"Were you ever that 1 in 1,000,000? If so, what's your story?"
Unexplained Malaria
"Not me, my wife."
"We lived in Jacksonville, Florida."
"She rarely gets sick, but has mild insomnia."
"Around Wednesday, she had a low fever, and complained of aches and sweats at night and trouble sleeping."
"That weekend she wanted to see the Doctor."
"I told her she probably had the flu, just wasn't used the aches, and she always has trouble sleeping, but if she was still feeling bad Sunday we'd go to a clinic."
"Saturday night she couldn't sleep so we made an appointment for Sunday afternoon."
"But on our way there, sure enough she's feeling better."
"Doctor checks her out, she's feeling fine now, no fever, he says she probably had meningitis but is recovering."
"I'm due to go on a business trip to California the next day, Monday, and ask him if he thinks it's fine I go."
"He says, yeah, no problem."
"That evening, wife is eating and laughing and all is good."
"Monday morning I leave early."
"That afternoon, my neighbor calls, and lets me know my wife was wandering in the street in a delirium."
"My wife didn't know where she was, so the neighbor drove her to the ER."
"I book a flight home that night."
"The hospital checks her out."
"She has a fever, her blood cell count is in the basement, and she is completely out of it mentally. "
"They're not sure what's wrong, and a bunch of specialists start descending on her."
"I have to fill out a bunch of paperwork on her medical history, where we've been, etc."
"They think maybe it's some weird auto-immune disorder."
"Not good."
"She gets a bunch of transfusions and put on a cocktail of meds while they figure it out."
"Third day in the hospital, the infectious disease guy comes in."
"Blood parasite."
"Maybe tick born."
"She'd been to the mid-West recently, coulda caught it if she went walking in the woods or a park."
"Next day he comes in."
"Figured out the parasite."
"'Why didn't you tell me she left the country?'"
"Huh?"
"She hasn't."
"'Well, she has malaria'."
"Malaria?"
"I thought you couldn't get that in the U.S."
"'You can't, you need to go home and bring me her passport'."
"What the hell?"
"I retrieve her passport."
"CDC comes, does a whole case study on her, which they wouldn't release to us."
"Mosquito traps setup around the neighborhood, mysterious vans start driving by spewing clouds of stuff."
"My wife stays in the ICU for a week, but recovers just fine. "
"If you look at the 2010 CDC Infectious Disease report you'll see a discussion of malaria, and how the XX number of cases all are related to people recently returned from endemic areas, except for one woman in Duval County, Florida who received it from a cryptic vector." Reddit
Invisible Appendix
"When I was 14 years old, I woke up one day with heavy stomach cramps."
"We called the hospital and they told us that i probably have a stomach flu and should go to the doctor next morning."
"After one of the worst nights ever, vomiting and sleeping next to the toilet we went to the doctor."
"I had a fever of 40 °C and was aching a lot."
"The doctor told me I had to to go to ER and have it checked out because she thought my appendix was inflamed and causing the pain."
"We went to the ER and I stayed in the hospital for about 2 weeks, but they couldn't find anything."
"They treated me with broad range antibiotics and after 2 weeks I was feeling a bit better and they told me to go home and recover."
"The night i got back from the hospital I went to bed and started hallucinating that I lived in a retirement home and that pirates were coming to steal our food."
"So I was flailing around trying to fend of pirates when my mother came in and asked what all the fuss was about."
"I told her what was going on and she looked at me like I had summoned a devil."
"She took my temperature and she instantly took me to the ER again."
"I had a 41°C fever."
"When we went back to the hospital I got treated immediately for inflammation and they did a wide range of test again."
"They saw that something in my body was inflamed but they couldn't find it."
"I stayed in the hospital for about 2 more weeks when they finally found what was going on."
"My appendix was inflamed and burst the night ."
"I was having the hallucinations but on all the scans they couldn't see my appendix."
"The doctor told me that if I came in 2 days later I would have died because of the puss flowing in my body."
"Apparently there is a 1% chance of all the appendix cases that the appendix is so stretched out that they couldn't see it on the scans or that the area was so inflamed they didn't see it."
