Surviving rabies
Tomorrow in medical history I'm discussion leader, and the topic is Pasteur and his contributions to medicine. Specifically, anthrax vaccinations, rabies vaccinations, and germ theory. I was discussing what I'm going to talk about with my prof, and he mentioned a case a couple years ago where a girl was bitten by a rabid bat. She contracted rabies and survived despite not getting the six shot procedure that is typical in rabies treatment (it was too far after her bite for the usual treatment to have worked - she was exhibiting symptoms of rabies). Instead they gave her drugs to protect her brain and nervous system, put her into a coma, and let rabies run its course on the rest of her body, hoping she'd survive. She did, although with some neurological problems. Very cool science. There's a BBC article about it, and this is a PDF of the case study about what they did.