What BS?
I was honest. My sister is a nurse - fact (in WA state)
She did not work on him - fact (Could not she was in Wa state!)
She was on duty - fact (Nurse in the neonatial care unit)
Just trying to add credibility to the picture.
The point of the thread was "Testament to Modern Medicine" in the fact that the guy survived - Simply incredible.
-=SF=-
SpeedFreak -
Didn't intend to question whether your sister was a nurse, etc. It's just that in my reading of your first follow-up post
sure are a bunch of non believers. It's not photoshopped, the picture came from my sister who is an ER nurse. She did not work on him but was on duty working
You seemed to be implying that this happened
at the hospital where your sister worked. Otheres seem to have made the same mistake. This looked like a classic "urban legend" - hence my search on snopes.
According to snopes.com (
https://www.snopes.com/photos/gruesome/splinter.asp )
this picture, and story, have been running around the internet since March of 2004
Here's the text of the SNOPES entry:
OUCH: READ THIS STORY THEN LOOK AT THE PICTURE!!!!!!!!
[The story]
Below is an actual emergency room photo of a gentleman who lost control of his motorcycle on a country road in West Virginia. Troopers believe that he was traveling at a speed of approximately 75 mph at the time of the accident. He was unable to negotiate a curve in the road.
Unfortunately for him, upon striking the ditch and being ejected from the bike, he landed back end first on a fencepost from an old barnyard fenced that was downed on the side of the road. You can probably picture what happened next, but the attached picture really says it all. The good news is that after about 6 months, this man made a full recovery after suffering a shattered hip, broken leg, several broken ribs, internal injuries and "soft tissue" damage. Doctors credited his recovery to the fact that the post lodged itself so tightly that there was little or no blood loss.
[Origins]
The photograph referenced by the above text (which can be found on various sites around the web by searching on phrases such as "gentleman who lost control of his motorcycle") is evidently genuine, although the explanation that now accompanies it is possibly an invented one. This picture first began circulating in March 2004 under the title "Lesson Painfully Learned" and at that time bore no text to explain its putative origins; the motorcycle accident scenario quoted above did not begin to circulate with the photographs until many months later.
Back in 2004 an informant told us that the photograph originated in the trauma bay of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences' (UAMS) emergency room. According to this source, the patient shown in the photo crashed his truck through a fence, causing a large fence post to come through part of the truck's engine and firewall before catching on spring wire in the back of the front seat, impaling the driver in the process. The patient was reportedly treated in the operating room but died a few days later of infection. We have not been able to independently verify these details, however.
(A google search on the exact phrase "gentleman who lost control of his motorcycle" will confirm the widespread distribution of the photo and story)
I'm not surprised that your sister (an ER nurse) would have rec'd this photo and story -- looking at a few of the sites that google finds, it's also spread around a lot by firefighers and cops - folks who see gruesome stuff all too often, and need to believe that they have at least a chance to save 'em all (or at least any one of 'em on any given day) in order to keep doing the job effectively.
(and MC types who have to beware of the crazy 'cagers' everytime we go for a ride)
FM