Hooked On You

So today at work, I had this thirteen year old kid come in with a fishing hook embedded in his left thumb. He was with his relatives fishing when it happened. He had been to other country hospitals, but there were no doctors there on a weekend and so his Mum had brought him to us.

I had to suppress my nausea when I saw it in his left thumb, as the thought itself was stomach churning. The fishing lure had three barbed hooks, one of which was sitting under his thumb. It looked like a thumb piercing gone wrong!

This brave little kid had been to several different hospitals and had been waiting for several hours in ours with the fishing lure in his thumb.

I brought him into the procedure room and then did the natural thing- started tugging at it a little. The kid flinched. He had been trying that himself all day (you idiot doctor), did he drag his bottom an hour away to our hospital so that I could do the same to him?

I put in a digital nerve block, which is just two small local anaesthetic needles to the side of his thumb to try and numb the thumb. I tried to pull a little harder. He flinched a little more. I can still feel it! he protested.

The problem with the hook was that it was barbed - which meant that it had an additional sharp needle sticking out of the hook in the other direction. Which meant that little fishies would get their mouths caught on the barb and would get more stuck the more they tried to wriggle free.

Which meant that the hook got more stuck the more I tried to wriggle it free. (Fishing hook manufacturers obviously have no children of their own).

After some gallant/blind attempts, I decided to ask a senior doctor to come and have a look. She manipulated the thumb with the hook in it, and it hurt the boy enough to start tearing. Mum was getting a bit restless, seeing her little one in pain. Make a cut along the pulp, the senior said, and then try and pull it out.

And so I tried it. The anesthetic was kicking in now, and I made a small centimetre long incision along his thumb tip and tried to pull out the hook. It didn't work.

Now what?

Hit by a sudden moment of inspiration, I pushed the hook through the thumb so that the barbed bit was sticking out. Yes, you heard right. I made another hole. By this time, the boy could not feel his thumb, so fascination had taken over his fear. While he was admiring my/his handiwork, I rushed upstairs to theatre to get a pair of wire cutters.

These wire cutters are not dainty little plier like appliances. They were wire cutters. You know, the type people use to snip fences to illegally cross national borders. Yes, those wire cutters.

I brought the wire cutters downstairs, excited as a child at Christmas, and then proceeded to carefully snip the barbed end. It was almost excruciating - I had to turn my face away, in case the barbed hook decided to behave like a stray toenail that flies into my eyes after snipping it.

Finally, after much grunting and straining, the hook came off with a satisfying snip.

Disappointingly, the barbed end did not shuriken itself into my face, but instead laid limply at the top of the wire cutter edge, defeated at last. With the barbed end gone, the rest of the hook surrendered to a simple tug without any resistance, and the relief in the room was palpable.

I stitched up the little cut that I had made and dressed the thumb. Mother and son walked away with grateful smiles, the rest of the offending lure stored in a tiny plastic jar to do whatever he pleased with it (ie. torture it, I suspect).

It felt really good figuring this one out and doing something to help. I could almost see the +100 XP (experience points - for those who don't speak geek) sign in red rising above my head like in a computer game. Now I'll be ready for the next person who comes in with a fish hook!

Random Memories: Eight Years Old

I remember being at a farm of one of his church elders in Malaysia. It was about an hours' drive from the city, and it had the works - lake, vegetable gardens, poultry scampering around.

The elder had invited over the church members for a fun day at the farm, even if only to give the city slickers a taste of the rural life.

I was eight at the time, my brother ten. My brother decided to go fishing with a group of the church members and I decided I wouldn't join them, but wander around the farm instead.

As I was happily walking around, there came a sudden loud scream followed by a litany of curse words coming from the stream.

One of the other church elders had inadvertently stuck a fish hook through my brothers' thumb, and the enraging shock and pain had caused my brother to swear at the church elder, telling him to go to that special place where Christians will not end up.

I was stuck between being embarrassed by this sudden show of passion from my brother and laughing out loud at the honesty that had come shining through! (And feeling sorry for him. Of course.)

Hahaha! (I bet my brother doesn't think it's funny).