motor training.

And, while still on his road to recovery, Janne and Susan got married after realizing there was nothing they couldn’t face together.

Randon Timmons

“Skitching” almost cost 18-year-old Randon Timmons his life in 2014. In the small town of Van Buren, Indiana, some teenagers have no fear of grabbing hold of a moving vehicle and letting the driver drag them along while balancing on a skateboard. They call this “skitching.”

Randon was doing exactly this when his skateboard hit a bump in the road, and he went flying through the air before landing head first on the pavement.

He had almost no brain activity when doctors examined him and ended up having most of his skull removed because of the extreme brain swelling. There was very little hope that Randon would make it through the night.

While Randon’s dad and the rest of his family stayed at the boy’s bedside, the citizens of Van Buren arranged a prayer vigil, concert, and walk-a-thon in support of the family.

Almost miraculously, after a few weeks his condition had improved enough to be discharged from the hospital. Randy, Randon’s father, had already suffered the loss of his own brother and father in a car crash and refused to give up on his son. He kept telling his son how much he loved him and that he couldn’t leave him. Randy believes love and prayer helped his son get through the brain trauma.

While there is some permanent damage, such as mild amnesia and subtle parts of Randon’s personality that have changed, doctors believe that he will continue to lead a normal life. He does, however, have to wear a helmet while doing certain activities especially considering that he was not wearing one the day of the accident.

Alcides Moreno

Alcides Moreno’s wife wasn’t too upset when he reached out his hand and attempted to stroke another woman’s face. Even though it was their special thing. After all, he was in a hospital bed and no one believed he would survive much less be able to stretch out his hand and speak.

Alcides and his brother Edgar were washing windows on the 47th story of a building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City when the platform they were standing on suddenly became loose and dropped out of the sky. The two men landed in an alleyway. Sadly, Edgar was killed on impact. Alcides was conscious and sitting up when rescuers and firefighters got to the scene.

By the time he reached the hospital, he was on the border of unconsciousness and tests revealed the catastrophic nature of his injuries. On top of serious brain injuries, Alcides also suffered spinal injuries, a broken arm, cracked ribs, and two broken legs, among other injuries. After an initial emergency operation, Alcides underwent nine more operations.

Doctors were stunned when Alcides Moreno spoke up after the trauma he’d been through. Rosario, his wife, wasn’t in his room on Christmas Day in 2007 when Alcides attempted to stroke a nurse’s face thinking it was his wife’s. She was there, however, when he spoke his first words since the accident took place. He simply asked, “What did I do?”

The doctors at the time predicted that Alcides would be fully recovered in just one year. They also believed that he would recover his ability to walk. Rosario only had one final thing to say to those interviewing her about her husband’s miraculous recovery: He was not going back to his old job.

Elijah Belden

An early birthday party for nine-year-old Elijah Belden, held in October 2014, almost turned fatal when a freak accident happened. Elijah was posing for a picture with one of his friends when he came into contact with a metal support structure on the patio of his home. Outdoor lighting supported by the pole had somehow caused the pole to be electrified and the boy to be electrocuted.

Doctors placed him in a medically induced coma. After 10 days of uncertainty and despair, Elijah woke from his coma. When asked by medical personnel what his name was he was able to respond correctly. His rapid recovery after this was called a miracle by his doctors and his father agreed.

Within two weeks of waking from his coma, Elijah started rehab and was able to take a walk outside. After this, he would be tested on a treadmill and doctors believed they would be able to send him home just a week after. Getting back to baseball practice is the next focus for Elijah and his family.

Rachel Lozano

Rachel Lozano was diagnosed with an Askin’s tumor during high school and would fight a courageous battle against this rare form of cancer throughout the rest of her high school years.

The cancer went into remission twice. In order to achieve this, doctors performed multiple surgeries on Rachel including a bone marrow transplant. Rachel never lost hope and took the small victories and disappointing losses in stride. Even when her hair started falling out from chemo sessions, she allowed her bald head to be used as a canvas. She simply took everything as it came.

Then, the devastating news came. The cancer was back for a third time. Doctors told Rachel the tumor would claim her life within a couple of weeks, all depending on the organ it would take out first.

