Dead-Hand: Not just a Tale
By the time I saw him, he smelt awful. Smells is all in the life of medical personnel: Smell of antiseptics; of disinfectants; of drugs and, of dying or dead flesh. In this particular case, it was the smell of a dead flesh. I guess that’s one of the hazards I have to cope with as a Doctor, though.
His offensive odour had an ironic but welcomed plus: His malodorous ‘perfume’ had assisted the nurses in chasing away a fair number of patients’ relatives, who are often, in the habit of loitering around their sick ones, all in the name of rendering care. But here I am, staying as close as the word ‘close’ can ever permit, examining every system in his body, including the source of the mal-odour -his gangrenous hand (the simplest way to describe this is to call it the dead hand).
The Dead-Hand Man had been a victim of a robbery attack. Certain ‘good’ highwaymen of the night had come unannounced, uninvited and in a very rude manner to his home. Our good highwaymen of the night, who had announced their foul presence with sickening brutal force to others were unwelcomed, unwanted, undesired, unsought, unsolicited, unasked-for guests to the Dead-Hand Man.
Being a butcher by profession, he had attempted to defend himself (or, maybe, attack his unwanted guests). He had a way with the tools of his trade but his way was dwarfed by the tools of our good –GUNS- highwaymen of the night. His uncommon zealousness had been duly paid back with a gun shot to his upper right arm (his dominant hand). A ghastly, garish and major wound became his lot from the gunshot.
His relatives had come to his rescue, after ‘his’ vile guests had left him in a pool of his blood. In their haste to save his life, they took him to a nearby ‘medical centre’ where they met an untrained (ill-trained, perhaps) fellow who used a tourniquet on the arm. He must have been daunted by the extent of wound and the rate of blood loss that he was rather too anxious to arrest the bleeding at all cost, apparently unwary of the repercussions.
Tourniquets are not bad in and of themselves, misuse and zero-monitoring was the bane herein as it is used, frequently, every day. From its first ‘crude’ use by the Romans in 199 BCE-500 CE to Jean Louis Petit’s, Joseph Lister’s to James McEwen’s patents, tourniquets have saved many a-life either during surgical procedure or emergencies.
In our sad case, an emergency was criminally mismanaged.
By the time Dead-Hand Man got to the centre where I work (3 days after the ugly incidence), the whole of the hand from the level of tying down to fingers was numbed: no blood supply, no nerve supply, all tissues therein-muscles, bone, skin are perhaps all dead!
We are therefore left with no other choice than to amputate the length of the hand.
Days after the amputation, our patient was terribly depressed; he still found it hard to believe that his limbs would never come back to him. His dominant hand, now no more, meant unemployment (and perhaps death by installment)
He now had to call on anybody, just anybody nearby before he could successfully lift a bottle of water to his mouth to quench his thirst.
He lost so much blood that he was being transfused day in day out in other to keep his packed cell volume at the barest optimal level. At this time, he was only interested in being sure that he wasnt going to lose his life.
How did he find himself here?
Was he wrong to have challenged the armed robbers? Was his approach wrong? Has it even been predestined that he would lose one of his arms (in fact the dominant one) before the age of 30?
His betrothed actually stood by him all the while,
are we sure things would still continue the way it was? Would she still want to marry an amputee? Would he be able to cope with his new life? What happens to his profession? These are questions begging to be answered. But to me, the paramount question still is ‘could this have been prevented?’
PS: Rushing down the aisle of the clinic a few days ago and a young man tapped my shoulder, our eyes met and there he extends his left hand (for a handshake). I quickly grabbed it and shook it as fervently as I could. Our Dead-Hand Man (having been discharged) is back for follow up. With a radiant smile on his face, he said ‘Doctor, e se gan ni’ (Doctor, thank you very much). I smiled back and gave all thanks to God -thats what my name stands for.
Hamid Adediran is a Medical Doctor+Broadcaster=Medicaster. He tweets from @hamid_doctalk
