Saving a hand from the grip of a grinder
Dr. Fernando
The mother was carrying the screaming toddler and the father the grinding machine. The toddler and the grinder were ‘inseparable’.
It was around 7.45 in the night on August 1 and the moment she saw the little boy’s left hand twisted within the grinding machine along with thala (gingelly), the heart of Medical Officer Dr. Marinie Fernando sank.
Transferred by ambulance from the Colombo North (Ragama) Teaching Hospital to the Accident Service – Outpatients Department (OPD) of the Lady Ridgeway Hospital (LRH) for Children, Dr. Fernando who was on duty, shuddered at the likely outcome. Most probably, the little one’s left hand would have to be amputated, consigning him to a life of disability. The toddler was a left-hander.
Relieving the agony of the screaming toddler by inserting a suppository, Dr. Fernando’s reflexes worked perfectly. The need was to get the machine off the toddler’s hand.
Informing the Plastic Surgery Unit of this emergency, she quickly asked the LRH telephone exchange to check with the Maintenance Unit whether they had equipment to cut away the grinder.
With a no from that quarter, Dr. Fernando shouted, “Can someone bring a machine to cut away the grinder?”
Immediate was the response. Up got minor employee B. Anura Kumara Perera from his usual place near the main door of the Accident Service OPD and urging attendant Menike to accompany him, ran to his trishaw and sped away.
Anura from Seevali Place in Wanathamulla, Borella, knew exactly what he had to do. Close to his home was the tiny welding shop of a Baas and he made a beeline there. Baas N. Don Prasanna Chandima Silva was making ready to close shop having finished a weary day, and was just about to indulge in a bath.
“There was absolutely no hesitation on Prasanna Baasunnehe’s part. Picking up ‘cutting’ tools he climbed into the trishaw with another Malli,” says Anura, who then sped back to the LRH within minutes.
By now, the Plastic Surgery Team under Senior Registrar Dr. Pravin Wijesinghe keeping in constant touch with their Head, Consultant Plastic Surgeon, Dr. Romesh Gunasekera, along with the Anaesthetic Team were scrubbed up and ready in the Operating Theatre (OT) on the 8th floor with the anaesthetized toddler on the table.
Anura
“It was a meat grinder,” says Dr. Wijesinghe, explaining that motions of this machine with an ogre (a spiral screw-like device), grinds and pushes through a compressor whatever is placed in the machine. “Fortunately, the mother had had the presence of mind to switch it off immediately, otherwise the entire arm would have been shredded and mangled.”
The LRH Maintenance Unit had a look, says Dr. Wijesinghe, but just did not have the equipment to cut through the metal which was about as thick as a finger.
Hustled into the OT after being garbed in green scrubs, mask and cap Prasanna set forth on his delicate ‘surgery’ lasting nearly 2½ hours. Armed with an axle-grinder he was able to cut a segment out and lift the ogre free.
“As sparks were flying, the baby was covered,” says Prasanna.
“All the boy’s nerves were cut, bones fractured and blood vessels damaged,” points out Dr. Wijesinghe. The spiral-device had severely injured the boy’s palm and middle parts as well as the tips of all the fingers.
In a procedure lasting altogether about five hours, the team worked on the nerves, blood vessels and bones. However, as the middle finger was the longest it had been damaged in four sections and was beyond repair and had to be amputated.
“The boy is fine now,” says Dr. Wijesinghe, stressing, however, that he would have to undergo therapy over time.
Now he is in Dr. Gunasekera’s Ward 14 and as we look into his cot, he is sleeping peacefully with his hand strung up, with his mother seated by his bedside.
It is a heartfelt thank-you that goes out from Dr. Fernando to Anura for rising to the occasion and not thinking that it is none of his business and to Prasanna for freeing the little one’s hand from the vicious machine. There had been vigorous shakes of the head and a definite “No, No” from both Anura and Prasanna to a tentative offer of a small remuneration.
Each and every one of them, Dr. Fernando, Anura and Prasanna, have simply gone beyond their call of duty, while the Plastic Surgery and Anaesthetic Teams have worked tirelessly and a little one whose life would have changed forever if not for them, dreams in innocent slumber, oblivious of it.
Prasanna with the ‘cutter’. Pix by M.A. Pushpa Kumara