• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Impaled! (Foreign Objects Thrust Into Or Through The Body)

Mighty_Emperor

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Aug 18, 2002
Messages
19,408
I'm not sure if this counts as good or bad luck:

Boy impaled on branch after being hit by train

December 16, 2003 - 9:16AM

A 10-year-old boy was critically injured when he was impaled on a branch after being hit by a train and thrown into a tree.

The boy was riding his bicycle beside rail lines at Taree, in mid-northern NSW, yesterday when an XPT travelling at 80 kph rounded the bend and struck him.

The child was thrown into a tree and impaled. He was conscious when emergency crews arrived, police said.

He underwent surgery at Manning Base hospital for pelvic and abdominal injuries. He also suffered a broken leg.

After surgery, the boy was transferred to Randwick Children's Hospital in Sydney, where he remains critically ill.

The accident happened about 5.45pm (AEDT) yesterday.

Police said the train driver tried frantically to stop the locomotive but could not do so in time.

Passengers did not witness the accident, which briefly delayed trains.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/12/16/1071336923870.html

Emps
 
For people getting run through with stuff. See the "its all in your head" for a specialist thread dealing with well people getting stuffed jammed in their head.

forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11850
Link is obsolete. The current link is:

https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...ects-piercing-or-embedded-in-ones-head.11850/

---------------
For example:

Girl Impaled During Sledding Accident

POSTED: 11:23 am CST January 26, 2005
UPDATED: 11:30 am CST January 26, 2005

A 14-year-old girl is recovering after being impaled by a 4-foot metal rod while sledding.

Magen Stephens has two puncture wounds in her right thigh where the rod ripped through her leg.

The accident happened over the weekend while she was being pulled around her yard by an all-terrain vehicle.

The rod was attached to a septic tank and barely visible under the snow.

Doctors say it's miraculous that Magen didn't suffer any more serious injuries.

The girl says it all happened so fast she didn't know what happened.

"I thought I was dreaming when it happened," she said. "I looked and I saw this big pole sticking out of my leg and I screamed."

Doctors had to use a hacksaw to cut through the 15-pound piece of metal.



---------------------------
Copyright 2005 by NBC5.com.

Source
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Man Gets Impaled by 2x4 After Car Crash

(Myrtle Beach) A man was impaled through his shoulder by a 2x4 after a car accident early Monday morning.

Police say 31-year-old Terence Hennegan's car ran off a bridge just after midnight. The impact of the crash was strong enough to split a board and send part of it through his shoulder and out his back.

Rescue crews tried to airlift him to Charleston, but the 2x4 would not fit into the helicopter.

He was taken to Grand Strand Regional and later taken to Charleston, where tonight he is in stable condition.

Source

Posted on Tue, Jan. 25, 2005

In Our Towns

POLICE

MYRTLE BEACH

Man impaled by board when car hit bridge

A driver was impaled by a board early Monday morning, Capt. David Knipes of the Myrtle Beach Police Department said.

Terence Joseph Hennegan, 31, whose residency was unknown, was driving south on Broadway Street in Myrtle Beach when he attempted to turn left onto Collins Street, Knipes said.

The car was moving too fast and struck a bridge, causing a 2-by-6 board to enter the vehicle and impale the driver in the shoulder, he said.

Hennegan was taken to the Medical University of South Carolina, where he underwent surgery, Knipes said.

An official from the hospital said Hennegan was in intensive care Monday night.

The car's passenger, Damien Hershberger, 28, suffered minor injuries.

Source
 
I read somewhere that so-called miraculous survivals from impaling accidents were actually just natural - organs just get pushed out of the way.

I'm about to eat so I'll not run a search on it. Last time I found a message board full of nasty men who were very into the subject. :cross eye
 
James Whitehead said:
I read somewhere that so-called miraculous survivals from impaling accidents were actually just natural - organs just get pushed out of the way.
I read this too, probably in FT. Vital structures like organs and major blood vessels just slip to one side. It's logical when you think about it; if you've ever tried to gut a fish or bone a chicken you can see this effect in action. It's probably to do with viscousity or something :cross eye
 
James Whitehead said:
I read somewhere that so-called miraculous survivals from impaling accidents were actually just natural - organs just get pushed out of the way.

