Wolverine's Miracles

We've all heard of miraculous recoveries from horrific accidents. But how are you meant to recover when you have a less than 5% chance of survival. When there isn't even a low enough percentage for making a full recovery. When you literally die four times, once at the accident site, once in the ambulance chopper and twice in the hospital? Well that's usually when you need a couple miracles…

First came the accident…

"5th of June 2009 at 8:20 am, I was in a head on collision with a 60 tonne semi-trailer quarry truck.

And I was given a less than 5% chance of survival.

It's one of the biggest things on the road. I was doing 80, he was doing 80 so it was a 160km impact…

I was trapped in the car for 45 minutes before the ambos, the police, the fireies and the SES could actually cut me out. And then I was airlifted to the Alfred Hospital, where they said I had literally a minute left to live before my body was completely dry of blood.

My injuries were very severe. I had a compound fracture to my femur. It was like an explosion where the door had shot off the car. I was still in the car, but from half way down my leg at the femur, down to my foot, my leg was actually dangling out of the car behind me, only hanging on by some skin and some muscle. I had a broken tib and fib, I lost my little toe, I had fractures to the skull, severe facial lacerations, I had five broken ribs, three of those ribs sliced my liver and I had to get half of my liver removed. I had a ruptured spleen and colon, which is very severe, punctured lungs, bruised kidneys…

I was in a pretty bad state… they didn't think I would survive.

That less than 5% chance of survival was with the loss of my leg. I still have my leg. So I don't know what the chances of survival are for actually making a close to 100% recovery. I don't think there was a percentage, cause they didn't think I would make it."

Then came the first miracle:

"I went through 36 litres of blood within the first 9 hours of getting into the Alfred Hospital. That's equivalent to 70 donations. Usually your body can only last for two full repetitions where all your blood's exited and new final blood is put in before your body goes into shock. But I was able to last for six rounds of that.

So I had six times my body mass of blood and a foreign blood type. I used up the whole supply of the Alfred hospital's A- blood type and they put in A+ to compensate. I was able to stay stable not only with that amount of blood, but also with a different antibody blood."

And then another:

"The fact I've still got my leg.

They wanted to do a massive surgery on my leg, but because I was already in such a bad state, they didn't think my body could stay stable for one huge operation.

There was so many things wrong with my leg… the compound fracture to my femur that had gone through arteries as well, a broken tib and fib, very severe lacerations throughout the foot, a little toe torn off… So to do a huge surgery on that leg, with me on a different blood type, they didn't think I was going to be stable. So they considered doing the surgery in stages. They reckoned it was about 5 or 6 different surgeries worth of work. The problem with that though is when you separate surgeries, there's a risk of infection between the surgeries. And they'd just taken half my liver out. So if I got an infection, they wouldn't be able to give me any antibiotics to fight the infection, because it would kill me.

So what they did is they decided to go for it, to do one huge operation on my leg. I don't know how many hours it took them, but I was on a different blood type, my body had gone through so much shock already, but I was able to stay stable for that whole time of multiple surgeons working on the leg.

And from them wanting to cut my leg off then and there, I now still have a leg and can walk and do amazing sports and yeah, very very grateful. So that's pretty cool, that's one miracle there."

And another:

"The next miracle is my ruptured spleen and colon. They wanted to take them out straight away because they were so bad.

Again though, that's a pretty massive surgery to take out vital organs, and because again my body was on a different blood type and my body's gone through so much, they didn't think I'd survive.

So what they did is they actually had me fully sliced open, so you could look inside my gut. I was wide open. They wanted to take it out a couple days later to give my body a chance to rest. So what they did is instead of closing my body back up, they put this vacpac seal over my chest, and that sealed it up so literally two days later they could just take that off and my chest was still open so they could reach in and pull it out.

So that's what they did. They sealed me up.

Two days later, they took the backpack out, pulled it off my chest and to their amazement, my spleen and colon had healed perfectly in two days. And I've never had a problem with them since. And they've said there is no medical explanation to how that has happened…"

Modern Operating Room by Agustin Julián Domínguez Alonso

But why is Jacob Fry known as Wolverine?

"The next miracle is my favourite one. This is the one that I love and that gets everyone going. There's a YouTube you can watch on me, just see Jacob Fry ICU, and you'll see me in the Intensive Care Unit, all banged up with tubes out of my mouth and everything. They wanted me to be in the ICU for 5-6 weeks, which is a long time in ICU, on life-saving machines, with 24hr care. But I started healing scary fast.

There's two reasons why they called me Wolverine at the hospital.

One of the reasons is because of my liver: it was said that it looked like a slash from Wolverine though my liver from my ribs.

And the other reason is the rate I started healing.

So 5-6 weeks I was supposed to be in ICU but I was only in there for 7 days. They put me in rehab to get muscle movement and strength back for 5 and a half weeks and then I was home. So within two months I was back home, within 8 months I was back on a surfboard.

There's no medical explanation as to how I'm alive. It wasn't my time I don't think."

- Jacob Fry

(Check out Jacob's other two stories: the Isolation of Healing and Back to the Extreme)

If you've got an impossible medical story like Jacob, send and share it with us!!