It was agreed that Rachel would undergo one last surgery as a last-ditch effort to remove the tumor. During the surgery, however, doctors were mystified and perplexed at the complete lack of a tumor. In fact, they could not find any cancerous tissue anywhere in the girl’s body and eventually closed her up without doing anything.

The hospital had no explanation for this incident and doctors would later testify that they had no medical explanation for not being able to find a tumor in Rachel’s body or even why she was still alive.

During an interview in 2013, Rachel, who had at that point been cancer-free for nine years, stated that her recovery from cancer was nothing less than a miracle. She also confirmed that she attended an honor ceremony for Father William Chaminade in 2000 and visited his grave. It was here that she prayed to the deceased clergyman for healing.

Rachel’s healing was proclaimed a miracle by the St. Louis Archdiocese and could become the second miracle attributed to Chaminade, making him a saint.

Sam Schmid

In October 2011, Sam Schmid, a junior at the University of Arizona, never thought his life would change as drastically as it did when he got caught up in a horrific car accident involving five cars. The Jeep he was traveling in struck a light pole and flipped sideways. He was airlifted to the hospital in critical condition with two broken legs, a broken left hand, and severe brain injuries.

The news didn’t get any better at the hospital, and the young man was placed on life support. Doctors tactfully began to prepare Schmid’s family for the worst after surgery that was performed on him for a brain aneurysm resulted in a stroke.

Neurosurgeon Robert Spetzler, who operated on Schmid, was dumbfounded with his patient’s lack of response after surgery because his scans did not indicate fatal injury. Going according to his own instinct, Spetzler decided to keep Sam on life support for a while longer.

Just a few hours before the hospital could act on the decision for Sam to be removed from life support machines, Spetzler requested a new MRI scan. Against all odds, the scan showed positive improvements on the patient’s part. The same day, Sam started responding to what was happening around him. He was also able to follow instruction from the doctors.

By December 2011, Sam could walk with the help of a walker and was able to speak almost normally again. He doesn’t remember anything about the accident that almost claimed his life.

Lesley Bunning

Over 300 people in California alone succumbed to the H1N1 virus in 2014. When 61-year-old Lesley Bunning was diagnosed with the virus in January 2014, she was rushed to the emergency room by her family as soon as they saw her condition deteriorating.

At the hospital things further deteriorated and, to her family’s utter shock, Lesley was placed on life support and also in a medically induced coma. She spent 10 weeks this way, with doctors doing everything they could to help her, and her family praying for a miracle.

After the medical experts did everything to their medical knowledge to help Lesley, even consulting other doctors for additional measures, she still couldn’t breathe on her own. However, as they prepared the family for her inevitable death, Lesley suddenly breathed on her own. Doctors were flabbergasted.

They were able to remove her from the ventilator which was no longer necessary. They inserted a feeding tube to help her get stronger and gave her family the extraordinary news. One of the doctors went as far as to call her recovery a miracle.

Lesley Bunning has confirmed that she will never again skip her flu shot. She refused to take the shot before she contracted the virus. Now, she is determined to get it whenever necessary and also make sure the rest of her family takes theirs as well.

Nicole Graham

By the time Nicole Graham’s junior prom rolled around, she had not only beat cancer but survived two strokes as well. When she should have only been thinking of homework and boys at the beginning of her junior year of high school, Nicole had to come to terms with the fact that she had leukemia. So, instead of hanging out with her friends and gossiping about the latest celebrity meltdown, Nicole had to start chemo sessions.

The 16-year-old’s journey since her diagnosis has been difficult considering that between the diagnosis and her eventual recovery she had major setbacks including the above-mentioned strokes, organ failure, sepsis, and even paralysis on one occasion.

However, her recovery happened in record time. Once she started rehab, it only took her two months to recover fully from all that had happened to her. When she entered the process of rehabilitation she couldn’t even sit up. After the two months were done she could literally run around. Throughout this time she was supported not only by her family and friends but also her boyfriend.

Soon after leaving the hospital, Nicole rejoined her lacrosse team and became the team’s captain. Pupils in her school also voted for her to become homecoming queen for a night to celebrate her recovery.

Luke Burgie

Four-year-old Luke Burgie’s recovery from a mystery illness was proclaimed a miracle by Pope Francis himself. In 1998, the little boy suddenly fell ill. Everything he ingested came out in bouts of diarrhea and, if that weren’t enough, he would experience intense pain after eating a meal. His parents took him to specialists at a Denver hospital but even they had no idea what could possibly be ailing the boy.

