Sometimes it takes just the right attitude to turn that distant dream into reality.
A 37-year-old Australian man by the name of Bill Morgan had a dream to win the lottery and was determined to keep playing it week after week until he did. But time abruptly ran out for Bill when he was involved in a major traffic accident.
It was way back in 1998 that the horrific accident occurred that started off the tragic chain of events. Somehow, he miraculously survived the crash, and even the preceding heart attack failed to finish him off. He was a fighter hanging on to life even as death continued to stalk him all the way to the hospital, not willing to let him go.
His luck ran out, however, when a drug administered at the hospital triggered an allergic reaction that stopped his heart dead. It took more than fourteen minutes for the battling doctors to bring him back, but even so, he was left in a comatose state. Things were not looking good, with brain damage and being left in a vegetative state a very real possibility.
His girlfriend and his family stayed by his bedside constantly for 12 days, waiting, praying for him to wake up. He didn’t, there were no positive signs that he would recover, and the doctors advised them to take him off life support, to let him go.
But they stubbornly held on to a last ray of hope, refusing to believe that he was not coming back to them. Fortunately. Incredibly soon after refusing the doctors’ suggestions, Bill Morgan simply woke up with no overt outside stimuli.
Tests were carried out to ensure there were no residual side effects of being comatose for so long and being connected to the life-support equipment. He displayed no serious side effects whatsoever and was soon allowed to go home and resume his life as if nothing had happened.
But everything had changed for Bill.
Not surprisingly, after his near-death experience, Bill decided to take life by the horns. He proposed to his girlfriend, set about changing his profession, and went out soon after to get his lottery ticket. To say his luck had changed was an understatement when he won a car valued at A$17,000. Finally, after years of trying, he had achieved his goal of winning the lottery. He was over the moon.
A news station from Melbourne, hearing about this amazing story, rushed to interview him. Bill recounted, live on television, how he had suffered a heart attack the incident on arrival at the hospital and how he was in a coma for 12 days. He had to admit that he was a lucky man to have survived.
To finish off the segment they asked him to purchase another scratch-off ticket to round off this amazing story. He happily obliged, barely believing his luck after all that he had been through that he was on live television experiencing his fifteen minutes of fame.
Cheerily he bought a ticket, scratched away, then paused, frozen in place.
The interviewer had a heart-in-the-throat moment seeing the strange expression on his face, fearing that reliving the recent traumatic events had triggered another heart attack live on national tv.
Bill looked up, his eyes wide, shocked, disbelieving, unreadable, and stared directly into the camera that was still beaming live images into thousands of homes in Melbourne. Viewers held their breaths as, slowly, he turned the ticket towards the camera, revealing the winning prize of A$250k that he had just won.
His reaction was priceless and couldn’t have been better timed to change the course of his life even further. Now he could buy the house he had promised his fiance, invest in their future, and embark on a new life together.
Considering the incredible recent turn of events that saw Bill Malone return from the dead after being in a coma for 12 days, embrace a new positive attitude that saw him win the lottery not once, but twice, definitely encompasses a never-say-die attitude.