🤯 INCRÍVEL: 47 Times Doctors Wanted To Ask Their Patients “How The Hell Are You Even Alive Right Now?” 😲
One time I had a patient who was walking in the street, got hit by a car, thrown into oncoming traffic, bounced off another car, and then got pinned under a third. Or so the EMS report said. He had a dislocated shoulder and a non- displaced femur fracture.
Edit: This happened a few months ago. Not Joe Black.
I had this patient before medical school when I was an EMT and he still sticks with me:
20 something year old male, motorcycle vs SUV; SUV won. We arrived on scene to a man face down in a pool of blood, ~1L. We were told he was wearing a helmet, but it was nowhere to be found. He was about 30 ft from his bike and there was a clear trail of blood to the bike because he wasn’t wearing leathers. We rolled him onto the board and that was the first beating heart I ever saw. His road rash was so bad it eroded his chest wall and we were staring at his heart, a collapsed lung, his great vessels, and the branches of the brachial plexus. Amazingly, they were all intact. Of course he had multiple injuries to his other extremities, mandible, zygomatic arches, etc. but we frankly didn’t care at the time. We were on scene for no more than 2 min before we sped off to the trauma center. I remember transferring the patient to the chief of trauma surgery whose first words when the trauma pad was removed were “Holy s**t!” I thought for sure he died.
Fast forward 2 years when I was at my primary care physician’s office for a checkup after my medical school interview and saw a collection bin for a veteran’s wedding. Guess who? Yup, it was him. They had taken his left arm to reconstruct his chest since the nerves were shot and he recovered.
When I was in trauma surgery in upstate by, got a notification about a man who was shot 3 times in the head. He comes in, literally one eye hanging out of the socket, blood everywhere, and he’s slumped forward. Apparently he was shot in the temple, exited out his right eye socket, in the nose exited from the roof of the mouth, and In the cheek one with exit from the side of the head. At this point I’m thinking they just brought him in so we can pronounce him in the ER because he looked d**d. I go to examine him and tilt his head back, and he’s says “yoooo be gentle!!!!” I jump back and scream like a little boy, as did everyone in the room. Literally the bullets missed his brain in every single shot.
My friend’s father is an Orthopedic Surgeon and he told us a story that once a boyfriend and girlfriend came in because they tried an in-home abortion. By running her pelvis over with a car… Abortion worked but I hope they actually never reproduce.
We have a patient we see at our hospital monthly. Young guy, early 20’s, absolute t**d to take care off. He has diabetes and essentially refuses to take his insulin. He comes in every time with diabetic ketoacidosis, which is essentially your body going into a coma like state due to your blood pH becoming acidotic and very elevated sugars.
The impressive part isn’t that he survives this, most people do. Its that this is a recurring event EVERY month and each time someone manages to find him/get him to the hospital. If he was ever alone when this occurred and no one found him in a timely fashion, he’d be toast. Been seeing him regularly at the hospital for the last 18 months Ive been here.
Anesthesiologist here.
I once had a 20-something year old Jehovah’s Witness as a patient who kept bleeding and bleeding after childbirth. Because of her religion she refused blood transfusions. After other measures failed, we finally took her to the operating room for an emergency hysterectomy that saved her life. In a pregnant woman, the normal hemoglobin (the protein in your blood that carries oxygen) count is between 9.5-15 g/dL. When we took her to the OR, her hemoglobin was 3.1 g/dL. In the ICU after, it was down to 2.6 g/dL.
I remember talking to her before going to the OR, and all she could do was lie flat in bed. If she did so much as lift her head, her heart rate would jump from about 130 to 180 and she started having chest pain. I also had to tell her A) that I didn’t know if she would live through the surgery, and B) that I wasn’t sure how much of an anesthetic I would be able to give her, so there was the possibility she might remember some of the procedure. Fortunately she did survive, and didn’t have any recall. If she wasn’t otherwise young and healthy, I’m sure she would have died.
I work with a dude that has a family history of heart disease. Not many males in his immediate family branch reach pass the age of 60. This man only has one vice. Food. I’ve seen him in action. At one point his caloric intake was over 10,000 calories a day. It’s almost obscene of how many burger meals and giant tubs of soda he puts away in a day. I don’t know the count but when he does need to see a doctor, they always marvel of how he is upright and not d**d with his blood pressure so high. He’s been told more than once that he should be d**d.
