Friday, July 16, 2010
What a police car wrapped around Superman might look like
The word "miraculous" scarcely describes the survival of a Santa Maria, California police officer who wrapped his Ford Police Interceptor around a tree Sunday morning. It's what the local Police Chief calls the "worst accident he's seen in 35 years."
Sunday was a busy day for the members of the Santa Maria Police Department, starting with a police chase that resulted in a stolen car crashing into a first grade classroom of a local school. But that's not where this amazing crash happened.
Hours later, Officer Damon Badnell was responding to an officer involved in a foot pursuit of a burglary suspect when he lost control of his vehicle on a slippery road. The momentum wrapped the vehicle around the tree, nearly bisecting the Ford Crown Victoria.
Officer Badnell, who recently was awarded for stopping the most drunk drivers, has a few broken bones but doctors are hopeful about his recovery.
Whoopi Goldberg Hated Her iPhone 4 So Much That She Destroyed It
Whoopi Goldberg Hated Her iPhone 4 So Much That She Destroyed It
Today, Whoopi Goldberg revealed that her frustration with the new iPhone caused her to "murder" it. After experiencing reception problems during a phone interview, Goldberg said that she opened her car door and smashed the device to pieces. Video inside.
Boy tries to kill fish. Fish try to kill boy.
TEENAGE angler Tom Mitchenall is lucky to be alive after he was speared in the chest — by his own FISHING FLOAT.
Tom, 17, had hooked a large carp and was jostling with the heavy fish when the line snapped sending the slender plastic float "twanging" back at him like an arrow.
Incredibly, the 8in-long plastic dart pierced Tom's chest and embedded itself in his lung which collapsed.
The riverbank "missile" missed his main artery by just an inch. Had it been cut he would have bled to death.
But Tom was rushed to hospital where surgeons removed the float from his chest and drained the fluid on his lung.
Collapsed lung ... Tom in hospital
SWNSRead more: Recovering from the nightmare ordeal at home today he said: "It was scary as hell. I felt like I'd been shot with a crossbow. At one point I thought I was going to die.
"Doctors said if the float had hit me an inch to the right it would have pierced an artery and I'd have had it."
Tom was just 15 minutes into a pole fishing competition at Whitehall Angling Club in Rushwick, Worcs, when he struck into a large common carp.
He played the fish for a few moments before it 'broke' him — snapping the elastic connecting the float to the line.
The recoiling float shot 18ft out of the water straight back at Tom and pierced his football shirt before embedding itself in his right lung.
Tom, from Worcester, said: "I was hoping to land some big carp and the conditions were perfect when I felt a fish on the end.
"I started playing the fish to tire it out because it was a big one but it shot off to the other side of the pool.
"The hook pulled out and the float catapulted out and hit me straight in the chest. At first I didn't realise what had happened and started looking behind me for the float.
"It's only when I looked down and saw it sticking out of my chest and at the patch of blood spreading over my shirt that I knew the float had hit me.
"I tried to pull it out but the end snapped off and about three-and-a-half inches stayed in me.
"I began struggling for breath and could hear bubbling which was the air rushing out my lung where the float had pierced it."
Tom's dad Graham, 54, drove his son to Worcestershire Royal Hospital where he had three x-rays and a CT scan.
Surgeons spent an hour removing the float before they drained the fluid.
Graham, also a keen fisherman, said: "I have never known anything like it before. It's just a freak accident."
Pole fishing is a specialised form of float fishing, where a light, long pole is extended in sections instead of using a traditional fishing rod.
Tom, who hopes to join the RAF next year, stayed in hospital for four days before he was allowed back home.
The lad added: "It was a strange thing to happen but it hasn't put me off fishing.
"I'll be back out there on Sunday - my dad reckons I should wear body armour but I'll take my chances."
Blink, and you live – doctors' message to man in a coma
A man who was left paralysed and seemingly unable to communicate following a traffic accident was saved from having his life support machine turned off when he managed to blink three times to tell doctors that he did not want to die.
Richard Rudd's family had been agonising about turning off life support, his father said, after his son had said he would not want to live in a paralysed state.
But his son's remarkable response raises questions about when life should end and about how and when a family can decide if their loved one has suffered enough.
The story began in October last year, when 43-year-old Rudd, a father of two, was seriously injured after a collision led him to be thrown 20 feet from his motorbike.
The battle to save him led him to be treated at the Neurocritical care unit at Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridgeshire.
His father, also called Richard Rudd, had given permission for doctors to withdraw treatment after his son failed to respond. "We said that knowing Richard, there was no way in a million years that he would want to live with his injuries, but doctors wanted to wait a little bit longer," he told the BBC in a programme about his son's case.
"[The doctor] held open his eyelids and asked him to move his eyes if he could hear and he moved his eyes around, so we knew he wasn't brain dead."
Intensive-care specialist Professor David Menon, 53, set up the unit 13 years ago and was in charge of Rudd's care.
He said: "He had severe injuries to his brain and we could not communicate with him. The outcome was thought to be very bleak indeed.
In fact, Richard was in a locked in state where people have relatively normal cognitive processes in the brain but are only able to allow you to know about that by movement of the eyes or eyelids.
"When, after a period of waiting, he showed voluntary movement of his eyes, everything changed. We could use these eye movements to document yes or no responses, and allow Richard to have a say in his own care."
Rudd's father added: "We're still not certain how much Richard understands … At times, it's like looking through frosted glass. But his speech therapist asked a series of questions to test him and it's definitely still Richard in there.
"He's in such a dire state that we wonder why he's smiling, but he seems to respond to the right cues.Making a living will could be detrimental to your own health.
"There must have been a time when Richard could hear what was going on but wasn't able to do anything about it.
"For my part, I'm glad he's alive and didn't make a living will."
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