Iron Rod Pierces Man

I seldom get to report some heartening new.
So it is with great pleasure that I report the operation performed successfully on one Sheikh Rajak Ali who was pierced through by an iron rod.
It was only God's grace and a team of doctors who were able to save him.

Radheshyam

5-ft rod through his lung, driver gets second life

KOLKATA: A team of doctors at the Kolkata government medical college successfully operated on a youth who had been pierced by a six-foot long iron shaft in a road accident.

Ali was driving a Tata Sumo to Arambag with his brother Sheikh Rajak and some neighbours when a truck rammed into them at Shirakol. An iron shaft shot out of the truck, smashed through the windscreen and speared Ali.

Rajak managed to pull Ali out of the car and first took him to a nursing home nearby. Later, he was taken to the state-run Kolkata Medical College and Hospital.

For the next five hours, it was his iron will that kept him alive. Every breath was torture. Every step agony. But he gritted his teeth through a bumpy one-hour ride to Kolkata, and even walked the last few metres to the emergency ward of Medical College and Hospital (MCH).

Only then did he pray for a miracle. And he got one - in a team of the city's best surgeons.

It took a two-hour surgery by seven specialists, with Ali half-sitting up, before the rod was pulled out and the gaping holes in his body sealed. "He showed exceptional courage and stamina. Most people would faint after being pierced by a rod like that, but Ali didn’t even look nervous. It helped us save him," said Siddhartha Mukherjee, who led the team of surgeons.

Mukherjee said Ali showed immense courage and stamina. He was not nervous and did not even faint after suffering the fatal accident.

"It helped us to save him," the doctor added.

Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee Thursday congratulated the doctors and said he wanted to meet them.

A similar accident took place in the national capital in July last year when an engineer, Supratim Dutta, was impaled by an iron beam that perforated seven of his organs. Dutta survived as the beam had narrowly missed his heart, but needed a series of complicated surgeries.