Edit: Even more surprising, he is not obese. He’s pudgy and has that dad belly, but not enormous. He’s certainly a wonder.
Paramedic here. I ran a call on a guy that was ejected out of a late 80’s mustang. The guy said the car rolled 2 times before pitching him out of the driver’s side window. He said he landed on his head and the 7 inch scalp avulsion seemed to corroborate his story. The car was completely crushed and sitting on its top. The guy wanted to refuse treatment and transport. GCS 15 and never lost consciousness. I insisted though that he be seen at the ER. He rode the whole way texting people. When I told him that he shouldn’t be alive he said “Yeah I got a hard nugget”.
Not a doctor, but my when I was 18, my mom was at a stoplight when she was rear-ended by a diesel truck going 60….
Her back was broken and her brain was bleeding. At the hospital, her kidneys started to fail, she had internal bleeding, and her blood pressure was in the 20’s. The doctor told us these facts and told us to say good bye. A priest was there and offered her last rights. The next day she was stabilized and I can remember the doctor looking at her like W*F?
My dad had a massive heart attack a few years ago. He proceeded to drive around for several hours disoriented and confused to where the hospital was. He went to a closed fire station and drove around the city for who knows how long.
He had a complete 100% blockage in his Left Anterior Descending Artery. They call it the Widow Maker. Blessed to still have my old man around to say the least.
Not a Medical Doctor but I am (almost) 1/8 of my way through Optometry School.
I did a medical rotation where my consultant was an endocrinologist. We had a young man with type 1 diabetes who would present almost weekly in diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA – actually a medical emergency as can cause coma and d***h) from not taking his insulin and just eating whatever he wanted. Always self discharged once he felt better.
In my last week of the rotation, he came in after overdosing on IV opioids – found by his family after no one having any contact for about 24 hours.
His temperature was 24 degrees celsius in the ambulance and the pH of his blood was 6.76 (7.35-7.45 is normal, less than about 6.8 is not generally compatible with life). The paramedics (who all knew him) genuinely thought this was it for him, as did all the ICU. But as the old saying goes, you’re not d**d until you’re warm and d**d (in that at cold temperatures, your metabolic rate can be slowed to the point where it appears you’re deceased however on warming, your body resumes more normal metabolic function).
Warmed him up in the ICU, treated his DKA and he survived. I rotated away to another hospital before he was discharged but he was out of ICU when I left – awake and interactive.
EDIT: To clairfy, 24 degrees celsius (normal is ~36-37.5).
Bit 7 times by a brown recluse spider when I was five. Don’t even have scars. Doctor said by the 3rd bite I should have been in convulsions. I just remember they itched a lot.
My father in law went to the ER for some sort of pain and it was discovered that he had over 300 blood clots in his legs. Every single blood clot dissolved and he’s alive and well.
I saw a guy who got shot 9 times, three of which were in the neck. Nothing important got hit, so we just cleaned out the wounds, packed and covered them, and that was it.
Obligatory “not doctor” disclaimer.
About a year and a half ago, a friend of mine was going mountain biking. He wasn’t actually on the mountain yet, just riding his bike over to a friend’s house, they were going up on the mountain together. He stopped to tie his shoe and (for some reason) took off his helmet. Finished tying his shoe, pedaled 10 feet, and got hit by a car.
Someone, we suspect it was the driver, called in an anonymous tip to the hospital. They found my friend with a broken skull on the side of the road. Hospitalized him, then discovered that he had a bleed in the membrane between his skull and brain, it was pushing on brain tissue. I believe it was something like a 20% chance of survival. The trauma team drained his skull, stapled it back together, sewed his head up, and two days later he woke up extremely concussed and confused, but otherwise fine.
Scared the hell out of us and his family, but all is well except he occasionally feels the weather and gets a few more headaches than usual. Bright side to all of this is that he found his calling- once he was back in the work force, he immediately became a paramedic, and is currently getting his certification to work as a fire rescue paramedic. Now he saves other people’s lives. Full circle.
I was working as a helicopter retrieval doctor in Australia last year. Called at 2am to a car crash in the middle of nowhere.
Patient was 150kg and 5 foot tall.
So drunk you could smell the alcohol in her blood.
Had been ejected from the front passenger seat of a car through the front windscreen. Wearing no seatbelt.
