“A Stop Sign Lodged In His Head”: Medical Workers Share Their “How Is This Person Still Alive?” Stories

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“One of my prior patients is a roofer who lived a very full life of alcohol, women, and drugs. He was infected with HIV, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, and was cirrhotic, and didn’t really care about his health at all. He was thin, weighing 110 pounds on a six-foot frame, which included 20 pounds of ascites in his abdomen. He was angry and didn’t listen to anyone, refusing therapy most of the time. I met him first in the ICU, where he had AIDS, end-stage liver disease, hepatorenal syndrome, unexplained lymph nodes all over his body, variceal hemorrhage, Kaposi sarcoma, and spontaneous bacterial peritonitis. The prognosis of in-hospital death was >90% even with therapy.”

“I was involved in his care for about two weeks, and again, he refused every therapy that his primary physicians suggested. I was surprised he lasted the two weeks. Finally, he was so fed up with the noisiness in the ICU that he requested transfer to palliative care, and was eventually sent to a hospice for patients with advanced HIV to live out his remaining few days.

One year later, I got a call from the hospice requesting a follow-up appointment for him. I was shocked that he was still alive and asked if I could talk to him. He was all better. Turns out he had the hots for his nurse in the hospice and did everything she asked in order to please her, including taking his medications for the first time. She had slowly nursed him back to health, convinced him to restart HIV meds, put him on a low salt diet for his liver disease, and then eventually got him up and mobile.

He spent another six months in a rehabilitation facility, then went back to work. He saw me in follow-up for a while as we treated his Hepatitis C, then his cirrhosis shockingly improved. After a couple of years, he moved to another place to start a construction company and became quite successful financially; he remains abstinent from his former vices.

He’s the only person whom I’ve seen come back from death.”

—u/Ralph_Malfredsson