I'm about to eat so I'll not run a search on it. Last time I found a message board full of nasty men who were very into the subject. :cross eye

Yep it comes up in those "Surviving Nasty Stuff" type shows (I think I've seen an Impaled one on Discovery) - most organs and major blood vessels have sheaths/coatings and can be pushed out of the with a relatively low velocity impact (unlike a bullet).
 
Emps' account of Magen Stephens' injury above omits my favorite quote from the story, so I'll post the version I found:

Girl impaled by metal rod while sledding

The Associated Press

AKRON, Ohio - A 14-year-old girl whose leg was impaled by a 4-foot metal bar while sledding says she won't be hitting the big hills anytime soon.

"I'm not allowed to go anymore," said Magen Stephens, who escaped serious injury.

The Canton girl was being pulled on her sled by an all-terrain vehicle on Saturday when she went over the inch-thick pry bar that was attached to a septic tank buried in the snow.

"I didn't even feel it go in. Then I looked down and saw this bar sticking out the side of my leg so I yelled," she said.

Neighbors ran to help, piling blankets on top of Magen to keep her warm until the paramedics arrived. The bar was still attached to the lid, so it had to be cut before Magen could be moved, her mother, Tracy Stephens, said Wednesday.

Medics had to cut her clothes to assess her injuries, Stephens said.

"She had on her favorite new Gap jeans that she had gotten for Christmas and a brand new T-shirt. It figures," Stephens said.

Magen was taken to Mercy Medical Center in Canton, then moved to Akron Children's Hospital for surgery.

Dr. David Andrews said the bar missed both Magen's thigh bone and her femoral artery. Had the artery been damaged, she could have bled to death, he said.

"We had to call the maintenance department and they found a hacksaw, which I used to cut the bar in half," Andrews said.

Other than some muscle damage, Magen's leg wasn't hurt, he said. She was able to get around on crutches and likely would be released from the hospital on Wednesday, Andrews said.

:shock: Remind me not to wear anything new if I'm sledding.

Web version here.
 
she went over the inch-thick pry bar that was attached to a septic tank
So what, fazerzackerly, is a pry bar?

(Perhaps this should be in the 'English' thread....!)
 
Rynner said:
So what, fazerzackerly, is a pry bar?

It's a big crowbar-type lever thing.

Haven't the faintest idea why one would be attached to a buried septic tank, though.
 
quote:

"The stories always say it's been a near miss, but that's nonsense most of the time. It often doesn't matter where the thing goes," says Christopher Bulstrode, professor of orthopaedics at Oxford University. "The basic rule, which always surprises me, is that if it goes in slowly enough, it pushes important things out of the way." That is why major arteries and nerves always seem to be so perilously close to whatever it was the patient got rammed into them. They were simply nudged to one side."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/health/story/ ... 43,00.html

(I'm not the only Grauniad reader here, am I?)
 
Blimey:

92-yr.-old impaled on faucet and saved!

BY KERRY BURKE, TONY SCLAFANI and ROBERT F. MOORE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

For more than six hours yesterday a 92-year-old Harlem woman banged on the walls and desperately screamed for help after she was impaled on a bathtub faucet, officials said.

Between noon and about 6p.m., residents ignored the noise, thinking someone was working on the plumbing at 45 E. 135th St. Two neighbors finally used a key to get into the 8th-floor apartment and found Thelma Riley naked with a four-pronged metal faucet knob stuck in her lower back.

"She was lucky," said Lt. James McCluskey of the FDNY's Ladder 30. "It's a good thing she didn't bleed out."

Fire officials said Riley, who lived alone, slipped and fell while taking a shower.

"She's a wonderful lady," said one of her neighbors at the Riverton apartments. "She's an elegant woman. I'm devastated by the news."

Firefighters found Riley in the seated position with the sharp cold-water knob painfully holding her prisoner. She was conscious and talking as emergency workers gave her oxygen and tried to keep her calm.