By January the next year, it seemed that little Luke’s condition was grave. He was losing weight rapidly and no amount of treatment seemed to make a dent in his condition. Out of sheer desperation, his parents enlisted two nuns to pray for their child. The nuns in turn prayed to Mother Maria Theresia Bonzel who founded the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration back in 1863 and has been dead for more than 100 years. The prayer session lasted nine days.

The doctors meanwhile came up with a theory that poor Luke might have a tumor somewhere in his little body and scheduled a colonoscopy for him. However, when his parents brought him to the hospital for the test, Luke wasn’t sick anymore. His mother told the doctors that her son has simply jumped up from the couch he’d been lying on one afternoon and announced that the pain in his tummy was gone.

His mother was convinced of a miracle. While many remained skeptical, with some even indirectly accusing Luke’s parents of deliberately making their son ill “for the attention,” Pope Francis agreed with Jan Burgie. Fourteen years after Luke Burgie’s miraculous recovery, the Pope officially proclaimed the incident a miracle.

Lesley Bunning

Source: https://listverse.com/2014/12/02/10-incredible-patient-recoveries-that-went-against-all-odds/

5 Stunning Medical Miracles That Doctors Can’t Explain

Gretchen Voss

Most people don’t survive a dying heart or a brain-eating amoeba. These five patients were extraordinarily lucky.

Amanda Friedman for Reader's Digest

The Church That Cured Cancer

It’s hard to say which was in worse shape: the run-down century-old church or the cancer-ridden 56-year-old man perched on its crumbling steps. For years, Greg Thomas would sit on those very steps and pray when he walked his dogs along the country lanes in rural Minnesota. But in May 2009, he learned that the searing headaches, earaches, and jaw aches that had plagued him for the past year were due to inoperable head and neck cancer. It had progressed so far that the doctors told Greg’s family to start planning his funeral.

“I was sitting at the church one evening, pouring my heart out to God,” Greg says. “I kept looking at the building and the shape it was in. I said, ‘Before I leave this earth, Lord, I’d like to do something for you.’”

Greg decided that that something was to fix the peeling paint and the leaking roof, the mangled steps, and the rotting floorboards. He approached the church’s association with a deal: He would completely repair the building on one condition: “That I get a key to the front door so I can go in anytime I want to worship.” He warned that it would be slow going—he had just gone through three rounds of chemotherapy along with 40 sessions of radiation and had lost 66 pounds. They said yes anyway. Here’s what cancer patients wish you knew.

Incredibly, as Greg scraped paint and replaced boards, he felt himself growing stronger every day. The more he worked on the church, the better he felt—he didn’t even need the strong prescription pain meds his doctor had prescribed. “My oncologist was blown away,” Greg says. “She said, ‘Whatever you’re doing, keep on doing it.’”

As Greg continued to rehabilitate the church, medical scans revealed some startling news: His tumors were shrinking. Four years and 23 days after Greg’s diagnosis, his doctors were able to remove his feeding tube—the one they’d said he would have for the rest of his life—and he ate solid food again. Today, Greg’s tumors are gone. He is considered officially in remission and no longer needs follow-up tests. These genius cancer breakthroughs are what scientists want you to know about fighting the disease.

And the church? After five years of Greg’s labor and love, it has been restored to its former glory too. Greg finished his main project this past summer, but he will probably always be involved in maintaining its beauty (he still wants to replace some windows, for example). Greg held his third-annual open house there near Christmas, inviting the entire community. “While I was restoring the church,” Greg says, “God was restoring me.”

Amanda Friedman for Reader's Digest

The Role of a Lifetime

The silent killer. That’s what doctors call an abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA).

The extremely dangerous condition—in which the main blood vessel shuttling blood to the abdomen, pelvis, and legs enlarges—can balloon up for years without any symptoms. But if the aneurysm bursts, it is often fatal.

Pretending to have this silent killer was Jim Malloy’s assignment as a “medical actor” one day in February 2013. Over the years, Jim, then a 75-year-old retired engineer, had faked all manner of medical maladies so that students at the University of Virginia School of Medicine could practice diagnosing him. Really, it was just a fun part-time retirement job.

