Posted on 04/23/2013 6:12:17 AM PDT by haffast
Tough guy over here.
A Brazilian fisherman who accidentally fired a harpoon through his own face survived with minimal brain damage -- and didn't bother to seek medical attention for more than 10 hours.
Bruno Barcellos de Souza Coutinho, 34, was cleaning his fishing gear when the speargun discharged, sending the foot-long weapon approximately six inches into his skull, according to Hospital Santa Teresa.
Instead of rushing to the hospital, de Souza Coutinho apparently thought he would relax and let the wound heal, prompting his aunt to call the fire department.
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(Excerpt) Read more at main.aol.com ...
Brazil nuts can be hard to crack.
I’ve read about people who have survived such injuries. Sometimes it does very weird things to them. He could start singing opera or beating his wife or both.
Caution: Do Not Point At Face
Yep. My oldest son was nearly killed when a tire exploded and cracked his skull and did frontal lobe damage. They are never the same again because they’ve been re-wired.
That was my thought:
1. ALWAYS keep the speargun pointed in a safe direction (Note: your own face is not a safe direction! Neither is your wife, even when you are “cleaning” the speargun and “didn’t know it was loaded”).
2. ALWAYS keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot.
3. ALWAYS keep the speargun unloaded until ready to use.
A fairly basic question that I have is - How could he NOT have known the spear gun was loaded?
That’s a question I always have, and no answer is satisfactory. When I grew up, every gun in the house was always loaded, with appropriate exceptions such as cleaning. If I had ever violated a gun safety rule, I would have been banned from touching any firearm for a year, perhaps more. With a speargun, I’m amazed that even a moron could have an oopsie like this. It should have been obvious that it was loaded. I blame the parents who may have raised him without teaching him basic gun safety.
Oh, please do hear the tale of Phineas Gage,
A man who lived in America’s golden age,
Who used a tamping rod to push down old explosives,
And deserves a much better rhyme to describe the consequences.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage
In any event, he was pestered for years by the Smithsonian,
which begged and pleaded to have his skull once he died,
and he finally agreed. So to this day, it holds an honored place in the national museum, with a replacement tamping rod inserted through the old hole to show what happened.
I’m glad he survived! How is he doing today?
His siblings try to break through with the truth and have a hard time understanding that the most complex wiring God ever created (our brain)is now “short circuiting”.
I’m sorry to hear this part of it. God Bless all of you.
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