Had lain undiscovered for 3 hours on the side of the road. The temperature that night was 2 degrees centigrade.
Her entire right scalp had been degloved.
Blood pressure and oxygen saturation were unrecordable at all times on transfer due to shock, hypothermia and body habitus. Carotid pulse only.
GCS 3 (completely unconscious)
Due to her ENORMOUS obesity any movement of her head from the position she happened to land in obstructed her airway.
If she had landed in any other position she would have had no way to breathe and died.
2 hours flight from nearest trauma centre.
Unable to intubate her without d***s due to muscle tone.
Scariest RSI of my life. (D***s to paralyse then intubate)
Middle of a paddock, on ambulance stretcher, under lights, patient placed in RAMP position.
With best rewarming we could do in the helicopter core temperature was 29 centigrade on arrival in ED.
We didn’t carry blood on the helicopter at that time.
Survived and discharged neurologically intact.
We have a homeless patient right now with active endocarditis, end stage renal disease on dialysis, HIV, and a carcinoid tumor. Totally noncompliant with antibiotics even though he has a PICC line and shows up for dialysis once a week maximum. Never got chemo or surgery for the cancer.
Constantly shows up to the ED looking for pain meds or in hypertensive emergency. After treatment he just walks out again.
Gomers don’t d*e.
Not a doctor. But this is what I have been told repeatedly when I was in the hospital for my open heart surgery. “How the hell are you still alive?”
Back story:
I basically was born with a congenital birth defect which has an extremely high mortality rate. Like 1 in 120,000,000 of it happening and about 95% to 99% chance of dying. Not only did I survive it for 20 years, I played lacrosse for 4 years. Now the issue was that I was missing a major blood vessel on my heart that is required to pump blood. My body compensated in such an extreme way that the blood vessel on the right side of the heart went down and around the heart and attached itself to aorta. My heart was basically circulating heart around itself and the rest of my body didn’t get enough blood.
So how it was found out? Blew my nose and full on heart attack.
Surgeons repeatedly stated and asked “How was I alive” and “You played lacrosse for 4 years”. Also, the main surgeon stated that anyone with this condition usually dies at birth. They only know of the condition from autopsies.
TL:DR
I blew nose. Had heart attack. Found out birth defect. All doctors are baffled. I have medical journals of my condition.
Edit: I, for the life of me, cannot remember what my condition was called. I will make a call monday to my cardiologist and find the name. So be prepared to be updated on the name.
Edit: I just got off the phone with my cardiologist nurse. It is called anomalous left anterior descending artery.
Since you didn’t specify how long they stayed alive… In med school I had a patient who got shot in the head a couple blocks away from the hospital. He was still able to talk for a few minutes after arrival, but it was clearly not a survivable injury. I stayed with him as his brain started to swell. I remember the moment his eyes became dull and his speech slurred to a stop.
There was a guy who ODed, was found by his roommate unconscious. Had to be resuscitated. Was barley responsive to painful stimuli. Blood pH was 6.6. Now normal blood pH is between 7.35-7.5 (and remember pH is a logarithmic scale), typically 6.8 is not considered compatible with life. He ended up waking up and following commands for a bit. Just crazy.
I am a doctor! My moment to shine.
Patient was driving a motorbike. We were informed that dispatch had been sent to pick up a motorbike vs logging truck, bike was behind the truck which had lost its load of logs at highway speeds. Trauma team is activated, we have called for blood.
Guy walked out of the ER after period of observation. When he saw the logging truck lose its load, he simply let go of his bike and fell of the back. Rolled a bit and got some bumps and bruises, but fine.
Second case off the top of my head was a 92 year old lady with urosepsis (bacterial infection in her blood from a urinary tract infection). Her initial gas had a pH of around 6.7, and a lactate of 12 (too acidic and too high for the non medical peeps – young patients would have a hard time surviving that let alone the very elderly). She was unconcious, but had received one dose of cipro (an antibiotic) by mouth from her family doctor before becoming altered.
Family agreed to a comfort (Do not resuscitate) level of care and said their goodbyes.
The next morning, the resident on call got pages asking if Mrs Blahblahblah could eat – she was awake and hungry. Guess the dose of cipro kicked in.