When Ryan Jones, a third-year medical student, walked into the room, Jim followed his script for an AAA: He complained of lightheadedness and stomach pain. But when Ryan pushed down on the center of Jim’s abdomen, he was shocked to feel a pulsing mass—it appeared to be an actual aneurysm.

“I stepped quickly back, confused,” Ryan says. “I tried to get Mr. Malloy to break character and tell me that he knew he had an aneurysm. But he wouldn’t.”

Ryan’s attending physician told Jim that he should see a cardiologist, but it was hard for Jim to take seriously. “I didn’t think I had any symptoms,” Jim says. He felt totally fine, and he had gotten a clean bill of health from his primary care doctor two weeks earlier. These are the medical tips doctors want everyone to know.

When he did get an ultrasound, it showed that his AAA measured six centimeters—with the potential to rupture. Doctors immediately scheduled surgery and inserted a stent to deflate the aneurysm, saving his life. “I had no idea anything was going on, and I would have just gone about my business,” Jim says. “I’d probably be dead.”

Ryan, who will start his residency in radiation oncology this year, agrees. “It was an amazing coincidence that he was volunteering for that case. If he had been pretending to have anything else, I wouldn’t have done that part of the exam, and I wouldn’t have found it,” Ryan says. “He was in the right place at the right time.”

Perhaps no one is more aware of this lifesaving good fortune than Jim’s wife, Louise. “Soon after Jim’s surgery, I met two women whose husbands bled out and died from an AAA,” she says. “We are so grateful to Ryan.”

Battling a Deadly Brain-Eating Amoeba

Fight like a girl. That’s what 12-year-old Kali Hardig’s parents told her on Friday, July 19, 2013.

There was nothing else to say. It was impossible to believe that just the day before her crushing headache and relentless nausea started, Kali and two pals had been giddily playing king of the hill at a water park near Benton, Arkansas. It was there, doctors told the devastated parents, that Kali must have gotten water infected with a brain-eating amoeba up her nose. The creature then traveled along her olfactory nerve and into her brain, where it began feasting on her brain tissue—a condition called primary amoebic meningoencephalitis. The doctors said it was about 99 percent fatal—only two people in North America had ever survived. “We had to tell her parents that it was very likely she would not be alive in 48 hours,” says Matt Linam, MD, the infectious disease specialist who treated her. Here’s how to decode confusing doctor-speak.

Still, doctors at Arkansas Children’s Hospital jumped into action, pumping Kali’s body full of antifungals and antibiotics as well as a rare, unapproved German drug they got from the CDC; lowering her body’s temperature to 93 degrees and putting her in a medically induced coma in an attempt to reduce brain swelling (this is what it’s like to be in a coma); and hooking her up to a ventilator, then a dialysis machine for her failed kidneys. For two weeks, Kali’s medical team worked around the clock just trying to keep her alive—a complex balance of preventing low blood pressure and stopping episodes of high blood pressure that worsened brain swelling.

“We had good hours and bad hours, not days,” says Dr. Linam. Slowly Kali’s brain swelling stabilized. Doctors decreased her sedation and increased her body temperature, unsure if she would be the same little girl when—or if—she woke up. “We just didn’t know,” Dr. Linam says, “but two days later, she did a thumbs-up, and her parents knew she was still in there.”

Kali would be in the hospital for eight weeks, relearning the most basic of functions, like swallowing. But eventually, she officially became survivor number three. Kali is now a healthy, normal, 13-year-old girl.

Doctors don’t know exactly why she lived. (A 12-year-old Florida boy, diagnosed days after Kali, received the same German medicine but didn’t survive.) “Number one, it was God’s grace,” Dr. Linam says. “Other than that, it was countless little things that went her way, countless little miracles that happened every day and made the difference between life and death.”

Amanda Friedman for Reader's Digest

She Was “Dead” for 45 Minutes

They literally ran her back to the operating room.

Forty-year-old Ruby Graupera-Cassimiro had just had a completely normal C-section, giving birth to a beautiful baby girl on September 23 (these are the myths of having a C-section all women should know). But when her medical team moved her to the recovery room, she fell unconscious. Suddenly, Ruby—now a mother of two—was in full cardiac arrest.

