A doctor was left stunned last year after a patient who plummeted down a staircase and “effectively died” for 90 minutes was “brought back from the dead” — and survived.
The fascinating scenario surrounds a Maryland man named T.J. Scanlon, 32, who fell down a flight of stairs last March after coming home after a night out with friends, CBS News reported.
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The traumatic fall happened as he was searching for his keys, lost his balance and fell down a 20-foot staircase, laying in a pool of blood for two days before a co-worker and roommate finally found him barely alive.
Scanlon was in bad shape. His legs were gray and black and his skin was blue when his friends discovered him. When he was rushed to the hospital, paramedics and doctors realized the gravity of the situation.
Then, Scanlon essentially died for an hour and a half before being brought back to life — something both he and medical professionals believe was a miracle.
“He was effectively dead for 90 minutes. This is a case like I have never seen before,” Dr. H. Neal Reynolds of the University of Maryland Medical Center told WJZ-TV. “This man was brought back from the dead.”
Despite Scanlon’s harrowing survival, the fallout from the injury was quite serious. He lost some fingertips as well as his left leg, he was paralyzed from the chest down due to an injury to his spinal cord and he had to endure 29 surgeries, as CBS News noted.
“I don’t even remember the first three weeks in the hospital,” Scanlon told the Boston Herald. “Seeing pictures of where I was 11 months ago, it’s crazy to me.”
Despite the intense health challenges, Scanlon said he’s working toward recovery and rehabilitation and that he believes strongly in faith.
“I think for whatever reason, I was meant to be there that night,” he told CBS News. “But I was meant to survive. I was meant to carry on.”
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