A Hair Removal Attempt Nearly Cost Him His Life

A man from Texas miraculously survived a complicated medical ordeal, overcoming a 4% chance of survival given to him by doctors. Doctors declared brain death for Stephen Spinal, a father in his late thirties, and assigned him a 4% chance to live after he fell into a medically induced coma due to a deadly infection from trying to remove hair from his thigh, according to the Daily Mail. His sister, Michelle, stated on TikTok, "We never lost hope when others did." She documented her brother's near-death experience since he arrived at the hospital in late 2022. On a GoFundMe page, which raised over $8,000 for his care, Michelle wrote, "All the doctors could find was that he was bleeding internally from somewhere. We didn’t know this would be the least of our worries." She noted that he suffered a series of complications that led to his medically induced coma to allow his body to heal. She explained, "He contracted a rare bacteria that was destroying his body and causing all his organs to shut down. He was in severe sepsis and in shock." While in the hospital, Spinal also contracted influenza A and double pneumonia in both lungs, along with acute respiratory distress syndrome. He remained in a medical coma for three weeks, according to his sister. Michelle commented on a recent video claiming that doctors had said, "Stephen won't come out alive," and that he showed "no brain activity." In other clips, she revealed that Stephen's chance of survival was about 4%. He had to undergo open-heart surgery after doctors found that the septic bacterial infection had reached his heart, spending two weeks in a rotating bed to aid his breathing while fluids were continuously drained from his lungs. However, miraculously, he survived and regained his ability to walk by the end of 2023, emerging from the coma without brain damage.