Do I need to say not a doctor at this point? I feel like it’s a given. When I was in 9th grade a friend of mine got into a car wreck. It was a car full of teens in the middle of the day. There were no injuries, but one of the parents insisted that all of them go to the doctor and get x-rays. Mind you, these are lower class people in a podunk town in the podunk state of Kansas, so the fact that someone felt strongly about this is and they all took it seriously is a miracle in itself. After hours of waiting around and taking turns, my friend goes in for her x-ray. When they look at the x-ray, they realize her neck is broken. It’s called a “hangman’s break” because that is how your neck breaks at the gallows. Her spine is entirely broken, just sitting on top of itself. All she had to do at any point was tilt her head up, sneeze, whatever, and she would have instantly died. It’s just insane thinking about. They put her in a halo (think Gretchen Weiners) and she healed and was fine.
EDIT: OK, REGINA GEORGE. No idea so many people are so passionate about Mean Girls, but my bad.
I’m not a doctor but I was EMS for a few years and one day we came up on an accident on the highway involving a motor cyclist and a minivan, usually that is not good, at all…it’s always a mess.. We get there and find out he hit the minivan at 80 MPH while it was stopped on the side of the road and flew through the back window, through to the front and survived without a scratch on him, no broken bone no AMS (altered mental status aka blunt head trauma)… he even got himself out the van and asked if the people inside were okay. He was wearing a helmet and I think that saved his life.
Blew my mind.
Not a doctor, but my sister’s cardiologist has this story now. My family has had trouble holding on to health insurance for many years, but my sister’s yearly heart checkups have been a priority — she was born with Ebstein’s anomaly of the tricuspid valve, which basically means blood leaks backwards and pumps oxygen very inefficiently. One year her appointment got postponed a few months due to a switch in providers and all that stupid s**t.
My sister was in 10th grade gym class and having trouble running every day. That’s what she told us — “I feel kinda sick after class” which we thought would mean she got lightheaded. Turns out she was puking every class due to the exertion. My parents immediately decided that checking up on her heart would be the best decision and thank god they did.
Her cardiologist said her heart was “the size of a small watermelon” and it was “an absolute wonder” she was only puking and not passing out or literally dropping d**d if she was running a mile in less than 30 minutes (and I think her mile was under 15). He said it was one of the most advanced states of Ebstein’s he’d seen, if not the worst currently unoperated case in the country (US).
Basically, she had to have an emergency open-heart surgery (Cone procedure and Bidirectional Glenn at Boston Children’s), and now, 4 years later she’s still on medication and is looking to get a pacemaker. Unbelievably, the a*****e gym teacher still gave her a B- final grade.
I’ve been struck by three cars , worked in a coal mine untill a shaft collapsed with my team in it, worked making fireworks untill a stray spark detonated the ‘powder shack’ i was walking out of, I’ve fallen off of roofs, and was even a passenger in a jeep that flipped…my only excuse is I’m to ugly to d*e lol.
Not a doctor but I do medical research which includes chart abstractions. I was abstracting a chart on a 90+year old rancher in Montana – still an active dude without any major health issues. I was abstracting what lead up to his minor heart attack and couldn’t hardly believe the ICD-9 codes so I went into the more granular notes. A storm rolled in while he was checking on the cattle so he hopped on his 4 wheeler to get home. BOOM he gets hit by lightning causing him to wreck his 4-wheeler. He must have been okay because he gets up and starts hobbling home – only to step on a rattlesnake and get bitten. Shakes that off too and manages to get home only to have a heart attack while waiting for medical services to get to his rural home. This dude had ICD-9 codes for lightning strike, motor vehicle accident, snake bite, and heart attack all on the same day. Spent like 4 days in the hospital and went home seemingly no worse for wear.
D**n I hope I’m that resilient at 90.
*Edit* There are no HIPAA identifiers here – I just did my kazillionth HIPAA training last month. Even specifying from Montana is okay. You aren’t suppose to disclose age for patient’s 89+ but ‘such ages and elements may be aggregated into a single category of age 90 or older’. I’m not even sure the dude was over 90 – I just remember he was old-old.
I got sick when I was 19, soon after I had returned from hiking the PCT. Sick enough to be hospitalized, sick enough that all of my family flew out to talk to me, sick enough that my doctor told me, “You’re going to d*e soon. This is a reality. We do not know what it wrong with you, and if you live it will be under a power greater than me and my colleagues can muster… (At this point he got super uneasy.) I’m keeping you in my prayers.”