Within minutes, Kevin Shanahan fetched a pair of bolt cutters and handed them off to Greg Williams. Both are firefighters assigned to Ladder 30. Williams cut the stem that connected the knob to the faucet, freeing the woman.

Firefighters covered Riley in a sheet and placed her on a gurney in the hallway. She was taken to Harlem Hospital with the knob still in her back. She was in stable condition last night after getting the knob removed.

"It was a freak thing," McCluskey said.

------------------
Originally published on March 3, 2005

Source
 
Its all Swedish to me but thankfully they bang a picture in at the top of the page which pretty much says it all (warnings of course!!):

aftonbladet.se/vss/nyheter/story/0, ... 68,00.html
Link is dead. The MIA webpage can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/2005060...et.se/vss/nyheter/story/0,2789,656368,00.html

The victim was impaled through his abdomen by a steel pipe. Here's the photo from the MIA webpage:


NYHETER-07s11-stalror1-719_368.jpg
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Found an online translator; what it gave me was Fortean in itself:

Spetsad - på steel concerns
Construction worker överlevde cases from the sixth floor
The construction worker had a fairytale different trip.
He fell from sixth våningen - spetsades on a steel tub - and överlevde.

FELL SIX FLOORS the scaffold collapsed and the workers fell headlong against the land.
Three construction worker in the Chinese town Xian willed be lifted down from a six floors high houses last Saturday.
Suddenly, the scaffold and the workers collapsed, two men and a woman, fell headlong against the land.
On the position, an about a hundred existed also considerable steel tubs that fell down concurrentlily.
An off the workers met of a steel concerns as tränga in in the side of the body and since his perforated abdomen.
The construction worker was pursued in rushing rat to a local hospital with a lot of difficult damages.
But kirurgerna the wide hospital did not succeed only with the art paragraph to clear the the considerable metal tub. The seems also have coped with their patient.
His conditions are denoted as stable after that two hours the long operation.

ttp://www.systransoft.com/index.html
 
This was a sneaky intrusion, because the foreign body lodged behind the cheekbone. An illustrative 3D CT scan image is available at the article's webpage.

Teen Had a Shard of Glass Stuck in His Face for a Month Without Knowing It

A teenage boy in Spain had a knife-like shard of glass stuck in his face for a month without realizing it, after he fainted and fell into a window, according to a new report of the case.

The 14-year-old boy went to the emergency room after experiencing pain while chewing and trouble opening his jaw for about a month, according to the report, from doctors at the Virgen del Rocio University Hospital in Seville, and published June 21 in The Journal of Emergency Medicine.

The boy said that, about four weeks earlier, he had injured his face when he crashed into a glass window after fainting. At that time, doctors at a different hospital had sutured a 1-centimeter (0.4 inch) wound on his cheek, and drained a hematoma — or a collection of blood outside a blood vessel — that was on his face.

But they may have missed something. When the ER doctors at Virgen del Rocio University Hospital ordered an X-ray, it showed a faint, rectangular object about 3.5 cm (1.4 inches) in length on the left side of the boy's face. ...

That led doctors to order a CT scan, and the scan revealed a foreign body "which had the shape of a knife blade" hidden behind the boy's cheekbone ...

The penetration of a foreign body into this space "is a relatively rare event" because the area is well protected by the cheekbone ...

The boy needed surgery to remove the glass, which doctors extracted through his mouth from the underside of the boy's cheek.

After the surgery, the boy was able to move his jaw again, and he had no complications after six months of follow-up ...

SOURCE: https://www.livescience.com/65983-teen-had-glass-shard-in-face.html

Published Article In Press Preview (PDF):
https://www.sciencedirect.com/sdfe/pdf/download/eid/1-s2.0-S0736467919303361/first-page-pdf
 
This Maine woman was dually impaled when a tree fell on the vehicle in which she was riding.
Woman impaled by tree limb has 7 broken ribs, husband says

A Maine passenger who was impaled when a falling pine tree struck the vehicle she was riding in suffered seven broken ribs, but she’s getting better day by day ...