"So after staying on antibiotics for about 2 more weeks they finally removed my appendix and all the pain was gone."
"I stayed in the hospital for over 4 weeks just because of my appendix and my bad luck on being that 1%."- Warplevel
Making The Happiest Place On Earth Even Happier!
"For my seventh birthday we went to Disneyland."
"They just happened to be having a car a day giveaway when we were there."
"For my seventh birthday, Mickey Mouse gave me a Pontiac firebird."- CaptchaGremlin
earth reasons GIFGiphyUnique Allergy
"I'm allergic to potatoes."
"Never met someone else who is so I guess it's one in a million."
"Never eaten chips or fries."- Mannaminne
Life Saving Bacteria
"I was diagnoses with leukemia i got a bacteria growth wich killed the leukemia, a real 1 in 1,000,000 chance."
"I almost died thanks to that bacteria though."- InNeedOfFriend
An Odds Defying Love Story
"How I met my wife."
"I’m from the Netherlands, she is from the US."
"We met in Israel."
"It was my first weekend in Israel, decided to go on a pub crawl to meet some people and have fun, as I’m buying the ticket my now wife walks up to the counter to also buy a ticket."
"The girl working there introduces us, we hit it off the first night but I’m leaving in 2 days to stay with friends of friends in the middle of the desert for 3 months."
"2 days after I leave I lose my phone, don’t have any way to get back in touch with her."
"I had little money and could stay/work with the people in the desert."
"But I kept thinking about her so after a week I say I’m leaving."
"Take the next bus, goes 3 times a week, at 5am, and then a train to Tel Aviv."
"I had no idea how to find her, where to stay and very little money."
"I email a couple hostels to find a work/stay agreement."
"Those jobs are very popular and usually planned months in advance."
"I get an email back when I arrive in Tel Aviv."
" I can come in for an interview because they have a spot, this is already ridiculously lucky."
"Right after the interview and dropping of my belongings, I went back to the first hostel to see if they would give me information."
"They wouldn’t give me anything."
"Now I’m at a loss, Tel Aviv is a city of more than half a million people, I don’t know anyone and have little more than the clothes on my back."
"Kind of defeated I start wandering around/exploring the city."
"After a couple hours I get hungry and decide to treat myself to a restaurant."
"I’m well out of the tourist area and find a place that’s almost empty and rather cheap."
"I sit down, order a drink and something to eat."
"As I get my food I see my now wife walking past the restaurant."
"She sees me I see her."
"I’m literally dumb struck and just kind of grin and wave."
"Remember how I lost my phone?"
"She didn’t know that and just thought I ignored her."
" She waves and keeps walking."
"I throw like 200 shekels, way too much, in the table and sprint after her, explained and the rest is history."- Dominusatrox
John Cusack Serendipity GIF by MIRAMAXGiphyJaundice
"I am a 19 year old male. In August of last year, I was driving with my sister, when suddenly her face turned cold. “Gavin your eyes are yellow”, I remember her saying. I quickly pulled down the passengers mirror, and to my horror, two yellow eyes radiated back at me.""
"Fast forward, I spent a month being sick, the initial diagnosis was Hepatitis A.
"Went back to the doctor, nothing was better(things were worse in fact). Was sent to the ER, then to the liver transplant unit at UCSF. By this point my eyes had turned muddy orange, and my pee was the color of... a mahogany tree."
"Anyways, the team of liver doctors at UCSF managed to save my liver. I was diagnosed with autoimmune hepatitis. Oh, and my eyes are white again :)"
User Deleted
Crash
"I survived a “non-survivable” plane crush. I was on an old po-2 (famous for being very safe and uncrushable) on a tour of the desert in western China when I was like 7, my father’s friend who hosted me and piloted the plane didn’t survive but somehow I got out with a concussion and apparently passed out for almost a day In the middle of the dessert, in the wreckage of the crash, 50 km from the town/airport, on the edge of the desert. The people who found me were some tree planters (they plant greens in the desert to protect towns from sandstorm, a lot of people live in these desert towns in China do this) found me on there way picking up a shipment, and the only reason they looked was bc they were making a bet on how fast the egg would cook in the sand and went off the road to test."
