Jordan Taylor was in a car accident that separated his skull from his vertebrae. There was no connection between the bones of the neck and the head. Doctors call the injury an "orthopedic decapitation" and at the time gave Jordan a one percent chance for survival. The tissue may have been destroyed, but the faith of Jordan's family was intact. Word about what happened to Jordan spread to the family's church and others churches across the country. Jordan's mother says at one time she knew of at least 20 churches that were praying for her son. Dr. Roberts reconnected Jordan's head to his neck with a metal plate, screws and titanium rods. 3 months after the accident, Jordan left the hospital and is now back at school.

It was supposed to be a great day for 14-year-old D'Zhana Simmons, who received a transplant to replace her enlarged heart. However, her dream turned into a nightmare when the new heart failed to function properly. Doctors had to remove the new organ, but without another heart available and with D'Zhana weakened from the surgery, they had to come up with a stopgap measure: two artificial pumps that kept the blood flowing in her body for close to four months. The feat was newsworthy partially because of D'Zhana's age and partially because when an artificial heart is used to sustain a patient, the patient's own heart is usually left in the body. Finally, on October 29, D'Zhana received another heart transplant, and it was so successful that she had a kidney transplant the very next day.

Thirty-three-year-old Glenn Orgias was attacked by a great white shark while surfing at Sydney's Bondi Beach. He was taken to St Vincent's Hospital with his hand hanging by a three centimetre piece of skin. Plastic surgeon Dr Kevin Ho never expected that they would be able to reattach the hand. But given the patient general health and the speed of which he was rushed into the operating theatre made it a possibility that he could have his hand reattached. Dr Ho said leeches were used as part of the effort to restore blood flow to the hand, and he is hopeful that Mr Orgias will regain function in it.

Katrina Burgess, 17, was told by doctors she may never walk again after surviving a 70mph car crash with a broken neck and back, and a catalogue of other injuries. But after being put back together with 11 metal rods and enough pins and screws to send an airport security detector into overdrive, Katrina was signed up by a modeling agency. Surgeons saved her life after her car left the M5 and crashed into a ditch as she travelled towards her home town of Weymouth, Dorset. She snapped her back, punctured both lungs and broke her neck, her pelvis, her left leg and several ribs. Surgeons at Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton, Somerset, said that without surgery to help the bones to fuse, her spinal injuries in particular could deteriorate, risking death. Doctors inserted a rod from her hip to her knee in her left leg the day after she was admitted to hospital. It was secured inside with four titanium pins. The most risky operation came a week later. They sliced open her back and inserted six more horizontal rods up the length of her back to support her spine. A week after that, they inserted a titanium screw to the top of her spine to support the break in her fragile neck. Only a day after the last operation she was able to take her first steps. Astonishingly, five months on from the crash, the teenager has recovered to the point where she no longer even needs painkillers.

Martin Jones, a 42-year-old builder, was left blind after an accident at work more than a decade ago. But a remarkable operation - which implants part of his tooth in his eye - has pierced his world of darkness. The procedure, performed fewer than 50 times before in Britain, uses the segment of tooth as a holder for a new lens grafted from his skin. He lost his sight after a tub of white hot aluminium exploded in his face at work in a scrapyard. He suffered 37 per cent burns and had to wear a special body stocking for 23 hours a day. He also had his left eye removed. But surgeons were able to save the right eye, even though he was unable to see through it. At first specialists in Nottingham tried to save his sight using stem cells from a donor but the attempt failed. It was only when a revolutionary new operation was pioneered at the Sussex Eye Clinic in Brighton that he was given a chance to have his sight back. During the procedure, a minute section of a patient's tooth is removed, reshaped and chiselled through to grip the man-made lens which is then placed in its core. It is implanted under an eyelid where it becomes covered in tissue. The process requires a living tooth as an implant because doctors suggest there are chances the eye would reject a plastic equivalent. So a canine - which is the best option due to its shape and size - was taken out of Mr Jones' mouth. A patch of skin is then taken from the inside of the cheek and placed in the eye for two months, where it gradually acquires its own blood supply. The tooth segment is finally transplanted into the eye socket. The flap of grafted skin is then partially lifted from the eye and placed over its new sturdy base. Mr Jones, from Rotherham, South Yorkshire, was able to see for the first time his wife Gill, 50, whom he had married four years ago.

A motorcycle accident almost killed David Blancarte 21 years ago. He was spared his life, but was unable to move his legs. He was confined to a wheelchair for 20 years. But two years ago, he was bitten by a brown recluse spider and was hospitalized for and spent 8 months in physical therapy. In therapy, a nurse noticed a spasm in one of Blancarte's legs and run some tests. Five days later David was walking again.

Alcides Moreno, 37, fell 47 stories from a New York skyscraper when a freak accident sent his window-washing platform plunging to the concrete pavement. The accident killed his brother, who was working on the same scaffolding platform, and left Moreno is such a bad state that doctors couldn't risk moving him to an operating room. Instead, they operated on him in the emergency room, leaving him in a vegetative state for nearly three weeks. Finally, he showed signs of consciousness and spoke -- on Christmas day. Less than a month later, he was discharged with the expectation that he would walk again within a year's time. Considering that the death rate from even a four-story fall is about 50%, Moreno's survival, thanks in part to some fortunate circumstances, is astounding.