Theresa Roy, 79, has a long recovery ahead, said her husband, David Roy. But he said he’s just happy they’re alive after the bizarre incident that destroyed their vehicle and injured both of them.

David Roy, 78, ... and his wife were driving home to Oakland on a two-lane road because their vehicle had been buffeted by strong winds earlier on I-95 during a powerful wind storm. ...

The crash in Sidney happened in an instant when a pine tree blown down by high wind struck his vehicle as he drove at 50 mph (80 kph), with limbs crashing through the windshield as he struggled to control the vehicle.

A large limb came through the center dashboard and windshield at an angle, hitting him and then striking his wife’s armpit while another broke the windshield and impaled her shoulder ...

FULL STORY: https://apnews.com/article/pine-tre...-wind-storms-7792497317b897dafac7d5886a95db41
 
Referring to Mighty_Emperors opening post, i dont think anyone bring impailed on anything can be considered lucky, in any way, shape or form of the word
 
Referring to Mighty_Emperors opening post, i dont think anyone bring impailed on anything can be considered lucky, in any way, shape or form of the word

it's good luck if you live.
 
Our previous post person was killed when (maybe suffering a sudden medical issue) they drove the post van into a metal farm gate and was impaled. I just hoped it was quick :(
 
I remember reading that Charisma Carpenter - Cordelia from "Buffy" - was impaled on a long bar as a young child. Apparently she lifted herself off it and went to find her mother, saying "Mom, I have a boo-boo"; her mother was rather freaked out when she saw the wound!
 
I vividly remember in the late 1970's having to go and inspect an early 18th Century cottage in the wilds of West Yorkshire in the UK, where it is common for roads to pass at the roof level of houses. A very elderly gentleman in a brand new Rolls Royce (at a time when you couldn't buy one for love or money) reversed out of his long sloping drive across the road through a dry stone wall and dropped straight through the roof of the cottage. A timber in the intermediate floor had gone through the car and straight through the driver. The coroner established that the poor guy was already dead from a sudden severe heart attack just after he started the car up, which was just as well. Fortunately the house was empty at the time. The car and driver had to be craned out since there was no access from below and the cottage had to be totally taken down to the foundations and rebuilt since there was some sort of preservation order on it. The costs were gigantic in 70's terms.
 
A decade ago the Malaysian track cyclist Azizulhasni Awang fell at the end of a keirin race and got a 'splinter' through his calf muscle. He still managed to get back on the bike to finish third. Cyclists are tough (no cheap drugs gags, please!).

A few years earlier the British track rider Jason Queally was impaled by "an 18-inch long, one-and-a-half inch wide splinter which entered through his back".

"Queally required 70 stitches and, had it pierced his chest cavity, it would probably have killed him. He was told by Doctors that it was probably the thickness of his chest muscles, a legacy of his swimming training, that saved his life." Luckily there are no pictures of Queally's 'splinter' but here's Awang's. Yikes, that's gotta hurt!

article-1359064-0D45D434000005DC-402_634x393.jpg
 
A decade ago the Malaysian track cyclist Azizulhasni Awang fell at the end of a keirin race and got a 'splinter' through his calf muscle. He still managed to get back on the bike to finish third. Cyclists are tough (no cheap drugs gags, please!).

A few years earlier the British track rider Jason Queally was impaled by "an 18-inch long, one-and-a-half inch wide splinter which entered through his back".

"Queally required 70 stitches and, had it pierced his chest cavity, it would probably have killed him. He was told by Doctors that it was probably the thickness of his chest muscles, a legacy of his swimming training, that saved his life." Luckily there are no pictures of Queally's 'splinter' but here's Awang's. Yikes, that's gotta hurt!

View attachment 36654

l’d bet that the penetrating wound healed faster, and caused less total discomfort, than that “gravel rash”.

