Redditor scared4lyf was curious to hear more about the statistically unlikely experiences people have gone through, leading them to ask:
"What statistically rare thing happened to you?"
Miracle Birth
"My birth is in a medical journal and my mom still gives me crap about it almost 40yrs later."
Due to my mom's low rib cage and high uterus, I was stuck in the bottom of her rib cage."
"The doctors were convinced I didn't have a head and told my mom her whole pregnancy that I only had a brain stem and she should abort."
"Lo and behold she goes into labor and they rush her in to do a C-section, only to discover I'm stuck."
"They end up laying her all the way open and cutting 3 ribs to get me out."
"She ended up stapled back together."
"(Yay for 1980s science."
" She gave her doctors so much hell about her being right."- Silaquix
Blessed With Strong Bones!
"I've been hit by a semi truck twice, and both times escaped with minor injuries."- mydogsaysimcool
so fetch mean girls GIF by Coolidge Corner TheatreGiphyFrequently Chased By Death
"I was pronounced dead at 6 weeks old."
"I found a dead body when I was 10."- Smoochmypie
"Pick Yourself Up, Dust Yourself Off, And Start All Over Again!"
"I’ve broken my ankles on 5 separate occasions."
"I also have flat feet. "
"Ironically I love running!"- ItsMyCakedayIRL
Lucky Discovery?
"Appendix cancer."
"Accidentally discovered during another surgery."
"No idea there was a tumor the size of an egg on my appendix."- Low_Bus_5395
A Mighty Wind...
"Got hit by a tornado."
"They don’t tell you about how it sucks the air out of the room while you’re inside it."- FriendlyFiber
Angry British Summer GIF by moonbugGiphyTalk About Victim Of Circumstance
"I was born in jail"- cavallinm
You Can Have Too Much Wisdom...
"I had 5 wisdom teeth."
"4 normal ones and 1 tiny one."- more_merkins
Lucky Day!
"My dad my uncle and me were all born on 8/11 different years."- Kimchiandfries
Happy Birthday GIF by Eat'n ParkGiphySome people have all the luck, and some apparently have none at all!
All the more reason we should never assume that any unlikely experience will never happen to us...
We need to hear more good news. I'm so exhausted from the gloom. Cheer me up.
Eat It
"Scientists have discovered a worm that can digest plastic, and they are currently trying to copy it's digestive system. This can help solve a huge problem."
my_username_30
It's Doable
"An Arkansas school district installed 1,400 solar panels, turned a $250k deficit into a 1.8 million dollar surplus due to the amount of energy they saved, and are now raising teachers' salaries by 2,000 or 3,000 dollars."
washyourhands--
"School of dreams!"
InfamousPudding6052
Deep Breathes
"On the surface of Mars, the mars rover was able to successfully separate oxygen from carbon dioxide."
Upstairs_Toe_1402
"That's interesting, but if people are hoping for a breathable Mars, it's far from the only hurdle. Mars' atmosphere is much too thin to ever be surface friendly and IIRC has no ozone layer. Still, it's useful potential technology for any subsurface colony."
imgrandojjo
Webb
"The public release of the first images captured by the Webb space telescope is just ten days away!"
JuniusBobbledoonary
"I've been counting down the days for this! I don't participate in astrophotography myself but I'm absolutely fascinated by it and blown away by what we already have. The Hubble deep-field blew my mind when it really soaked in for me. Webb is immensely more powerful so I can't wait to see what comes through in the future from it."
Merry_Dankmas
Action!
Movie Theater Reaction GIF by CBSGiphy"Some journalist wrote something based off of one of my tweets and now I accidentally named a movie. Even if it sucks I hope the film gets a release since that's a notch on my belt."
artpalos
Now this is the news we need to hear. CNN should sprinkle more of this in.
