Sunday 4 March 2012

Guns vs. Knives

Guns don't kill people. The little holes that the bullets make kill people. Knives, on the other hand, kill people. The interesting thing about your murder weapon of choice is how personal you want to get with your intended victim.

You can stand several yards away from someone and shoot him. It's very impersonal, and you can even shoot multiple times if you like. But to stab someone, you need to be within arm's reach, potentially looking this person directly in the eye as you plunge the knife into his body. THAT'S personal.

Why the morbid thoughts? A patient I took to the OR last night was stabbed 20 times. TWENTY TIMES. Think about that as you're looking over the list of what was stabbed:

Right shoulder
Right hip
Left cheek
Left ear
Left scalp
Chest 3 times
Abdomen twice
Back ten times

Fortunately, none of the injuries were life-threatening. I explored his abdomen and stopped the bleeding, put a tube in his left chest to re-expand his collapsed lung, and tediously repaired all 20 stab wounds (the one on his scalp alone was about 25 cm or 10 inches long).

Now I've been righteously pissed off before. But how much rage must you have inside you, and how much anger must you have towards this person to stab him this many times in all these places?

19 comments:

  1. Oh my gosh. You know he wanted him dead.

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  2. I could easily possess that amount of rage. Scary I know. What would you do if someone threatened your kids or wife? Maybe this guy deserved to be stabbed 20 times....its possible

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    1. Nope, he was an innocent victim of a madman high on PCP.

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    2. idk... the hate is still ugly to me. Hatred and rage just makes me flinch, it automatically makes my stomach queasy and it's repelling. I would have a hard time thinking highly of someone wanting to do that, or doing it. Reading this I imagined the poster doing it... mounting the suspect, and stabbing him 20 times for threatening the family, that is. It's just ugly to me, love motivated or not.

      And it creates more victims as usually people do have families as well. Even if you're disgusting by what your daughter, son, whoever did, the pain would be made worse by their death, so just think about that, that you're putting the same pain you may have felt on 1 - multiple other human beings.

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  3. This is really sad but at they same time happy...
    Sad that someone can let themselves put that much drugs in their body to do something like that;
    Happy that somehow the victim survived being stabbed 20 times! I chalk it up to having a great doctor on his side! :)

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  4. You would think after a few stabs, the victim would somehow try to defend themselves... Maybe?

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  5. Oooh. PCP. That stuff is no joke. Glad the victim was alright!

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    Replies
    1. I sent him home yesterday, and he's doing very well. He's just thankful to be alive.

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  6. That's crazy. I cannot imagine that much rage.

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  7. Something similar happened to a friend of mine, he and his brother's wife don't get along very well at all and they got into a verbal spat and one thing led to another his brother jumped on him and just started stabbing with a small steak knife. He only stabbed about 8 times and mostly were glancing cuts but I still can't imagine what can make people do that to other people.

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  8. Doc I have a question. Do you work in new York like at all?

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    1. Nope, not even close. :)

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    2. Do you work in Europe? Or in America?

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    3. I have a strong feeling you won't get a satisfactory answer to this question.

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    4. I'll have to admit, I guessed South Africa for awhile. I am 100% certain that you don't practice in the US due to past postings, but I wouldn't cross off Europe as a possibility.

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    5. Yeah, I can see that it's not the US now, haha. it's a pretty interesting place where he lives though, all the stupid stories :)

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  10. I know this post is old, but i just found your blog today, and this one entry really brought back something that has been sore for my entire nation. Your comment on the amount of anger that it takes to stab someone 20 times reminds me of the case of cardiologist Guy Turcotte. The man was in the middle of a divorce, and he stabbed his 5 year old son 27 times, and his 3 year old daughter 19 times, as they were screaming and crying for him to stop. He was sent to a psychiatric institution, saying he had 'blacked out' and couldn't remember a thing that happened that night. He had attempted suicide by drinking windshield washer, which is kind of a weird way, especially for a doctor who normally knows how ineffective of a solution it is. Whether this is true or not, his case was reopened recently, and he will go back to court.

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