Ooyah!

maximus otter
 
This brings back another memory of school sports afternoon, when risk assessment, elf 'n safety and the like was none existent. Combine this with teachers who couldn't care less about the safety of pupils resulted in a recipe for disaster as excited pupils got hold of javelins discus etc. An over exuberant javelin thrower managed to pin my mate straight through the foot into the ground. The teacher nearly fainted the gormless wimp. The victim was fortunate in some respects in that only a very slightly longer throw would have killed him instantly.
 
Anyone mentioned the gruesome case of Gregor Baci?
This 16th century Hungarian nobleman was fond of a bit of jousting, until a freak injury put an end to his sporting pursuits.

His opponent's lance was deflected up into Gregor's face and pierced his right eye-socket, emerging at the base of his skull.
Apparently he survived another year and the lance was simply sawed off fore and aft, leaving some 20cm inside his skull.
The painting vividly depicts how he must have looked just after the accident.
I'm amazed he could stand so still to pose for his portrait, as a wound like that must have stung a bit!

lance.JPG

https://de.zxc.wiki/wiki/Gregor_Baci
 
Last edited:
A decade ago the Malaysian track cyclist Azizulhasni Awang fell at the end of a keirin race and got a 'splinter' through his calf muscle. He still managed to get back on the bike to finish third. Cyclists are tough (no cheap drugs gags, please!).

A few years earlier the British track rider Jason Queally was impaled by "an 18-inch long, one-and-a-half inch wide splinter which entered through his back".

"Queally required 70 stitches and, had it pierced his chest cavity, it would probably have killed him. He was told by Doctors that it was probably the thickness of his chest muscles, a legacy of his swimming training, that saved his life." Luckily there are no pictures of Queally's 'splinter' but here's Awang's. Yikes, that's gotta hurt!

View attachment 36654
These account reminded me of when i last visited HMS Victory in Portsmouth, it was interesting to read the ships doctors reports, the majority of the injuries in ship to ship battles were from wood splinters, i cant find a link to the ships surgeons journal but came across this:

https://ageofsail.wordpress.com/2011/08/30/more-on-splinters/
 
A
These account reminded me of when i last visited HMS Victory in Portsmouth, it was interesting to read the ships doctors reports, the majority of the injuries in ship to ship battles were from wood splinters, i cant find a link to the ships surgeons journal but came across this:

https://ageofsail.wordpress.com/2011/08/30/more-on-splinters/

Oddly, MythBusters tried this with a very accurate presentation in Episode 71 – "Pirate Special" in 2007. Their finding was that the wood splinters they produced by firing a cannon through heavy planking were incapable of causing serious damage to pig carcases.

Weird, eh?

maximus otter

 
Oddly, MythBusters tried this with a very accurate presentation in Episode 71 – "Pirate Special" in 2007. Their finding was that the wood splinters they produced by firing a cannon through heavy planking were incapable of causing serious damage to pig carcases.

Weird, eh?
maximus otter

I've got a kitchen knife that could cause a deep and nasty wound if I tried using it on myself, yet I find it nearly impossible to score pig skin for crackling on a roast joint. I'm not sure whether this has something to do with the skin hardening after slaughter vs. living flesh being more supple.
Perhaps the age of the pig carcases in experiments like this should be taken into consideration.
 
A


Oddly, MythBusters tried this with a very accurate presentation in Episode 71 – "Pirate Special" in 2007. Their finding was that the wood splinters they produced by firing a cannon through heavy planking were incapable of causing serious damage to pig carcases.

Weird, eh?

maximus otter
Yes i believe that was addressed in the link, apparently they used 6 pound cannons rather than the standard 24 pound cannon found on most naval ships of the time, as you can imagine there is a BIG difference in destructive capability of a shot 4 times the size with a massively increased powder charge.
 
I've got a kitchen knife that could cause a deep and nasty wound if I tried using it on myself, yet I find it nearly impossible to score pig skin for crackling on a roast joint. I'm not sure whether this has something to do with the skin hardening after slaughter vs. living flesh being more supple.
Perhaps the age of the pig carcases in experiments like this should be taken into consideration.
A stanley knife is best for cutting your pig skin to get ideal crackling
 
Back
Top