"Whiskey War"
Alec Baldwin Whiskey GIF by Product HuntGiphy"Canada and Greenland (Government of Denmark) have just come to a peaceful resolution of the 38 year territorial dispute over the highly coveted Hans Island, where they've agree to share the island and split it right down the middle. This is of course the famed 'Whiskey War.' The main aspect of it (swapping schnapps with whiskey or vice versa), I imagine, will remain in some part as a celebrated border-crossing tradition."
i_f**kin_luv_it_mate
Miracles
"Several extremely promising treatments for cancer are being developed."
46from1971
"As someone who lost their dad to cancer, seeing all these breakthroughs is so exciting. He did some experimental treatments, and I know that he helped move some of this along."
OHManda30
"I lost both of mine to cancer… specifically pancreatic cancer for my mom. I heard about the potential breakthroughs with finding a cure for the disease. I’m beyond excited for what this could mean for people suffering."
TheCallousCurd
The kids are alright...
"I was at the Phoenix airport a couple weeks ago. An older gentleman sat next to me at our gate. Both his feet were wrapped in some sort of bandage and he was struggling to get around with a cane. On his other side were a pair of teenagers just giggling over kitten videos on their phones."
"They were strangers but made sure this man got helped to the restroom, had a drink, carried his bag, got to his seat, had access to a wheelchair when he got off the plane! It was seamlessly selfless. The kids are alright. They really are. I'm 47. I am seeing it around me so often."
GoingApeCostume
Wonderful!
"Polio was officially eliminated from Africa last year."
Less_Reflection_7601
"I was in Africa ten years ago and saw it a lot. It's devastating and tragic, and oh so preventable. What a great thing to hear for those people!"
M33tm3onmars
"break the cycle"
Bel Air Reaction GIF by PeacockTVGiphy"More people are seeking to 'break the cycle' of all the crap they had to deal with as children, and I couldn't be prouder."
No-Championship21
You name it...
"The amount of machines in development to clean up plastic pollution is just crazy. Want a large boat patrolling the oceans? What about a small drone for busy waters? A gate stopping plastic in rivers from entering the oceans in the first place? You name it, someone is working on it."
MarcoYTVA
Rubbish
"The ocean cleaner that everyone said wouldn't do anything years ago has carried itself into an outstanding success!"
MsMcClane
"They've also figured out like 7 locations where all the ocean rubbish ends up because of currents. Wonder if this is going to be targeted there now?"
_artbreaker
"Are you sure about that? Last time I checked the number of trash that we dumped in the ocean was several times larger than what any of these projects could clean."
lazyfinger
"trigger"
"Astronomer here! I'm pretty psyched for the first James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) pictures and data, which will be released to the public in just 10 days! One is going to be of the farthest galaxies we've ever seen, and one is going to be of the spectrum of an exoplanet, and probably one or two other things showing the capability of the telescope we don't know yet. The fact that JWST has worked without a hitch, and that we are finally getting to see all this, is so exciting!"
"My own group has JWST time by the way, to study a neutron star merger (I'm not on it, but will definitely be looking over the shoulder of the person in charge when our data comes in!). Our time starts this very month and lasts for a year, and we have no idea when the universe will deliver on the 'trigger' we need to spin JWST in that direction- could be later today, could be in June 2023- I guess we shall see!"
Andromeda321
Hey Jon
Excited John Cena GIF by WWEGiphy"There is a video going around of this Ukrainian refugee woman who told her son that they were going to see Jon Cena in order to get him to escape with her. Jon Cena heard the story and flew over there to see them so he could meet her son."
idk0897
Smells
"I bought a mess ton of milkweed and wildflowers and got rid of 20% of my grass lawn to make a meadow. Bees are thriving in my lawn. I also successfully seed bombed quite a few places in my area from last year's fall that are BLOOMING this year."
SadlyCantGoToEdc
"Good on you! I keep my yard wild and full of flowers. They are pretty but they are for the bees mostly. Have you smelled the milkweed flowers? They smell so good!"
MartoufCarter
501st Legion
"Chapters of the 501st Legion, people dressing as Star Wars characters, visit children's hospitals all over the world. Connecticut has free admission all Summer for kids at museums, zoos and aquariums."
Bigbird_Elephant
"My neighbor is in the 501st! They do a lot of good."
