Today, my patient came back from the dead.
True story.
He was legally dead in the morning, and alive that afternoon. And no, I didn't even need to pound on his chest.
He was brought in to the ED after being found in the morning by his family, not moving and unresponsive. A quick CT scan showed that he had suffered a devastating hemorrhagic stroke at his brainstem. There was nothing that could be done for him. He had no reflexes, no response to noxious stimuli, and worst of all, he was starting to show signs of herniation. My attending and my senior resident each performed brain death exams, six hours apart, with apnea tests and everything, and declared him to be dead. They filled out all the legal paperwork, the death certificate, and wrote up a discharge summary.
My co-intern was on call, but we were hanging out in the call room, finishing up notes and tying up loose ends, when we got a call on our emergency phone.
NURSE
Doctor, you need to come see your patient right away.
CO-INTERN
Why, what's going on?
NURSE
He's ALIVE!
We stared at each other blankly, not believing, and then we sprinted to the ICU.
The family had agreed to organ donation, and now the organ donation team was there to start the process. However, as they started putting in IVs and various other things, our patient started moving.
And now here we were, my co-intern and me, watching our patient withdraw to our trapezius pinches and sternal rubs, and coughing quite vigorously as we stuffed a probe down his endotracheal tube.
Holy cow.
We have no idea what happened, or how it happened. But we ended up writing a brand new admission history and physical for our patient, with brand new admit orders, with a brand new status of FULL CODE. Chief complaint? Rose from the dead.
I'm pretty sure he's never going to come out of his vegetative state, but who knows now? He might just end up walking out of our ICU doing calculus.