So it was at that point, while enduring multiple organ failure, that I tried to make peace with my very small and short time on this earth. For a week I was as ill as anyone who was dying in the ICU with me. I spent 80ish of those hours in a coma and the rest in a partially waking/resting state that was painful and awful. On the eighth day I could feed myself… Although it was difficult because during the previous seven and a half days my body destroyed about 30% of it’s muscle mass in chunks in various places (My right leg on my thigh, both of my biceps, my lumbar on the left side, the top of my abdominal muscles, and the muscles in my right hand.
While I was making the attempt at feeding myself the doctor poked his head in and said, “You might be getting better. Whatever you’re doing, keep it up. How’s the pain?”
Well, the pain was bad, but I wanted to live. Withing a week I was standing and six months later you wouldn’t have known I was ever sick (except for a light limp that remains to this day many years later).
The attending physician while I was in the hospital who said these things to me and talked to me saw in his office about three months into the recovery process. He said almost those exact words, “I do not know how you lived.” The doctor then told me that he had told my family to make arrangements for my d***h right after that initial conversation and that when I had slipped into a coma he was pretty sure that was the end of it.
That’s my story of medical trauma.
Edit: Apparently I didn’t make it clear but they never figured out what made me sick. As a stop gap to secondary infections I was put on antibiotics and fluids, but they never found out.
Not a doctor, but I self checked into a pysch center because I was going through some s**t. They monitor all your vitals and stuff
My BP was 220/180 ( Fairly certain that’s correct). I didn’t even know because I didn’t look. This was at 10 PM so they had to call the on call doctor and checked it three times. Apparently me saying I felt normal was really weird. Handed me pills and said ” this is the dose I give people with heart failure.”.
Not doc story.. military sea story:
I worked on Ejection Seats (job is called AME). There was a legend in my trade of a guy at Norfolk Naval Air Base that was working on a Martin Baker ejection seat that didn’t have a properly disarmed drogue gun (see diagram, drogue gun at 2oclock position http://www.aereo.jor.br/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/MB-MK-1-ejector-seat.jpg). Since the drogue gun wasn’t properly disarmed, when he went through the timer checks the component fired. Unfortunately his head was hovering above the large heavy piece of steel that fires from the drogue gun to pull the drogue chute out (see huge steel bar in diagram). Apparently it went through his chin and out of the top of his head. It cleanly pulled 20 feet of cord through his head, then the drogue chute. The chute went half way into his head then got stuck. It was so firmly planted in the 2″ diameter hole going through his grape that it stopped any bleeding. They cut him out of the cables and took him to the hospital for surgery. Other than the 2″ hole in his chin and the top of his head he was completely fine and was back to work two weeks later.
tl;dr – don’t use ejection seats against zombies.. won’t work.
Not a doctor, pediatric respiratory therapist in the ICU. Admitted a patient who arrived in the ER already on d***h’s door. He was in a hemolytic crisis as a result of some infection. He wasn’t coding, but it was definitely an “any second now” scenario. We established an airway, intensivist placed a line, and my major stuff is done so I became a gofer/helper/b***h because that’s what you do. One of the nurses turned to me and handed me two specimens to send to lab. One is pink tinged but mostly clear, the other is dark red/brown and thick. She says,
“Urine and blood!” I turn to find the requisition forms to send them off, and she pulls my shoulder and turns me back around. She grabs my hand with the thick brown liquid, shakes it just a bit, “THIS is the urine,” she grabs the clear liquid, ” and THIS is the blood!!!” I say, “For real?” She says, “Yes!” I send them to lab in the tube station and not 5 minutes later my phone is ringing and lab is b******g at me for incorrect labeling.
They started trying to transfuse the kid, but he’d begin having adverse reactions almost immediately, and they’d have to stop. This also prevented them from putting him on ECMO, (heart/lung machine for the critically ill) because ECMO requires donated blood to prime the circuit. When I came off shift, he was still holding on by a thread but I think everyone there assumed this kid was a lost cause.
My next shift was a few days later, and to my utter shock, he had lived. Not only that, but his brain and internal organs hadn’t sustained any lasting damage. He lost the tip of one finger, but that was it. During rounds the kid’s whole d**n family was there, and the intensivist is telling them how great he’s doing, how he exceeded everyone’s expectations and is basically a miracle. All the most polite ways of saying “We totally thought your kid was a goner.” The parents were very nice, but there was one grandma who kept harping on the finger, what happened to it? Why couldn’t we save it? Some people just don’t get it.
