A Florida security guard dubbed the "miracle man" by hospital workers made a remarkable recovery after lying unconscious for seven hours in a brutally hot parking lot with fire ants marching across his face.
Clifford Rice, 49, suffered a seizure last month at Tampa's Raymond James Stadium, according to St. Joseph's Hospital workers, who treated the man.
Rice fell between two parked cars and wasn't discovered for hours. After he was found, he was rushed to St. Joseph's, where medical professionals didn't expect him to recover. "His chance of survival was very low," reads a post on the hospital's Facebook page.
When he arrived at the emergency room, he was unable to breathe on his own, was unresponsive and extremely dehydrated, the hospital said. His organs were shutting down.
Rice hadn't experienced any medical problems beforehand, he said. His last memory before losing consciousness was of ants heading toward his face. They "were just coming in a line, like, 'Hey man, come got some meat.' I was like 'Wow, OK, this is a bad way to go out," he told WFTS-TV.
He woke up in the hospital about a week after he was admitted, he said. He was released two weeks later. "He defied the odds and today he he was able to go home," said the Facebook post.
"I'm fortunate, very fortunate," Rice said.
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