IvoryRosebud93
Killing the Layers
"Ozone layer has been almost 100% repaired after the CFC bans from years ago."
PulverizedAnus
"Really? Do you mind linking your sauce? I didn't think that was possible so soon, like I know CFC's are the worst for Ozone, but I thought there are still plenty of other ozone depleting gases we're producing - methane, halons, nitrous dioxide, etc."
i_f**kin_luv_it_mate
"I've been wondering about this lately. I remember CFCs being called the worst thing for the environment in the 90s, and that we needed to stop using aerosol cans immediately. But I still see aerosols everywhere."
thespickler
I See
Happy Feeling Good GIFGiphy"I know it may be selfish to put here but I’m proud of myself for this. I went from not seeing a purpose in living to living every day with purpose."
DudeManThing1
See there is some good in the world. Let's report more.
Life is infinite and we'll never know everything that is possible. But let's dream of what could be...
Mood Grandma GIFNew pieces...
"I want to see us grow hearts, kidneys, livers, etc... In labs and end the need for donations and waiting lists for transplants."
IMadeThisBullS*itUp
"I waited for a heart/bilateral lung transplant for over a year and I spent 8 months living in the hospital waiting for it. You’re basically waiting for someone to die."
"Which feels all kinds of wrong… but my therapist (all transplant patients sees a transplant therapist) kept reminding me that me needing a heart and lungs doesn’t cause someone to die…"
"And what made even harder was that my mom died of Covid about 5 weeks before my transplant happened. So while I was praying and hoping so hard my mom wouldn’t die… I was also praying for my transplant to happen. I had a lot of mixed and confusing feelings. My transplant happened last November."
Junebug1515
"Idiot Bottom Line"
"To build an environment friendly world."
deadprotocol_
"That depends entirely on how far you want to go with 'environmentally friendly.' Some amateurish pseudo-intellectuals will say that humanity itself is devastating the planet by it's very existence so we'll call that the 'Idiot Bottom Line."'
"So you have to find an acceptable level above that to declare environmentally friendly. For example can we still have hear exchangers? Space debris? Artificial Electromagnetic radiation? There has to be a level before you can declare such and so far no one agrees."
PoorPDOP86
“20 years, tops”
"Viable nuclear fusion."
AlterEdward
"Nuclear Astrophysicist here. I know the joke is that we been saying '20 years, tops' for 50 years now - who do you think came up with that joke? But seriously, we are really close."
"We need a reaction that is self-sustaining and puts out more energy than we put in. We can easily do a reaction that’s one or the other, just getting one that’s both is hard. And with recent updates to the Greenwald limit we found some relatively minor tweaks that doubles previous theoretical max output."
Gleeful-Nihilist
Deep Within
black hole animation GIF by rotomanglerGiphy"Figuring out what Dark Matter is, solving the mysteries of black holes. Proper thorough investigation of our own oceans."
fIumpf
So far, so interesting. We have so much to learn.
let me dream...
news tech GIFGiphy"Prosthetic limbs and organs that can work just as well as real ones. Affordably too. A cure for total nerve damage. Carbon neutral liquid fuel. FTL travel (let me dream)."
idonthaveanaccountA
Contact
"Making contact with another intelligent species in another solar system."
Pigs100
"That's probably not going to happen. I'd be overjoyed though if we discovered even just microbial life in the oceans of Europa or Enceladus. They'd be the first true extra-terrestrials ever encountered."
Cybyss
Going Places
"If we had teleports then we might also have other technologies integrated with it like instant dental work, instant food, instant surgery, things just unthinkable without the technology but before the steam engine travel was by horse so they could not imagine traveling cross country in any other way besides ships. Maybe with teleports we wouldn't need energy, just an infinite loop of the first spark."
Stickerdan
Sickness be gone...
"Cure for all cancer forms."
Kal-El1994
"I approached a nursing assistant with the question. They could describe it as trying to go after the stick of a lollipop. The treatments are mostly concerned with favors, not sticks. If they can discover a way to deal with the stick, then you may be able to treat cancer from there."