Back in 75 we lived in the country and we had two wolves and several other dogs. One morning after my mother had taken the kids to the bus stop the male wolf got it into his head to attack me. I was on my back with this 95-pound wolf trying to rip out my throat. I’m fighting for all I’m worth, I’m prying his mouth off, I’m hitting him with my fist. My Black Lab broke her chain and came to the rescue and saved my life. My shirt was torn to shreds, I had puncture wounds in my throat, my fingers were torn. Had it not been for my Lab, I’d have died. A week later dad took the wolf off and shot him. The Lab was a rescue dog, dad had found her on the side of the road and brought her home. Never knew who to thank, the bad guy for dumping that dog on the road, or dad for saving her. Of course, I thanked the dog and she always got special treats.
A year and a half ago my dad got a new cardiologist because of insurance reasons and high blood pressure. He got standard new doctor tests, the doctor gave him an echo-cardiogram (I think). He called my dad when he got the results and told him to get to the ER immediately, he had an aortic dissection. My dad, not knowing what that was, charged his phone up, finished his episode of the Young and the Restless, and called car service. For the majority of people who don’t know what an aortic dissection is, it’s when there’s a tear in your Aorta, which causes the blood leaving your heart to fill up the walls of the artery until it has an aneurysm and it bursts. Basically, if it bursts, you d*e. It’s what k****d John Ritter. Usually, when it tears, you feel pain in your chest, but in very few cases there’s no pain. My dad was one of the very few cases. The mortality rate once the aorta tears is 1-2% per hour for the first 48 hours, meaning 50% d*e within the first 2 days. When he got to the hospital, his aorta was 3x the size of a healthy persons, and the surgeon said that it was likely dissected for 4 days minimum, and if he waited a few more hours he would certainly be d**d. After the surgery to replace his artery with an artificial one, which took 8 hours and involved essentially (and intentionally) k*****g him 3 times, the surgeon told him he was a miracle case and he really shouldn’t be alive, as his aorta was past the size it ruptures 9/10 times. The kicker? When he called my aunt to tell her she was the emergency contacy, he told her he was having minor surgery on his big toe, because he didn’t want anyone to worry. Nobody besides his girlfriend (she knew but had to fly back home so she couldnt be the contact) knew until 6 hours into the surgery what it actually was.
TL;DR insurance made dad get new doctor, new doctor found something in a standard first visit test, sent him to the hospital. Should’ve been d**d by the time the doctor saw it, went to hospital to have emergency open heart surgery with only a few hours maximum to spare.
I have hypoglycaemia/hyperinsulinaemia which is basically low blood sugar as a result of my pancreas over producing insulin (Think the exact opposite of T1 diabetes). Once when I was given a normal coke instead of a diet coke at Maccas I started to get symptoms and passed out in about 30 seconds before I could get to my glucagon. Paramedics arrived and tested my blood sugar level which was 10 mg/dl (0.55 mM). I ended up dying and being revived by paramedics after I received a shot of glucagon. Afterwards the paramedics told me that I had actually died and been revived I turned to him and said ‘Brainzzzzzz’.We both had a laugh.
And since I am a doctor/med student, this story still fits the question.
Not a doctor but a friend of mine was hit by an Escalade while riding her scooter to her pet sitting job years ago. The police unfortunately thought she was unconscious and her injuries were so bad he told the trauma team to let him know when she passed for his report. She remembered that he said that and told him later lol he was the one that drove her home from the hospital afterwards he felt so bad about saying that.
Truly though, with nothing to really protect her she was seriously injured, massive head trauma. Her motorcycle helmet broke in half, broken bones, separated shoulder. The doctors thought she wouldn’t make it either but she’s back to working though she doesn’t use a scooter anymore for sure.
Patient not the doctor.
About 18 months ago was in a bike crash. Shoulder of the road gave way and I went Into a gravel, concrete, and brush lined ditch about 4 feet deep at a speed of 24mph according to my cycling app and was motionless for around 12 mins. I woke up in the ditch having zero memory of anything. But bleeding and in pain. Major road rash across my entire right shoulder blade and rib cage. My left lower palm was ripped open to near bone. My water bottle was flung about 50 yards down the road.