Jordan Knurr, MD, her anesthesiologist at Boca Raton Regional Hospital in Florida, immediately intubated Ruby so a machine could breathe for her. He called a code, and about a dozen other doctors and nurses crowded into the room, frantically giving advanced cardiac life support. “For more than two hours, she was having life-threatening heartbeats,” Dr. Knurr says. Most scary was when Ruby had a pulseless rhythm—her heart was beating but not pumping any blood throughout her body—and doctors delivered constant CPR compressions for 45 minutes straight to try to get her heart working normally again.

After about two hours, her doctors knew there was no hope. They brought her extended family into the room to say goodbye. After Ruby’s family returned to the waiting room, where they, along with a few nurses, frantically prayed on their knees for a different outcome, the doctors stopped pumping her chest. They were ready to call her time of death.

“I was seconds away from turning off the ventilation machine when one of the nurses shouted, ‘Stop!’” Dr. Knurr says. “Without any medicine or CPR, Ruby’s heart began to beat on its own for the first time in two hours. It is just indescribable.”

It turned out that some amniotic fluid had leaked into the uterus and traveled through Ruby’s bloodstream and to her heart. Called an amniotic fluid embolism, it causes an air block in the heart and prevents blood from flowing. “These embolisms are rare, and we don’t know a lot about them,” Dr. Knurr says. “Usually the patient passes away or has significant brain damage.” (Her doctors don’t know what happened to the amniotic debris; they assume it dissolved on its own.)

Not only did Ruby live, but “she is in perfect health. It’s almost as if this never happened,” says Dr. Knurr. “It’s a miracle. I’m not a highly religious person, but you just don’t see this happen.” The next morning, Ruby’s breathing tube was removed. Four days later, she walked out of the hospital with her newborn daughter, Taily—without even a broken rib from all the chest compressions.

“Someone else was running the show that day; there’s no doubt in my mind,” Ruby says today. “I don’t know why God chose me, but I know he gave me this life again for a reason.”

The Heart That Healed Itself

He had been throwing up for four days. But clearly, this was not a mere stomach bug.

On August 17, 2012, 23-year-old Michael Crowe “froze up”—eyes open and staring into space—on the couch. He quickly snapped to, but when it happened again a few minutes later, his mother rushed him to the local emergency room.

There they learned that Michael was in real trouble. His heart was pumping out blood at just 25 percent, an alarmingly low rate. By the time he was transferred to Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha an hour later, it was down to 10 percent. A virus was causing acute myocarditis, inflammation of the heart muscle. If it got worse, he would need a heart transplant. With Michael’s family surrounding his bed, the doctors asked him to sign papers—while he still could—for that transplant. “They said I had only a 30 percent chance that my heart would recover,” Michael says. “I remember thinking, I can take those odds. I haven’t won the lottery yet, I’m Irish, I’m due for some luck. I was strangely calm.”

His doctors, however, were not. “His heart failure was so bad,” says his cardiologist, Eugenia Raichlin, MD. “The rate of mortality is huge.” They immediately hooked him up to an ECMO, an external heart and lung machine, to pump his blood while his heart couldn’t. But it was a short-term fix, and Michael’s health continued to decline. Spiking fevers led to convulsions; ice cooled him but dropped his oxygen levels. “It was a balancing game just to keep me stable,” Michael says. These are the heart health tips cardiologists follow themselves.

He desperately needed a heart transplant. For 17 days they waited, while Michael’s condition continued to worsen. His heart stopped twice—once for an entire day (being hooked up to the ECMO machine prevented him from dying). Doctors had to fend off blood clots and excess bleeding.

At 6:30 in the morning on Labor Day, Michael’s doctors got the phone call everyone had been waiting for: A heart would be available that night. But a few hours later, they made a devastating discovery. Michael had developed a blood infection; a transplant would be too dangerous.

As Michael’s family despaired, Dr. Raichlin noticed something unusual: His blood pressure, which should have remained constant because of the heart-lung machine, was actually rising. She ordered a test, which revealed that the left side of his heart was working at near-normal capacity. Unbelieving, she ordered another. Again, the same astounding results.

After four days hooked up to a different machine that assisted only the right side of his heart, Michael no longer needed a transplant. His heart had completely, miraculously healed itself, his body eradicating the virus on its own. “He overcame everything,” Dr. Raichlin says. “He was very debilitated, but he rebuilt himself.”

