Giese survived and recovered most of her cognitive abilities within a few months. Doctors put Giese in an induced coma to allow her immune system enough time to develop antibodies to the virus, and gave her antiviral drugs. When she was 15, Giese was infected by a bite from a rabid bat in Fond du Lac, Wisc.

Jeanna Giese is the first person known to have survived rabies without receiving a vaccine, Scientific American reported. But after symptoms occur, survival is rare - there have been fewer than 10 documented cases of human survival from rabies, and only two of these patients had not received preventative drugs, according to the CDC. Usually transmitted to humans by bites from wild animals such as raccoons, skunks, bats and foxes, the rabies disease is preventable if treated by vaccination before symptoms begin. The rabies virus attacks the central nervous system, causing brain disease and death within days of the onset of symptoms. Giffords recovered, but she still has difficulty speaking and walking and her right arm is paralyzed.Įveryone's familiar with the image of a rabid dog, mouth frothing and ready to deliver a fatal bite. The bullet passed through Giffords' skull front-to-back, causing less damage than a shot passing from one hemisphere to the other would have done. Doctors removed part of her skull during surgery to prevent damage from brain swelling, and placed her in a medically induced coma, according to CNN. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was shot in the head in an apparent assassination attempt, during a shooting that left six other people dead. But on occasion, people have been known to survive the brutal trauma of a bullet to the brain.

White Bull lay in a near-coma for 16 years, when one day in 1999, as a nurse was rearranging her blankets, she reportedly sat up and said, 'Don't do that!' Other coma cases of severely brain-damaged patients have been reported, but in most of these, patients either wake up within a few days or weeks, or remain in a coma state for the rest of their lives.įew injuries can be as instantly fatal as being shot in the head. A woman named Patricia White Bull entered a type of coma called a persistent vegetative state - in which the patient is awake but not responsive - while giving birth to her son, the LA Times reported.

People coming back to life