I got back on the bike and rode 3.5 miles home. Realized my shirt was ripped open covered in blood. Head gashed open from where the front of my helmet broke on Initial impact. Side was dented and back of the helmet broken in 2 places. Changes and drove myself to the ER.
Explained my injuries at the desk and was in a bed with a trauma team at my side in like 3 min. Full body CT scan later…i had broken the 3 upper ribs on the right and the first upper rib on the left. Grade 3 separated shoulder, broken forearm and elbow and of course a fairly major concussion.
Doctor said the upper rib fracture is associated with fatal head and neck injuries about 75% of the time. Breaking both upper ribs on each side while not as high a fatal injury is almost always associated with severe head and neck injuries I using paralysis. I luckily had no neck or head injury other than concussion. It’s likely the 8inch titanium plate holding my clavicle together from a previous injury along with the helmet saved my life.
I’ll never forget the look on the Trauma Docs face when he said “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen someone walk into my ER with these Injuries. They usually arrive by ambulance or helicopter.”
He was amazed I rode my bike he and drove myself in despite what had to be enormous pain. I said well adrenaline and a concussion numbed the pain until I laid down on the we bed, then I couldn’t move.T. Tried to get me to stay the night but I wanted to go home.
Nurse here, but I have some good stories coming from level 1 trauma center.
I had a pedestrian vs train once. He was stumbling home drunk and passed out on the train tracks. He was hit straight by the front of thevtrain, bounced to the side, got hung on the side of the train, and then dragged 100 yards while the train stopped. He wound up in a coma for a week and paralyzed from the waist down, but he lived with no major nerological deficits (other than the whole not able to move his legs thing).
Had a patient once with throat cancer and his tumor ate through his carotid artery. Due to the cancer and a previous surgery he had a fistula (a hole) in his neck. He and his wife were at home… he was dozing in the sun room. Wife goes to the kitchen and comes back to see him covered in blood and bloody handprints on the glass door where he tried to open it and get help. He had perfed his carotid artery and the blood was pouring (spurting?) out of his fistula. This tiny little old lady pulled the drapes from the window, jumped on his neck, and pushed her life alert button. Somehow she held pressure enough to keep him from bleeding out, and we actually save the man with very little neuro defiict. People perf carotids in the ICU and don’t survive the run to surgery… and he survived until EMSA got to him and got him to the hosptial, all because his wife thought quick and was remarkably strong.
Im not a doctor, but this guy where I worked got stabbed through his stomach, cut his liver, crushed his lung by a water ski. After this, he swam all the way back to shore.
Obligatory not a doctor but, my great grandmother and grandfather both scared doctors.
My great grandmother did so by having a blood pressure of 240/190 for 3 months straight including being on a no salt diet for 3 months minus 1 day of it until one day it just dropped back to normal. There was no damage to her body anywhere including with the blood vessels.
My grandfather had polio when he was a kid (think between WW1 and WW2) and they thought he would d*e since it took out his ability to move anything below his lungs. He ended up being that bad and then it was as if polio decided to just retreat. It was gone within a couple of weeks and the only long term damage after everything was miminal. He just had his growth plates inactive for a while so he ended up fairly shorter than his dad and my dad.
I was diagnosed with bilateral pneumonia while in boot camp. It started as a cold that got really bad, really quick. Coughing up blood, shortness of breath, etc. When I finally went to medical I had a 103 degree fever and O2 sat of 65ish. Went to the hospital on base where they x ray’d me. I knew something was really bad when every person in the place was huddled around the picture pointing and giving me wierd looks. Turns out about 80% of my lungs had filled up with fluid. I was eventually transported off base to an ICU where I spent 5 days getting my lungs drained and recovering. I still have doctors give me wierd looks when they look at my medical files.
Well, this story has happend somewhere arround the 70s to my uncle and even made it to the newspaper.
My uncle was driving on a scooter one afternoon on a country road when he was hit heavily by a car from the back. He fell of the scooter, flew through the windshield of the car and came to an halt on the backseat.
The driver of the car steped on the break so that he flew from the backseat again through the windshield and ended lying on the road. Except from some bruises he was unharmed.
When the police came both, my uncle and the Driver of the car told the same story (which they didn’t believed in the first place). However my uncle had lost a shoe in the back of the car so finally also the police got convinced.
My Grandma cut out the article from the newspapaer and it is still in a Frame in her living room :-).
