Man Left Brain Dead After Pulling Out Ingrown Hair In His Groin

What usually is a simple ingrown hair that needs plucked, left a man brain dead with a 4% chance of survival, after he developed blood poisoning.

Steven Spinale, 36, was diagnosed with sepsis after getting an infection when he attempted to remove the ingrown hair from his groin area.

A GoFundMe and TikTok videos shared by his sister Michelle show the dad fighting for his life at the end of 2022, as he was placed in a medically-induced coma and underwent open heart surgery. 

Sepsis is a life-threatening reaction to an infection that occurs when the immune system overreacts, starting to damage the body’s tissues and organs

Steven developed the condition after trying to remove an ingrown hair in his leg which became infected.

“He became pretty sick a month before being admitted to his local hospital. He was turned away at numerous hospitals who thought he was making it up,” Michelle explained about Steven’s predicament. “He started vomiting blood and they still sent him home. The next day, my sister had to call 911 because he couldn’t breathe.”

Once Steven was finally admitted by the hospital, doctors were confused by his symptoms and couldn’t figure out the root cause behind them.

“All they could figure out was he was bleeding internally from somewhere,” his sister wrote in the GoFundMe. “Little did we know that would be the smallest worry.”

Doctors finally discovered that Steven had a very rare bacteria in his bloodstream that was causing his organs to slowly shut down. His health started to decline quickly and before his family knew it, Steven ended up being put on life support.

The bacteria drove Steven’s body into septic shock, when his blood pressure dropped to a dangerously low level after the infection.

Steven’s body succumbed to a series of issues as time went on, catching influenza A, contracting pneumonia in both his lungs, and developing acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) that left his lungs unable to work.

Doctors then discovered that the septic bacterial infection had reached his heart and destroyed it. This caused him to have a small stroke, but he couldn’t undergo surgery due to his condition being too critical.

Steven was intubated, when a tube is inserted through the nose or mouth to the trachea to help a patient breathe, and placed in a medically induced coma.

The heartbroken family were told Steven probably wouldn’t come out of his ordeal alive, with doctors giving him just a four per cent chance of survival.

Steven’s family gathered around him, along with his wife and sister, to constantly take turns remaining by his side.

“To help with ARDS, he was strapped to a rotobed, a specialized hospital bed that rotates, for two weeks, which turned him over like a rotisserie chicken”, Michelle said. “He spent 18 hours each day being turned from his back to his chest to relieve pressure from his fluid-filled lungs and improve oxygen flow.”

Steven also underwent open heart surgery to repair the sepsis-induced damage and had drains inserted into his chest to remove excess fluid. Finally, a miracle happened after being in a coma for a month and undergoing multiple treatments, Steven emerged with no brain damage and is on the road to recovery.

According to Michelle, the family watched him regain his sparkle after having “dead sunken eyes”.

“Steven has a long road ahead of him but he is steadily on his way,” she wrote on November 29, 2022. “He is learning how to sit up on his own, which is amazing.”

Though he was released from the hospital in a wheelchair, Steven was regaining his ability to walk by the end of 2023.