Only three people in the last 50 years had survived the brain-eating amoebic infection called Naegleria fowleri, a disease that kills 97 percent of its victims.
Sixteen-year-old Sebastian DeLeon from South Florida just became the fourth survivor—something that one doctor called a "once-in-a-lifetime" miracle, the New York Daily News reports.
His parents said the miracle could not have happened without God's intervention.
"Thank you to everyone on the staff. And thank you to God, who guided them. I truly believe this was a miracle," said his mother, Brunilda Gonzalez.
Sebastian was swimming in an Orlando, Florida beach during a vacation with his family on Aug. 7 when he contracted the infection through his nose, according to the Daily Mail.
Minutes after inhaling the bacteria, Sebastian complained of intense headache and sensitivity to light. His family immediately rushed him to the Florida Hospital for Children in Orlando.
After examining the patient, Dr. Humberto Liriano was stunned. Sebastian had contracted a highly lethal disease.
"The family when they came to me immediately within 24 hours, I had to tell them to just say their goodbyes," Dr. Liriano said, according to CBS News in Florida. "I had to tell them 'tell him everything you want to tell your child because I don't know from the time I put him to sleep to the time I take the tube out, will he wake up.'"
Doctors lowered Sebastian's body temperature and induced a coma.
That's when the miracle began. A company that produces a drug that battles the rare infection, which is not available at most hospitals, happens to be based in Orlando. In just 12 minutes after Sebastian was diagnosed, the experimental drug called miltefosine arrived at the hospital, according to CBS.
Doctors then put their patient into a chemically-induced coma for days.
And then he woke up.
Now, "he's walking, he's speaking," Dr. Liriano said Tuesday, according to CBS. "I saw him this morning, he's ready to go home."
The doctor said it was simply amazing how the boy survived the deadly brain-eating amoeba.
"It's been miraculous to see Sebastian recover right before my eyes from such a fatal and unforgiving infection," he said. "This was a once-in-a-lifetime case for any doctor, and I'll take these lessons with me throughout the rest of my medical career."
The disease that struck Sebastian causes a rare and devastating infection of the brain called primary amebic meningoencephalitis.
The infection is very rare, with only about 35 cases reported in the U.S. in the last decade, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