Many patients with Michael’s condition die, or get a heart transplant, or survive but have permanent heart tissue damage. But today, as Michael works through his third year of pharmacy school, his heart is in perfect shape. “I’m so grateful that I got a second chance at life,” he says.

Source: https://www.rd.com/true-stories/inspiring/medical-miracles/

9 Miraculous Medical Recoveries That Still Can’t Be Believed

Lauren CahnUpdated: Nov. 13, 2018

Surely you can’t survive with only half a skull. Or can you? We’ve got the miracles behind these amazing stories and others that are certain to inspire you. This is what today’s medicine (and maybe a few angels) can accomplish.

The first 23-week preemie to survive in more than a decade

Courtesy Jennifer Fresneda

A few years ago, we wrote about the miraculous survival of a baby born at 26 weeks. Now we have Samuel Rodriguez, born in April 2017 at just 23 weeks and 3 days, the result of a spontaneous placental abruption (separation of the placenta from the uterus). All Samuel’s mom, Jennifer Fresneda of Tioga, Texas, remembers is waking up to labor pains and rushing to the hospital, where she learned that her baby’s sole chance of survival was an emergency C-section. Sam actually took a breath upon emerging, but doctors immediately intubated and rushed him to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). When Jennifer and her husband were finally allowed to see their baby, Jennifer nearly collapsed from the shock. “He was the tiniest thing, hooked up to all these wires. I was frightened and powerless.”

Samuel spent four months in NICU, during which he had two surgeries, including surgery to correct a heart abnormality. On August 9, the day before his actual due date, Samuel was discharged from the hospital, a healthy baby boy, albeit with an apnea monitor and supplemental oxygen. “I didn’t even know babies so small could survive,” Jennifer marvels.

The boy who survived leukemia three times in ten years

Courtesy The St. Baldricks Foundation

Zach Swart was first diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in 2007 at age 6. Although ALL is generally highly treatable, Zach’s version played hardball. Zach’s first treatment consisted of more than three years of chemo. Two years later, the cancer returned. After another two years of treatment, Zach was deemed cancer-free. Then, when Zach was 15, the cancer came back. This time, chemo was just the pregame—to put Zach into remission in preparation for a bone marrow transplant (BMT). But three months later, after nearly dying from the side effects, Zach still wasn’t in remission. It seemed as if he was out of options when along came the miracle.

Kevin Curran, MD, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, introduced Zach and his family to “CAR-T cell treatment,” which Dr. Curran developed through a research grant from St. Baldrick’s Foundation. It put Zach into complete remission in a matter of weeks. Within a month he received his BMT (from his brother, Ben). He’s getting stronger by the day. Read about the 10 parenting lessons we can all learn from children with cancer.

“I was initially afraid about CAR-T’s side effects,” Zach told Reader’s Digest. “But then I didn’t have any at all. I was so lucky, and it feels so good not to be sick anymore and to be home and see my friends. I’m determined to leave cancer far behind me.”

“Every day I see Zach smile, laugh, and just be a kid, it is truly a miracle,” his mom says.

Two parents’ lifesaving touch

Courtesy Kate Ogg

On March 25, 2010, Kate and David Ogg heard the words every parent dreads: Their newborn wasn’t going to make it. Their twins—a girl and a boy—were born two minutes apart and 14 weeks premature, weighing just over two pounds each. Doctors had tried to save the boy for 20 minutes but saw no improvement. His heartbeat was nearly gone, and he’d stopped breathing. The baby had just moments to live. “I saw him gasp, but the doctor said it was no use,” Kate told the Daily Mail five years later. “I know it sounds stupid, but if he was still gasping, that was a sign of life. I wasn’t going to give up easily.”

Still, the Sydney, Australia, couple knew this was likely goodbye. In an effort to cherish her last minutes with the tiny boy, Kate asked to hold him. “I wanted to meet him, and for him to know us,” Kate told the Today show. “We’d resigned ourselves to the fact that we were going to lose him, and we were just trying to make the most of those last, precious moments.”

Kate unwrapped the boy, whom the couple had already named Jamie, from his hospital blanket and ordered David to take his shirt off and join them in bed. The first-time parents wanted their son to be as warm as possible and hoped that the skin-to-skin contact would improve his condition. They also talked to him.

