(Photo: Courtesy of Florencia Nunez)Nino Martin Chain.
A doctor in Argentina has suggested that only God can explain how a 3-year-old toddler miraculously survived after falling from the ninth floor of his apartment block last month, and took only 20 days to recover.
Hospital director Cristina García de Alabarse at the Children's Hospital in San Miguel, Argentina, said that despite being a "woman of science," occurrences such as this leave her looking to the heavens for answers.
Garcia said she has never heard "of a similar case, it is, at the least, unusual that a person could fall from such a height and have so few after effects."
"There are times that for us professionals, there's nothing left but to put ourselves in God's hands. I'm Catholic and I believe that miracles exist. Something happened there," she said, the Catholic News Agency reported on Sunday.
The incident concerning Martin Chain occurred on June 7, Clarin.com reported last month, when the 3-year-old boy fell from the ninth floor while playing on the balcony of his apartment.
Though the boy was rushed to the hospital on the verge of death, he not only survived, but took only 20 days to recover, showing no sign of long-term complications.
The boy's father, identified as Maximo, was apparently preparing food when the boy walked out onto the balcony and climbed over the railing.
Martin fell almost 100 feet down to the ground, and there was nothing to break his impact, the parents said.
"As he peered out, Maxi saw Piti (Martin) face down, lying on a patch of wet ground amid debris. And he saw him move," the mother, Florencia Núñez, said.
The doctors at the hospital were reportedly "stunned" when they saw the crying child was still conscious and hadn't suffered any broken bones.
Martin, however, was placed into a medically induced coma because he had sustained trauma to his abdomen and skull, and suffered a pulmonary contusion which made breathing difficult.
The parents said they "didn't stop praying" for their son's recovery, and their prayers were granted.
"He just has a few problems walking, but it's nothing permanent. With physical therapy he can make a 100 percent recovery," García de Alabarse said.
"He will have to continue with a psychologist, and physical checkups for a while, but we don't expect he'll have major problems long term. It's incredible," she added.
A mother in Ireland also reported experiencing a miracle in August 2016 after her 2-year-old son fell from the sixth-floor balcony to a concrete area on the first-floor of a hotel in Limerick.
"I believe it was a miracle. I believe I got a dig-out, I really do," Martina Shanahan said at the time, according to the Irish Independent.
The boy, Neil, spent five weeks in the Intensive Care Unit at a local hospital but received no physical scars from the event.