Seheulta boy with two days to live asked for one thing: to go outside
After six weeks indoors and given two days to live, a young leukemia patient's one request was to be outside — and Seheult still doesn't know whether it was the sunlight or the light device his family used that turned things around.He'd been indoors for six weeks. What happened next amazed everyone.
Critical illnessSunlight exposure6 min
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Key takeaways
- Seheult says a 15-year-old with leukemia developed a lung infection after chemotherapy — it cost him his left lung, then spread to the right.
- His condition worsening and no further options, his care team recommended against further intervention, giving him roughly two days to live.
- Told he was dying, the boy's one request was to go outside (he had spent 6 weeks indoors in the hospital).
- His care team moved his bed and ventilator outdoors, and the only other thing his family did was more frequently shine a light-emitting device on him several times a day.
- Seheult is direct about what he can't conclude: "I'll be honest, I don't know which did it."
- Once outside, his white blood cell count and oxygen needs improved day over day — the two-day mark came and went.
- Follow-up imaging showed the remaining lung's infection "probably 60, 70% gone," and it ultimately cleared.
- He went home with no sign of disease and went on to a Make-A-Wish trip.
In their words
“They changed none of his treatments. The only thing that they did was they took him outside.”
Context
Dr. Roger Seheult is a board-certified internal medicine and pulmonary/critical-care physician and co-founder of the medical-education platform MedCram. He told this story — relayed to him by the boy's mother — on The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett in July 2025, while making the case that sunlight's effects on the body go far beyond vitamin D.
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Updated Sep 28, 2026