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This is hard to believe but here is the x-ray.
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This is nothing! Some railroad worker took a wrecking bar through the head and lived back in the late 1800's or thereabouts. Read an article about it in some obscure medical journal while waiting for a daughter in a library. maybe someone out there can fill in the rest of the details.
*In the late 70's in downtown Marion, Indiana, a man fell a couple stories and was impaled on a piece of rebar. The rebar entered his head at the base, right at the neck in back, and went completely through. He lived. I don't remember if there were complications. Rich, you remember this ???
*Don, I remember a similar story, not sure if it's the same one. I'm thinking of a man in a quarry...could have instead been blasting for railroad track construction? In this case the worker was, I believe, tamping a charge into a hole in ledge in prep for rock removal. He was tamping with an approximate 6' long iron bar...the charge blew and sent the bar through clean through his skull, in near his eye socket and right out the back of his head...right though his brain.He lived, no complications, except he had some sort of problem with reasoning...always getting into quarrels. I believe this one was back in the time frame you mention.
*Luka,I have no memories dating before 1978. So no.Rich Beckman
*I worked at a drug store in high school. The year after I quit, the owner got shot in a robbery. Point blank range, directly between the eyes. He was walking around the store when the police arrived. They had to insist he sit down. At the hospital, it took awhile for the doctors to figure it all out. The bullet failed to penetrate the bone, flattened out, and then slid off beneath the skin so it wasn't right there at the wound. He recovered fully, but closed the business.Rich Beckman
*Now THAT is a thick-headed man !!!Whatta you mean, no memories before 78 ? You trying to pass yourself off as a youngster ? Or was that the date of your last shock treatment ? LOL
*When pouring concrete for the Mactaquac dam, St. John River, New Brusnwick, a worker fell from scaffolding a few stories to land impaled on rebar. He was hanging from it - clean through from his ass out through his shoulder/neck. They used a torch to cut the bar and he was taken to hospital like a chicken on a spit. They removed it and he was ok
*This exact story word for word was also in the paper last year at xmas time. It seem werid that knew about it months before it happen. with the same x rays. also don,t nail guns have safety devices. I,m not quessing the story I just think the paper is rotating the story due to holiday season.But another story, back in 1984 a dump truck driver was cleaning out his body with a piece of rebar. When he got done he toss it overside. When he jump over the rebar stuck in at the thigh and exit behind the neck. The rebar travel just under the skin and never harm anything.I guess miracle do happen.
*This is one time when a smooth nail would be better than a ring-shanked nail ...
*I remeber that guy Mongo...He posts in here under an assumed name as we speak...blue
*... was helping the homeowner on his roof about 15 years ago... ( when i was young and foolish... now i'm not young )the roof was over an area adjacent to a foundation that had a footing poured with 4 foot rebar sticking up every two feet...we moved onto his roof planks that he had installed on roofing brackets..his end let go..and he slipped down the roof, staging and all.. then he flipped into the foundationlanded right between two rebar spears...one on one side of his rib cage and one on the other..... all he got was a broken leg.. and i got a resolution not to work on someones staging that i didn't help erect...
*I live in Marion, and you said the accident happened in the late seventies, and it sounded like loss of memory might be a side effect of the accident. A too subtle joke, apparently.My memory is just fine back into the early sixties.Rich Beckman
*ROFLMFAOYup, was just a bit too subtle for me. Funny as heck once you explained it though. LOLWhen that happened I hadn't been a carpenter for very many years. Made me consider my vulnerability.
*A while back there was a story on the Learning Channel "Trauma" series (true life ER filming) where a guy had a 7" hunting knife buried in his head-the CAT scan was something else! The guy suvived with not a whole lot of problems.