"First thing first, according to legends, 15 min, I never tested it though. So, according to my dads, the theory that I might have lived was because the plane was mostly made out of fabrics and wood. So when the plane crashed, the front half collapsed and took the majority of the impact. Though I got knocked out, I was probably covered under the wreckage and in the shades, it cooled me off enough to survive for a day or so!"
yusenye
Tumor
"Had two 11cm benign tumours growing in my spine, resulting in gradual paralysis from my chest down. They had no idea how the tumours formed. Surgery took 11 hours when they thought it would take 4 because the tumours were so complexly woven throughout my spine. I now have pretty much half a spine and chronic pain but I’d take that over losing my life from paralysis and being unable to breathe 🙏🏼"
erieberie
Lucky 7s
"I was born on 7/7/77 and weighed 7 pounds & 7 ounces. Sadly though I clocked in at 6:50 A.M."
"The other is that around the age of 14 I started to notice the outsides of both of my feet starting to get much wider. After a couple of years of buying expensive custom-made shoes they decided to perform surgery on my feet. Turned out I had extra muscle growth along with something else I don't recall at the moment. My podiatrist told me he submitted a scholarly article on it. May also have been genetic as when my Dad was 3, he developed an extra toe growing out of each one of his big toes."
indiesnobs
You never know when the odds will, indeed, be in your favor.
Sometimes, when the odds seem against you, it's still worth it to give it your all, as you may find yourself surprised and happy with the results.
On the flip side, always best to be prepared, as you never know when your luck might turn on you...
Get this: A copy of Super Mario for NES just became the highest priced video game ever after it sold at auction for $100,150.
No, it isn't made out of solid gold.
The previous high mark was $30,000, which seems paltry by comparison.
You're probably wondering:
"Whoa, why so much?"
Gather round, heathen.
This isn't just any copy of Super Mario.
There were 11 slightly different versions of the black box the original cartridges came in between 1985 and 1994. Some, for example, had the trademark symbol in a different place.
Others had tabs that were used to hang the box from store shelves.
But the box this cartridge came in predates all of them. No one knew Super Mario would be such a hit back then.
When you think about it, it had to have been devised by someone while on 'shrooms.
So the original box the game came in was not shrink wrapped. Rather, it was sealed with a tiny "Nintendo" sticker at the top as part of a test launch run before the game's official release in 1986.
You're probably asking:
"Who the hell keeps an original Nintendo box containing a Super Mario NES cartridge in such pristine condition anyway?"
Oh, foolish mortal.
Don't you see?
Whoever this person is (actually people, but we'll get to them in a moment), they're $100,150 richer. And you're not. Sorry.
Believe it or not, this was a group effort, as the press release from Heritage Auctions notes:
"A group of collectors joined forces Feb. 6 to purchase the game, including some of the biggest names in video games and collectibles as a whole. The buyers include Jim Halperin, Founder and Co-Chairman of Heritage Auctions of Dallas, Texas; Zac Gieg, owner of Just Press Play Video Games in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; and Rich Lecce, renowned coin dealer, pioneering video game collector and owner of Robert B. Lecce Numismatist Inc of Boca Raton, Florida."
That's insane, man.
It gets better, though.
According to Wata Games, which certified this copy, the box is in pristine condition. It was given a rating of 9.4/10. Not only that, but this copy is the only known "sticker sealed" one still in existence and the sticker is also in excellent condition.
You're telling yourself:
"There's no way I could have had that game in my possession for so long and not have played it?"
Oh, you delicate little flower.
This game has only been re-released dozens of times over the years! Get a grip!
And if you're one of the many fans salivating at this news, just know you're not the only one who's impressed.
Let's say this box is never actually opened.
It could be worth considerably more in the future, and let's face it, we need all the money we can get as we contend with the affordable housing crisis and stagnant wages!
Too real?
Sorry.