Only a tiny reflex flickered in the most primitive part of David Shublak's brain stem.
He was close to complete brain death, and doctors tried to prepare his family to pull the plug, suggesting they consider donating his organs.Doctors said they had never seen someone with such massive head injuries survive - except in a vegetative state.
His family believes their prayers helped bring Shublak, a 35-year-old Army intelligence major, back to life two weeks later.
"It was really eerie - that's something I have never seen," said Dr. William Smith, the neurosurgeon who headed Shublak's case.
Shublak was jogging at Fort Huachuca the morning of Nov. 30 when a car, its driver blinded by the early morning sun, hit him. He flew 55 feet and landed on his head on the road. Both legs were shattered and his arm broken. His skull was fractured in five places and he had massive brain injury.
He was flown to the University Medical Center, where he lay comatose as his family prayed over him. Repeated brain scans showed no brain activity.
But after five days, his hands moved. Then his legs moved, and his eyes opened.
"What he had been through was essentially incompatible with life, and I have never seen someone come back from that," Smith said. "A miracle? Well, I've cared for a lot of head injury patients, and I've never seen anything like this."
Shublak was awake but disoriented two weeks after his accident.
He has been in intensive physical and cognitive rehabilitation therapy at the Tucson VA Medical Center since mid-December. He's still in a wheelchair but learning to walk again, and vows he'll be back to work and eventually will run too.
"The last thing I remember is I was running. That's all," he said.
Shublak was awake and talking when he was brought to the hospital, but he got worse within hours.
"Over the next 24 hours, he began to deteriorate and went into a coma," Smith said.
Pressure inside his skull caused his brain to swell to five times above normal. As a last resort, doctors used barbiturates to induce a deeper coma.
A neurological exam showed Shublak "as close to clinical brain death as possible," Smith said. "I almost wrote a note declaring brain death. But there was a trace of primitive reflex in the brain stem, so I didn't."
Shublak's wife of two months said she felt the pressure to release his body so his organs could be donated.
"It was very miserable. It was so hard. We kept trying to pray and believe, but David wasn't there," Linda Shublak said.
Shublak's wife, parents and brother prayed openly in his room.
"We asked God to heal his brain," Linda Shublak said. "We did this in front of the whole medical team."
Mary Jo Hardy, an intensive care nurse, saw the family's devotion.
"When I saw him making very significant, positive changes - coming back to life - well it had a considerable impact on me, when it happened."
Shublak credits his recovery to his family's persistence, the support of his military friends and colleagues and God.
"It's absolutely fantastic," he said, smiling broadly. "A miracle had occurred. I'm not the miracle, but what Jesus Christ did for me is the miracle."