*A good friend of mine fell 40 feet off a bridge into a field of rebar when we were in high school.He was on a 4-H trip to Chicago and somewhere walking across a double overpass. The lights turned green and he started running to make it across. Jumped the little concrete curb that keeps cars from running up on the sidewalk but it was dark and he didn't see that there was no sidewalk.Apparently they were building or tearing down sidewalk and there was a 50' section missing.He fell 40 feet, woke up in the hospital. Spent a couple of weeks in bed but didn't have any specific injuries except a hairline fracture of one ankle. He gets headaches now and thinks that's from hitting his head.I forget if it was 5 or 9 other people that had fallen in the same place but a couple died and a couple were paralized.
*((if it was 5 or 9 other people that had fallen in the same place but a couple died and a couple were paralized. ))ryan.... stop... yur killin me....!... and the const. company got the BBB company of the year award...my, how times have changed...for the better....
*At least my hardhat is now firmly nailed to my head. Safety first!
*Mongo, the event you're referring to occurred in 1848. A railroad construction supervisor, Phineas Gage, was preparing a powder charge for blasting rock, using a steel rod more than 1/2" thick and over a yard long as his tamping rod. He indadvertantly tamped the rod directly against the powder, setting it off. The rod was driven in through his left cheek, destroyed his eye, and exited the top of his skull on the right side.Gage immediately lost consciousness, but was taken to a doctor, and was soon walking and talking. He recovered well, and lived for another 13 years. However, Gage suffered changes in personality and mood for the rest of his life. A man who had once been responsible and well liked became extravagant, moody, and ill-mannered. Basically, he suffered a partial prefrontal labotomy.
*And for the record, I moved to Marion in '84. Your post is the first I've heard of the accident.Rich Beckman
*Thanks for the extra info...I appreciate the follow-up.Regards, Mongo
*If any of you ever watch TLC's "Life in the ER" they had a guy brought into the ER with a 7' hunting knife buried to the hilt in his head. they operated and removed it and to everyones amazement he was ok.
*I think that the Phineas Gage story was covered in one of the books by the neurologist Oliver Sacks (among other places) - probably in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat : And Other Clinical Tales but possibly in An Anthropolgist on Mars . I think both of these were best sellers; interesting books about the strange effects of certain brain abnormalities.
*I was walking around on a steep icy roof years back (my brain damage is congenital) when my feet shot out from under me. I landed flat on my back, on the roof, with a plumbing vent pipe sticking through the space between my chest and my arm. I was lucky that it didn't stick into my back, plus it kept me from sliding the rest of the way off of the roof! I got down immediately.
*I was standing in the check out line when a guy from Canada started checking the "stand out" on a Stanley Fat Max. After running the tape in and out several times to check the retraction the spring got confused and shot the Fat Max blade right through my cheek. That big old hook caught on my lip and even though I ran behind the register, around the return counter and over several patrons I couldn't shake it. When I passed the theft detectors near the door the alarm went off...startling the Canuck...who let go of the Max. The spring began to retract the blade..with the result that the case rocketed toward me with the speed of a John Elway deep pass.The case hit me in the forehead and buried itself beneath the skin. The docs decided it was better to leave it be. That Fat Max still works great and I can measure out to about 9' just using my tongue to push the tape. Been getting more work down at the women's club after the accident for some reason.Sure wish I could thank that dude from Canada somehow.
*- "Sure wish I could thank that dude from Canada somehow"Thor, send us money. Only Yankee bucks will do.
*Mongo: This sounds like the story. My daughter was a Med Student at the Medical College of PA and I was stranded in the library while she did something back in the spring of 1995. As usual, I grabbed some obscure journal and read this article. I asked her today if she remembered the story, and she said she never heard of it. Where on earth did you ever hear such an obscure story? I notice that another poster even gave him a name. The name I cannot remember. Guess there are just a bunch of nuts like me that remember odd trivia.Don
*Saw a guy in the shop cutting laminate on a table saw...a piece that he was ripping about 4" kicked back and hit him in the forehead... it continued up under his scalp and out the back. He's had trouble growing hair on that part of his head since then!!TDC
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This is hard to believe but here is the x-ray.