Miracles of Life...

Life, existence of all forms, truly excites me!! I love to read about medical miracles and I love learning about medicine...the thing is though, when you're in medicine, you are always learning!! Or re-learning....sometimes it really helps to refresh your memory of things you learned once upon a time. Since I'm soooooo very fascinated in medicine, I'm going to try to start posting medical miracles from time to time...

I don't know about anyone else, but this stuff just gets me goin...
Sometimes we all have patients whose family members will ask you, "Well, how long do you think he has?" or "The doctors give him 3 months, what do you think?"

I always tell them that in life, there are no guarantees and that no one knows when they will die...or if someone will get better, etc...

When all hope is lost, we expect to give up!! Most of us anyway, but there are the occasional few that "never" give up!! and for them, sometimes it pays off!!!

I got the following article from Yahoo news... and it's fascinating stuff!!

Please read:

OKLAHOMA CITY - Four months after he was declared brain dead and doctors were about to remove his organs for transplant, Zach Dunlap says he feels "pretty good."
Dunlap was pronounced dead Nov. 19 at United Regional Healthcare System in Wichita Falls, Texas, after he was injured in an all-terrain vehicle accident. His family approved having his organs harvested.
As family members were paying their last respects, he moved his foot and hand. He reacted to a pocketknife scraped across his foot and to pressure applied under a fingernail. After 48 days in the hospital, he was allowed to return home, where he continues to work on his recovery.
On Monday, he and his family were in New York, appearing on NBC's "Today."
"I feel pretty good. but it's just hard ... just ain't got the patience," Dunlap told NBC.
Dunlap, 21, of Frederick, said he has no recollection of the crash.
"I remember a little bit that was about an hour before the accident happened. But then about six hours before that, I remember," he said.
Dunlap said one thing he does remember is hearing the doctors pronounce him dead.
"I'm glad I couldn't get up and do what I wanted to do," he said.
Asked if he would have wanted to get up and shake them and say he's alive, Dunlap responded: "Probably would have been a broken window that went out."
His father, Doug, said he saw the results of the brain scan.
"There was no activity at all, no blood flow at all."
Zach's mother, Pam, said that when she discovered he was still alive, "That was the most miraculous feeling."
"We had gone, like I said, from the lowest possible emotion that a parent could feel to the top of the mountains again," she said.
She said her son is doing "amazingly well," but still has problems with his memory as his brain heals from the traumatic injury.
"It may take a year or more ... before he completely recovers," she said. "But that's OK. It doesn't matter how long it takes. We're just all so thankful and blessed that we have him here."
Dunlap now has the pocketknife that was scraped across his foot, causing the first reaction.
"Just makes me thankful, makes me thankful that they didn't give up," he said. "Only the good die young, so I didn't go."

END of article...

so, the question is, "When should one give up?"

We can't keep every life going just to see if they ever get better...right?

Then there's the guy who was in a coma for 19 years and all of a sudden he woke up...
He has a daughter and he doesn't know who she is because she was just a baby when he went into the coma.....

stories like that are truly amazing...
hmmm, makes ya think doesn't it?

kT