MissSara101
"I think it is important to add that there won’t be ONE cure to all cancers. Cancer is such a broad spectrum of diseases that sometimes have next to nothing in common. But hopefully we will keep getting the survival rates up with different medications for different cancer types."
TastyConsideration82
Simplicity
Get Ready Pain GIF by Rodney DangerfieldGiphy"Solve back pain please. We can do crazy sh*t like nuclear bombs, new fancy vaccines and space exploration, yet we don't have a solution to one of the biggest and most common ailments that existed though all of humanity."
inksane
I want to see all of this happen! Fingers crossed.
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Awake and in pain
snakes miracle GIFGiphyHad a woman who was practically unresponsive for days, no sign of improvement, deemed to be end of life.
Arranged discharge to a hospice for end of life care, ambulance arrived and transferred her.
Less than an hour after arriving at the hospice she woke up and asked one of the nurses there for a can of fosters.
Eventually went home and lived for a few years after.
Another one, not really a miracle but it scared the hell out of me: I had been off sick with the good old D+V, first shift back we had a new patient arrive a few hours into shift.
Started admitting him, paperwork and so on. Part way through he told me to stand up, looked at me for a while and said "that stomach pain you have been having - I thought it might be your appendix but you had that taken out as a kid in Scotland, never mind."
I did have it removed when I was on holiday in Ayre - yay butlins!
Stayed as far away from him as I could after that.
Sealed With a Kiss
Nurse here. When I was a new grad there was this young woman who had a severe brain bleed to the point that we removed two skull flaps to relieve pressure. She had a really bad prognosis. Her husband always was at her side and kissed her every day even though she was unresponsive. One day she kissed him back. I happened to be in the room hanging a med when it happened. It was her first purposeful movement after her stroke. She ended up making a pretty great recovery last I heard. Walking and talking. Came back to visit us with her husband. Will never forget it.
On a Walk
As a student nurse I did a placement on a Neuro floor. Had a guy who had had a sever stroke. Aphasia (jumbled words) and 3 x assist with a hoist. Late one evening dude walked past the nurses station like nothing had happened, my preceptor carefully followed him and asked what he was doing. He said "oh just going for a walk" like it was no problem. We followed him around the ward for a bit and then he went back to bed.
The next day he was back to being a full assist. The guys wife said he would go for a walk every evening before the stroke. The doctors think it must of been muscle memory or some other part of the brain driving him (I'm not sure maybe a Neuro person could explain, I'm a cardiac nurse now! Haha).
In the ICU
I am an ENT surgeon. During my post-graduation we were just winding up at 2 o'clock a busy OPD, the senior resident of ob's hospital came rushing on a scooter to get us. As theOPD was locked the phone was no reply and it was the year 1989. Turned out that a full term woman was taken for caesarean under spinal anesthesia and was later given general anesthesia in which a breathing tube was required to be inserted through the mouth/nose into the airway. But she hid the fact while giving history that due to a childhood injury, her mouth opening was just one finger. So it was impossible to go through mouth and a blind insertion through nose wasn't working. (No flexible endoscope at that time).
So they called us to do a tracheostomy (making a hole in airway at the front of neck) through which the tube could be inserted. Meanwhile the only oxygen that the pt could get was through mask. Tracheostomy is a 1 mt procedure in emergency but it was easier said than done. The pt was repeatedly arresting and they would do CPR and the moment we began our work, there would be cardiac arrest again. This happened 5-6, times. Ultimately we succeeded in inserting the tube. It seemed a futile exercise to me. Pt.
Was shifted then to the ICU. The next morning i had a call of some other pt from ICU and went there. A woman came and said, thank you so much, my daughter is fine now! I didn't understand then I went to the bed no. She told me and the pt. Was there, conscious, obeying commands, with no hypoxic damage to brain despite a series of terrifying cardiac arrests. Her daughter from caesarean was also fine and healthy (of course she was delivered before the cardiac arrests.)