When I was a paramedic student I was doing placement in my home town which was a rural town of about 12K people, so there was a reasonably sized hospital. Around my former home there were a lot of smaller communities ranging from 2k down to a few hundred people.
We get called first thing in the morning to the hospital to come pick up a guy who came in over night and take him to the airport for transport via plane to Melbourne.
He’s basically up in the hills where there’s nothing but winding roads, wombats and kangaroos where he came off his motorcycle after attempting to dodge some of the local wildlife that clearly didn’t give a f**k about looking both ways before crossing the road. He’s given himself a good old skittle down the road, picked himself up and dusted himself off and in true Aussie fashion decided, ‘Bit f****d, better go get someone to take a gander at this.’
He self presented to the local police station in a small town of about 1,500 people to say, “Yeah… f****d up a bit. Need some help mate,” at which point they’ve immediately called the ambos to come and collect him.
It’s a good two hour and change drive to the hospital where they X-ray him and discover a cervical spine (neck) fracture and refer him to the surgical unit in Melbourne. Not bad for a bloke that’s broken his neck and decided “F**k it, better rock around to the cop shop to get this sorted out.”.
Anesthesiologist here.
We had a fine young gentleman who was shot while diving away from a gang-related bullet. A single bullet hit is right subclavian vein, went through his right lung, right diaphragm, liver, many loops of bowel, hit both his left Iliac artery and vein, and lodged in his sacrum.
He coded (heart stopped, no blood pressure) in the ED, got an ED thoracotomy, internal cardiac massage, and got his heart restarted. 200+ units of blood product and 10 hours of emergent surgery later, he made it to the ICU.
Before that night, I had never seen someone survive after an ED thoracotomy and had never given someone that much blood. He walked out of the f’ing hospital…
My uncle lost some stupid amount of blood to internal bleeding and then had a ten hour emergency surgery. He was offered a priest and told this could be it right before surgery. Still alive, still dealing with serious complications.
Not a doctor. Happened to my brother when he was in his early 20s. Going over a snowy mountain pass and he is in the passenger seat. The driver goes into oncoming traffic and the side my brother was on hit an oncoming truck head on ~80mph both cars. His seatbelt was ripped out along with his whole seat of the car and even some of the car (i was 5 when this happened and no one really remember what happened because of the collision). He flew onto the guide rail of the cliff and slid his whole chest down it cutting into him with the seat still on his back. Then he flips of the edge of the cliff, unconscious at this point and they speculate from the blood trails he slid down the mountain in the seat. He was airlifted to the best hospital in the state and remained in critical condition for 3 months. He now has several massive scars (several inches wide and about an inch deep) across his chest, arms and legs where he was cut open by the rails and doctors. The doctors said they never believed he would live. Not even 1 in a million. They said he should have died from 12 different things before he even got to the hospital. He is 37 now.
ER doc here. Lots of crazy cases. I had a patient who had an industrial spike aerator that he was pulling behind a tractor. He put the tractor in neutral to clear some brush and it slipped into first. When EMS arrived the tractor had stalled and he had 4-5 inch puncture wounds up his leg and abdomen. It stalled just before hitting his chest. He lived long enough to make it into the helicopter to transport on a vent. As far as I know he survived but I’m sure he lost the leg and some organs. Absolutely crazy seeing them wheeling him in like a pincushion.
I was an ER physician in rural Oklahoma when a 43 year old woman was brought in who had slid off of a bridge into an icy river below. Fractured her neck and all four extremities were paralyzed. For two days she watched as rats chewed her fingers and toes down to nubs and couldn’t move or do anything about it. Finally, she was discovered and brought in by ambulance. She went into kidney failure but still lived for several years afterwards.
Hope you sleep well tonight!
Not a doctor, but the head of trauma at the hospital I was sent to after my accident tells my story frequently. I was thrown from a horse a little over 16 years ago. I dislocated both hips and both knees, completely shattered C5 and L1-L4 (including all all of the spinous and transverse processes and facet joints), had flail chest from multiple broken ribs and costovertebral separation, a moderate – severe TBI, and whiplash. The craziest part is that I had no internal bleeding despite my spine and ribs being an absolute mess.
📢 Gostou da notícia? Compartilhe com os amigos!
Este artigo é uma tradução automática de uma fonte original. Para ler o conteúdo na íntegra: Clique aqui.