A parental mishap
Jul. 31st, 2016 07:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sawylSkyped by my sister this morning with the news that my father has had an accident. Crossing the boarding rail plank yesterday, he slipped and fell. When he came out of the water, his arm was bleeding; something which, true to form, he initially attempted to shrug off.
It's not entirely clear what happened — the others say they can't find any obvious signs of blood on bits of metal — but to my untrained eye it looks like a classic avulsion injury. I suspect he must have caught himself on something sharp enough to cause the initial cut, and the rest was a tear caused by a combination of his bodyweight and the fall, opening his arm pretty much from elbow to wrist.
(There is a photo, but it's seriously unpleasant. Too unpleasant to embed behind a cut, so be very, very sure you want to see it before clicking through...)
After getting a good look at the injury, he conceded that it did need medical attention and he and my sister set off from Arki to Lipsi — a couple of miles south — in a friend's powerboat. They arrived to find that the doctor was a locum who was more than a little shocked to be confronted with a traumatic injury on only his second day in the post.
Fortunately my sister, an extremely experienced A&E nurse, was able to advise the doctor on the best course of action and to suture the gash back together; something that took 24 stitches to accomplish. She also ensured that the doctor sorted out a tetanus jab, prescribed the right course of antibiotics, and between the two of them, they put him back together.
In many ways, they were all very lucky. That the accident happened when my sister was there to help. That the injury was the posterior rather than anterior surface of the arm. That no bones were broken and none of the tendons seem to have been damaged. It's also good that, if it had to happen to anyone, it happened to my dad. As my brother-in-law said afterwards: he's one seriously tough bastard...
It's not entirely clear what happened — the others say they can't find any obvious signs of blood on bits of metal — but to my untrained eye it looks like a classic avulsion injury. I suspect he must have caught himself on something sharp enough to cause the initial cut, and the rest was a tear caused by a combination of his bodyweight and the fall, opening his arm pretty much from elbow to wrist.
(There is a photo, but it's seriously unpleasant. Too unpleasant to embed behind a cut, so be very, very sure you want to see it before clicking through...)
After getting a good look at the injury, he conceded that it did need medical attention and he and my sister set off from Arki to Lipsi — a couple of miles south — in a friend's powerboat. They arrived to find that the doctor was a locum who was more than a little shocked to be confronted with a traumatic injury on only his second day in the post.
Fortunately my sister, an extremely experienced A&E nurse, was able to advise the doctor on the best course of action and to suture the gash back together; something that took 24 stitches to accomplish. She also ensured that the doctor sorted out a tetanus jab, prescribed the right course of antibiotics, and between the two of them, they put him back together.
In many ways, they were all very lucky. That the accident happened when my sister was there to help. That the injury was the posterior rather than anterior surface of the arm. That no bones were broken and none of the tendons seem to have been damaged. It's also good that, if it had to happen to anyone, it happened to my dad. As my brother-in-law said afterwards: he's one seriously tough bastard...