Kidneys
I'm an RN, not a doctor. I worked in dialysis for almost five years. People who have acute renal failure (somehow injured the kidney, kidneys got messed up due to an illness, stuff like that) will sometimes get better and be just fine. Chronic renal failure patients (kidneys just get worn out, usually from diabetes and/or high blood pressure) don't get better. Between my main clinic and floating to other clinics over the years I've cared for hundreds and hundreds of patients. Chronic renal patients don't get better.
I got into dialysis because my kidneys were failing and I wanted to know what I was in for. I'd had diabetes for 24 years and high blood pressure for a couple. I was very much a chronic patient. My doctor said I had five, maybe ten years before I'd be on dialysis and looking for a transplant. That was twelve years ago and somehow my kidneys are better today than when I first got diagnosed. The only thing I, or any of the doctors I worked with, can guess is that being in the dialysis center scared my body into somehow fixing them so we don't end up there.
Turnarounds
Doctor here. I've seen a good handful of miraculous turnarounds, but the one that stuck with me is a little different.
I was a medical student, and an elderly gentleman had come in with a worsening of his heart disease. Neither the patient or the cardiac surgeons were thrilled with the idea of surgery. So we were treating him medically the best we could, but he wasn't making much progress. While talking with him one afternoon, I discovered that his wife was also very sick, and also hospitalized.
Because hers was an autoimmune problem, and his was a cardiac problem, they were kept apart in two different hospital units. So, we asked around and got approval to transfer his wife up to the cardiac unit into a shared room with her sweetheart. They were both so ill that they couldn't get out of bed, so we pushed them together. After they all got set up, everybody left to do their paperwork, but I stuck around and talked to them for a bit.
They shared with me that they had been married for nearly 70 years, and bragged about each other, and how grateful they were to have shared their lives with each other. They held hands across their hospital beds and expressed a profound contentment with their time on earth.
The following day, I went to check on them on early morning pre-rounds, but the room was empty. The overnight nurse explained that they had fallen asleep holding hands, and both had passed away in the night.
Nailed
Sick Germany GIF by UpReachGiphyMedical assistant here. I saw a nail go through a guy's thumb and to the other side. Glove included. As we were workman's comp/urgent care and he wasn't severely bleeding, we got an X-ray before we sent him to the ER. The nail was a hairline away from the bone.
His story, paraphrased and in English (he spoke Spanish): "I was using a nail gun at work. I turned off the safety to move quickly and my dumb butt forgot to move my hand."
The X-ray was freaking awesome.
The Untold Science
It happened to me a lot of times as a medic. But we, as the doctors, have to attribute it to some physical, explainable circumstance. Problem is: our scientific community is very cropped, very narrow sighted and arrogant. There is an untold paradigm: "Anything that happens but I don't understand, didn't happen or must be converted to something I can explain", instead of accepting our science is limited and we (humans), at our current level, cannot understand or explain certain things. Current science doesn't like to expand; the scientists who are revolutionary explorers of the unknown are mistreated, marginalized and are not financed.
Miracle with a Catch....
I was a CNA. For three years I broke my back moving this women in and out of her wheel chair to bed and vice versa. And you know how some people just seem to be heavier than others, even though they are the same size. BACK BREAKING WOMAN SHE WAS. One night I am doing rounds. Making sure no is falling out of bed in this nursing home. Norma had gotten herself out of bed and walked over to roommate and was suffocating her with a pillow because she was a constant screamer. I saved a life that night.
Life is Messy
Television Doctor GIFGiphyI'm a doctor. I've seen unlikely things, but unlikely is not impossible. So of course I will see unlikely things.
In terms of explanations, loads of things happen I can't totally explain. Good and bad. That's medicine, we don't know everything. I worry a lot about questions like this because it assumes medicine (or science) has some kind of near total knowledge, which is not true. Ie. It assumes that most things are perfectly explained, but instead run the best or most likely odds of certain things happening and if something happens that is less likely then so be it.
We know lots and lots but we do not know everything. And that is fine! We are constantly learning and trying to advance our knowledge.
That's where all these probabilities come from. Life is messy, things go unexpected ways all the time. That isn't the same as something being unexplained.
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