Man Wakes Up After Family OK's Disconnecting Life Support

Mike Connelly's family and many of his nurses are calling him a miracle man ---- and doctors are hard-pressed to disagree.

The 56-year-old Vista man's heart stopped in late January and he lay in a coma for 96 hours before his family tearfully gave the OK for physicians at Tri-City Medical Center to disconnect life support.

That's when Connelly woke up.

Though doctors had pronounced Connelly's case hopeless and said his brain would never recover, today he is showing steady progress. Those same doctors say Connelly seems headed for a full recovery.

Full Story Here

Crazy story ... can anyone possibly explain how this happened?

[edit to add link]

[edit on 18-2-2009 by baseball101]

Can't explain it but to say that with added motivation...we can do most anything, including awaken from comas and recover from injury...

Thanks for the story!

Haha, this is totally a real life House episode, except the woman had an extra arterie? I think in her heart which cause it to be troublesome, there was heart inflammation in it. Could be a heart defect otherwise, if they don't figure it out you can't guarentee it wont do it again

I can't believe they only waited 96 hours to pull the plug you gotta be kidding me. Nice to know he made it tho.

reply to post by TooManyHumans


haha agreed i was surprised at the 96 hours, of course money could've always been a factor ...

I can't say I'm surprised - that hospital sucks. It's dirty, it smells, and NEVER gets good reviews. I'll have to see what I can dig up. Tri-City is the last place you want to go if your in a health crisis. I'm really glad this guy was able to make a come back.

It happens. Anyone who works with dying patients can tell you that this sort of stuff happens.

Pulling the plug might be the thing that triggers the person to wake up when they would have otherwise stayed comatose. Helped by machines just long enough for a few body systems to straighten themselves out or heal a bit, then pull the plug and part of the brain that controls automatic funtions suddenly reboots.

Yeah, 96 hours that's only 4 days.
Maybe his insurance was running out.
That ususally gets hospital staff to pushing the plug pulling.

Originally posted by TooManyHumans
I can't believe they only waited 96 hours to pull the plug you gotta be kidding me. Nice to know he made it tho.

Of course! He had to wake up to tell his family what (and I quote Johnny Dangerously here) bastiches and fargin iceholes they were.

"Eh, Dad's been out of it for 4 days. Let's kill him. It's not like he doesn't have a nice life insurance policy. Hahahaha!"

Sickening. It's unreal that in this day and age a family would have to choose to let their loved one take their chances with life and death because they can't afford to pay for medical care. This is one of the main reasons why I praise democratic socialism. It's a damn shame the USA won't adopt a system like Canada or the UK.

[edit on 2/18/2009 by pjslug]

Late 2004 Nov 28th the ambulance brought me in straight to surgery, transferred from accident and emergency of another hospital as "nothing they could do" but try some specialists.

I lay in Intensive care afterwards.

Family friends told to come and say goodbye as such.

Discussing things like organ donations as prompted by dept heads.

After rushed to emergency surgery for 2nd crash in 12 hours a couple of days later all told then, when wheeled back in less than 40% chance of living making the next day.

If I did I would never ever walk, talk, communicate or be "Me/Name" ever again and have profound brain damage due to above, the word used was "vegetable" if which they doubted, I survived.

Hey saw the angels and stuff, 12 days in a coma, woke up, dragged myself to the toilet (did a lot of nursing/care work when younger knew when woke up and head cleared a bit the reality of the situation, go for it 100% or else would be like some people I had cared for) Woke up, they reduced drugs a bit, made a fuss demanded to be unplugged from all the unnecessary stuff, and that which was to put it on wheels, and dragged myself with no help to toilet not using a bottle. that was dec the 11th 2004

On dec 22nd that year less than 1 month later, after going to High dependency etc then general ward, in fact I was helping the nurses out quite a bit

Walked out fully unaided out of the hospital and returned just for plastic surgery 6 months later, refused all meds painkillers etc, myriad of tests to get full driving license back, no one would know except me.... Have run teams since then worked 80 hour weeks in very very stressfull and regulated positions...

The mind is a powerful thing, with faith , karma and some divine help to.

It was not his time yet, I remember choosing to come back in my NDE.

Its more than mechanical this I know about life.

You WILL when it is your time experience every single thought action deed from the point of view of the people you do them to, as they felt through their eyes, good and bad.

Some of the little unimportant things as we think in this life turn into quite a big deal there! I was very surprised as some things I thought meant nothing at the time both good and bad I had done and said that in fact were very important in the big picture.

Elf

Wow , I wonder how that person feels knowing his family had given up hold so early and was going to watch him die. I'm undecided on what my reaction would be.