u/PuzzleheadedBug8018

As a surgeon working in Cambodia I see all kinds of weird and wonderful stuff. Many of these are injuries resulting from accidents. For example, it is not uncommon to find home-made arrows being used for hunting rats, frequently fired from some sort of crossbow (also home-made) and two people are usually involved – one to flush the rats out and the other to shoot them. The added incentive is that the rats are subsequently cooked and eaten and yes, they do taste a bit like chicken! On one particular occasion a couple of lads were hunting in a section of concrete drain and, unfortunately, the one doing the flushing from the far end of the drain did not move out of the way quickly enough when his friend shot the arrow which missed the rat, ricocheted off the concrete and lodged itself firmly in his face.

 He arrived at the hospital with the arrow sticking out of his face between his nose and his left eye, having lodged in one of his sinuses. There is also a nasty barb on the end of the arrow which makes it a little tricky to remove without creating further damage so you cannot just pull it out. He was fully conscious and had no other injuries and, after an operation to remove it, I am pleased to say that he made a rapid and uncomplicated recovery. I am sure he did not feel lucky at the time, but had the arrow hit a centimetre or so to the side, he would have lost his eye.

I have seen several other similar examples with the arrows ending up in all sorts of places, some more unpleasant than others, but fortunately none of them have resulted in the death of the recipient. To read other examples please see either my book "Random Musings of a Disorderly Mind" available as an ebook on Amazon or my blog surgeonsstories@blogspot.com but please note that some of these are NSFW as they include graphic content of some of the injuries.

This is a true story from many years ago when I was working as a surgeon. It relates to a patient was a member of the so-called Newcastle mafia - a notorious crime syndicate family from the Northeast. He had been driving his car at speed, lost control and collided with a stationary wooden picket fence coming in the opposite direction. This resulted in him being impaled through his chest. He was admitted to the emergency department in a state of collapse with the wood protruding from his chest as fortunately the rescue team had the wisdom to not try and remove it at the scene of the accident, electing rather to cut through it in order to free him. The accident and emergency consultant, a dour Scottish man of enormous experience, oversaw his resuscitation and immediately took him to the operating theatre where he found the stake had penetrated his left ventricle but had missed the coronary arteries. He removed the offending object and sutured the puncture wound and, against all the odds, not only did the patient survive, but he also recovered with no appreciable long-term health effects. Upon his discharge he had a quiet word with the consultant saying "If you ever have any problems you need dealing with, just give me a call".

 The picket was duly mounted on the wall over the door in the consultant's office. "This is the biggest splinter you will ever see" he told me over a cup of coffee and a cigarette one day (he was a chain-smoker despite the fact his father had died of lung cancer). He was given to meiosis and had many such stories to tell. Good job the patient wasn't a vampire I thought, but I kept that to myself.