“We were trying to entice him to stay,” Kate told the Daily Mail. “We explained his name and that he had a twin that he had to look out for and how hard we had tried to have him.” Then something miraculous happened. Jamie gasped again—and then he started breathing. Finally, he reached for his father’s finger. The couple’s lost boy had made it. “We’re the luckiest people in the world,” David told Today.

Eight years later, Jamie and his sister, Emily, are happy and healthy. The Oggs only recently told the kids the story of their birth. “Emily burst into tears,” Kate said. “She was really upset, and she kept hugging Jamie. This whole experience makes you cherish them more.”

The church that cured one man’s cancer

Amanda Friedman for Reader's Digest

It’s hard to say which was in worse shape: the run-down, century-old church or the cancer-ridden 56-year-old man perched on its crumbling steps. For years, Greg Thomas would sit on those very steps and pray when he walked his dogs along the country lanes in rural Minnesota. But in May 2009, he learned that the searing headaches, earaches, and jaw aches that had plagued him for the past year were due to inoperable head and neck cancer. Doctors told Greg’s family to be prepared to plan his funeral.

“I was sitting at the church one evening, pouring my heart out to God,” Greg told Reader’s Digest. “I kept looking at the building and the shape it was in. I said, ‘Before I leave this earth, Lord, I’d like to do something for you.’”

Incredibly, as Greg scraped paint and replaced boards, he felt himself growing stronger every day. The more he worked on the church, the better he felt. As Greg continued to rehabilitate the church, medical scans revealed some startling news: His tumors were shrinking. Four years and 23 days after Greg’s diagnosis, his doctors were able to remove his feeding tube. Today Greg’s tumors are gone. He is considered officially in remission and no longer needs follow-up tests.

And the church? After five years of Greg’s labor and love, it has been restored to its former glory, too. Greg finished his main project last summer, but he will probably always be involved in maintaining its beauty (he still wants to replace some windows, for example). Greg held his third annual open house there near Christmas, inviting the entire community. “While I was restoring the church,” Greg says, “God was restoring me.”

The bladder cancer that saved a man’s heart

Courtesy David Shusterman MD urologist NYC

You might not consider a cancer diagnosis to be a miracle, but then you probably haven’t talked to David Shusterman, MD, a urologist who practices in New York City. Dr. Schusterman had a patient last year whose life was actually saved because of his cancer diagnosis (for privacy reasons, Dr. Schusterman can’t disclose the name of the patient). Here’s what happened:

Before any surgery, it’s protocol for a patient to get a presurgical workup, including blood tests and an EKG. In fact, before initiating any cancer treatment, the patient’s general health should be assessed. In this case, Dr. Schusterman explains, “We had a patient with bladder cancer, but when we checked his heart, we found a terrible heart condition.” The condition was so life-threatening that the patient was actually at risk of sudden death. Literally, as Dr. Schusterman told Reader’s Digest, “he was about to die of a heart attack.”

Because of the patient’s cancer diagnosis, his treatable heart condition was discovered in time. “He survived and was able to get his bladder tumor cured as well” and, in so doing, “beat two conditions that almost caused his death.” Find out the most miraculous recoveries these doctors have ever seen.

An internal tourniquet saves a man who was split wide open

Courtesy Memorial Hermann Red Duke Trauma Institute

By all accounts, Michael Cassidy should not be alive today. In March he was thrown from his motorcycle, face-forward, into a fire hydrant. The impact broke his pelvis wide open—literally, cracking him open like a book. It’s what Michelle McNutt, MD, chief of trauma at Memorial Hermann Red Duke Trauma Institute (MHRDTI), says is known as an “open-book fracture.”

When Michael arrived at the trauma center, Dr. McNutt had to make an immediate decision to utilize what’s called the REBOA (resuscitative endovascular balloon occlusion of the aorta) technique. It involves placing a flexible catheter into the femoral artery (located in the thigh), maneuvering it all the way up into the aorta (the main artery of the human body) and inflating a balloon at the end of the catheter. What this does is stop the blood flow beyond the balloon, which improves the person’s blood pressure and provides a sort of “bridge” to getting a severely injured patient into the operating room in time.

