I've had several questions asking about this next picture. In case you haven't seen it, here is the picture:
The story is not for the faint of heart, and it's enough to get your blood boiling. A man was picking up his kids from their mother's house when they got into an argument. His response to the disagreement was to go back inside, get his gun, and shoot her multiple times. She was hit in the left arm, the abdomen, and the head. I took her immediately to the operating theatre for a laparotomy where I found multiple perforations in her small intestine and colon, all of which I repaired successfully. I then stayed to assist the neurosurgeon who performed a craniectomy - he removed a large piece of her skull, stopped the bleeding in her brain, and put the bone on ice to (hopefully) reimplant later. This procedure allows the brain to expand outside the normal confines of the cranium, because there is very little room inside the cranial vault for the brain to go. The picture above is her preoperative picture. The bright white spot in the middle is the bullet sitting in the middle of her brain (no, we didn't remove it -
see here to read why not). And below is her postoperative picture.
You can see where the skull is missing. That bright white spot in the middle is...you guessed it, the bullet.
She survived, but unfortunately she has not woken up yet. It's been just over a month and she remains completely unresponsive. I discharged her to a nursing home a few days ago where she will likely live out the rest of her days like this.
They have not caught the shooter. I can only pray for her and her children and hope that justice will be served someday.
God bless you for what you do daily. Hopefully they will get the shooter and her kids will find a good home.
ReplyDeleteWhat an ass, I hope they find him then fry him.
ReplyDeleteI still think that ads "tailored" to posts are really insensitive, there is an advert at the top of this post for specialist brain damage lawyers
ReplyDeleteThat's nothing more than an unfortunate coincidence.
DeleteIt's things like this that make me question any faith I have in humanity but then there's people like you who save hundreds of lives everyday. Still, it well- sucks that things like this happen.
ReplyDeleteA question about the bullet, I can understand leaving it in when you're referring to body tissue, however won't leaving it in the brain interfere with the neurological processes? Or is it more of a lesser of two evils kind of thing?
The brain can re-forge neural pathways around it. You can actually do a hemispherectomy - literally taking out half the brain - and still have a person retain nearly all their cognitive powers (including memory and personality - though they will have some paralyzation).
DeleteWait, is the skull missing from the whole area that there is no white?! Sorry if that's an incredibly stupid question but I'm no a doctor....
ReplyDeleteYes, where there is no white is where part of the skull was removed
DeleteHow come she hasn't woken up yet? :( And why won't she ever again?
ReplyDeleteShe has a bullet in her brain.
DeleteI appreciate that one must not confuse correlation with causation, but really - why do you think?
Damn that sucks. I wish there was something that could be done to get her conscious. But it's amazing that she was shot in the head and she's still alive!
ReplyDelete