deck—and that was when the blade bit him.
When the reconstructive plastic surgeon was almost finished with the complex job of sewing the patient back together, another patient came in with the same injury! On questioning him it was found that he, too, had been using his mower to trim his hedge. Apparently he lived near the first patient. He saw his neighbor trimming his hedge with the mower and thought it was a bright idea.
Often fact is so much weirder than fiction.
Reference: Personal account by Northern Scout, whose friend is a plastic surgeon with expertise in reconstructive surgery
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“He saw his neighbor trimming his hedge with the mower and thought it was a bright idea.”
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Darwin Award:
A Highly Improbable Trajectory
Unconfirmed
A rare nonfatal Darwin Award. Nobody dies!
In a suburban ER the first patient of the evening was a young man suffering from a gunshot wound. His story? “I was at a party and went outside to take a piss. Somebody did a drive-by and shot me.” He was examined and a small-caliber entry wound was found at the anterior base of his penis, exiting the midshaft, in and out the right testicle, and into the right thigh where the bullet lodged.
A highly improbable trajectory for a drive-by.
The nurse picked up his white jeans, which had been cut off and thrown aside. Inside the waistband were unmistakable powder burns. She said to him, “You had a gun down your pants!”
At first “Billy the Kid” denied it, but he finally admitted to shooting himself while playing quick-draw with a friend. The reason for the attempted deception? He was on parole for a weapons violation.
The nature of the injury effectively removed him from the gene pool.
Reference: Anonymous eyewitness account
At Risk Survivor: Tales from the Finnish Forest
Unconfirmed
JULY 2004, FINLAND
I accepted a post as general practitioner for a small village in the Finnish forests. In Scandinavia, Finland is the butt of jokes concerning mosquitoes, trees, and excessive alcohol consumption, so I can’t say I hadn’t been warned. In defense of the patients, their government had just halved the taxes on alcohol, but nothing could have prepared me for the stories behind the wounds I treated.
CASE 1: A young male I’ll call Pekka came in on a Wednesday, as the damages from a weekend of heavy partying began to bother him. Lacerations and abrasions covered his entire backside, from his ankles to the top of his head. But Pekka’s main concern was a dislocated thumb. It was sticking out at a ninety-degree angle from his palm and colored a nice shade of purple. I ordered X-rays. Luckily for Pekka he had no fractures, and we reset his thumb joint.
How had these wounds occurred?
Pekka’s friend was driving him home from the local waterhole. As they sped along somewhat faster than the speed limit, as one does when one lives in the middle of nowhere, Pekka realized that the driver was as drunk as he was! He decided to take action and get out of the car. While the driver was preoccupied with a sharp bend in the road, Pekka opened the passenger door and quit the car.
Pekka was a regular customer over the summer, coming in when the anesthetic effects of a weekend’s libations began to wear off. He had his cast replaced, and the thumb reset, and reset, and reset yet again. I am sure he’s still out there working toward a Darwin Award!
CASE 2: A middle-aged woman came in, complaining of a horrible headache. Two days earlier she had been driving to work when she suffered a “blackout” and woke up upside down. Her car was now resting on its roof. She extricated herself and walked (!) to work. But the headache had grown steadily worse. She thought it might be whiplash.
To demonstrate that the pain was worse when she moved her head, she suddenly started shaking her head vigorously back and forth. The nurse and I both jumped to intervene and immobilize her until we could fit a collar and have the madwoman