Another way of thinking about the REBOA is as an “internal tourniquet.” It’s revolutionary and the key to why Michael is alive today, according to Laura Moore, MD, FACS, an associate professor in the department of surgery at the University of Texas McGovern Medical School and medical director of the Shock Trauma ICU at MHRDTI. Michael was also lucky to have been where he was when the accident happened, or he might not have had access to REBOA. Amaze yourself with these 20 other true stories about luck.

She’s alive and well, though half her skull is gone

Courtesy Jennifer Beaver

In June of last year, Jennifer Beaver fell off a golf cart and landed on her head, leading to such a massive brain bleed that doctors had no choice but to remove half her skull to alleviate pressure. To say her prognosis was grim is an understatement. Colin Looney, MD, the orthopedic surgeon who helped repair Jen’s broken limbs, was also a friend of Jen and her husband, Bill. “I had operated on friends and neighbors before, but this would be my first time operating on a friend who was dying,” he recalls. “Talking to Bill shortly after, I tried to sound positive, but I’d seen so few patients survive massive brain trauma that I’m sure it all showed on my face.”

“So many things were going through my head,” Bill recalls. “One minute we’re having the best day. The next, all the doctors can say is ‘They’ll do their best.’ I just wanted to hold her hand and make it better. I couldn’t stand to think she’d never come home again.”

But she did go home again. After being brought out of a medically induced coma, Jen steadily improved. “Whenever I examined her,” Dr. Looney told Reader’s Digest, “I’d get emotional seeing how she’d improved beyond anyone’s hopes or expectations.” Read about what it’s like to be in a coma, from real-life survivors.

Jen, who’s back at work and is suffering no significant deficits, knows she’s a “walking miracle,” and she’ll be forever grateful to her doctors, including neurosurgeon Lola Chambless, MD.

She wasn’t supposed to live, let alone stand or dance again

courtesy Memorial Hermann Health System

Katie Vacek was never your typical high school senior: a class officer, sixth in her graduating class, a member of her school band, a varsity cheerleader, and, as if that weren’t enough, a member of the school’s powerlifting team. She’d planned to attend Texas State University in the fall until her future took a tragic detour in February 2017, when she fell 20 feet from a tree she was climbing while on a nature walk with friends and family. Katie landed facedown, but miraculously enough, she remained conscious. Turning over, however, she realized she couldn’t feel her legs.

Air-lifted to Memorial Hermann Red Duke Trauma Institute, Katie was found to have a fractured sternum, multiple broken ribs, a partially collapsed lung, and a broken spine. After a seven-hour surgery to fuse her spine, she was told she might not walk again.

But for Katie, it wasn’t enough just to have survived. Even if she’d never walk again, she was determined to stand beside and dance with her boyfriend at prom. That’s what she told her physical therapy team at TIRR Memorial Hermann, who came up with a plan and worked on their own time to fashion a harness for Katie and her boyfriend to wear together. A few weeks later, not only did Katie stand and dance beside her boyfriend at prom, but the two were also voted prom king and queen. Read on for 5 real-life miracle stories.

He’s alive because of his angels … and an AED

In January 2017, attorney Rand Mintzer, set out to complete his 25th marathon and his 11th Houston Marathon—but it didn’t go exactly as planned. “I wasn’t feeling great. I was struggling to keep up my pace, but I had heartburn and nausea. I even vomited on the sidelines,” Rand, 58, recalled. “Then I began feeling lightheaded, and my vision started to blur.”

At mile 15, he collapsed. He was in full cardiac arrest. Luckily, six spectators (aka Rand’s “angels,” as he calls them) who were trained in CPR ran to his aid. What’s more, he had collapsed right near an assisted-living facility that had an AED (a heart defibrillation device that saves lives). When the paramedics arrived, they transported Rand to Memorial Hermann Heart & Vascular Institute–Southwest, where Peter Chang, MD, positioned a stent to address a severe arterial blockage.

Today it’s Rand’s mission to encourage everyone to learn the miracle of CPR. “I will keep working to make sure that everyone who crosses my path knows CPR, so perhaps that percentage of survival will increase and someone else gets to go home to their loved ones.” Next up, read 13 more “unsolved mysteries” easily explained by science.

Originally Published: November 13, 2018, Lauren Cahn for Reader's Digest

Source: https://www.thehealthy.com/healthcare/miraculous-medical-recoveries/