Dumb ways to die...

[75]

Ouch! A cut like that can ruin a good pair of trousers.

Just as well he had his around his ankles when he was doing the gralloch

 

[75]

This thread did remind me of an occasion I went in after a young dog. It was spring in the Lake District on the edge of Crummock or Buttermere. Still snow on the tops so the water was a tad nippy.

Spaniel pup decided she couldn't swim - I assumed all dogs knew how to swim! She was swimming vertically trying to get her head above water and kept bobbing up and then straight back down under water. It was peeing down with rain so I had wellies, over trousers and waterproofs on and the shoreline shelved steeply with loose gravel / shale. She was only about 8' from me but I went from ankle deep to out of my depth in one step as the bank slipped away from me. Not a soul about. Neither of us came to any harm but I did have a moment or two reflection after I dragged my self back onto dry land!

 

[Donkey Basher]

Ouch! A cut like that can ruin a good pair of trousers.

I have a similarly ruined pair of trousers & a matching scar on the inside of my left knee…

 

[Smellydog]

I once climbed a tall corner fence and slipped with an 870 in hand.
Leg got twisted up and I swear it nearly broke! I was just few pounds force away from a break.
I was stuck for a while inverted. By slicing the calf and shin on the barb wire I got free, just.
Nobody for miles and no phone.
Got home with blood stained ripped trousers and proceeded to get a bollocking!

 

[Shotgun572013]

Severed a tendon in my hand many years ago. Just finishing a suspended gralloch and removing the head when the carcass slipped off and knocked the blade onto my knuckle . Didn’t look too bad but if it was my wrist, I was in big trouble !

 

[nathan.p]

Aren't the official stats something like 15 or 18 to 1, even for those trained in doing it properly (a category I would include you in of course).

I’d class myself as properly trained, I drive a large yellow taxi. Good quality early CPR and early defibrillation as S62 says are what saves people, depending on whether or not you go into a specific rhythm.

It is incredibly rare to get a patient to survive to discharge with good neurological output. Few survive and even fewer survive with positive outcome unfortunately.

As of the statistics, I’m unsure. 1 in ten survive, but it will be less for a good neurological outcome.

So please gents, be careful and if you think, aaaah bollocks this might hurt if it goes wrong, just don’t do it

 

[Mungo]

Without a defibrillator, the odds are indeed very much against success.

it is also exhausting to do CPR for any length of time and brutal on your knees.

Why is it that first aid courses spend so much time on CPR?

I’m sure I’ve ranted about this on here before. Been on multiple courses because I run field courses, sometimes in reasonably remote places. They all spend between 30 and 50% of the time on CPR. Which is (a) utterly pointless if you’re well over an hour from help, and (b) statistically unnecessary when the people you’re looking after are all under the age of 25.

This is even when the courses are billed as Field Work First Aid, or even Remote/Wilderness FA.

I got into quite an argument with the provider of the last one. Very nearly resorted to showing off my scars…

 

[BenBhoy]

I once read of a chap who was rolling bales and got the wrist button of his army surplus jacket caught in the netting. Dragged him right over the top and broke his neck, poor bloke. My blood ran cold when I read that as I used to do the very same thing! Never had a combat jacket on around the farm since

Its amazing how easily buttons get caught on net wrap. Never to that extreme thankfully, but I've had plenty of cuff buttons get caught in wrap, usually results in me ripping it off & button popping off shirt.

 

[User00056]

Its amazing how easily buttons get caught on net wrap. Never to that extreme thankfully, but I've had plenty of cuff buttons get caught in wrap, usually results in me ripping it off & button popping off shirt.

The button cuffs were changed to Velcro on the later gear. Probably to save costs, but I'm pretty sure it'll have saved more than a couple from a similar fate as a result. Even now, that incident stays with me, and I pull the cords off new hoodies, and make sure I have nothing to snag if I'm messing with bales or machinery.

 

[Roebuck9]

Then your mate is extraordinarily lucky.

I have had occasion to perform CPR on six members of the public. Not one of them made it.

I promise you it was not my poor technique.

I do not wish to hijack the thread but I remember when I was just 21 and I went into a department store and was looking at an item on the counter when I heard a loud hollow thud behind me. I turned around only to see this elderly gentlman flat on his back on the wooden floor with his lips turning blue. i realised he had a heart attack I said to the counter assistant phone for an ambulance which she hurried off to the office to do, while I tried to administer CPR with another man who had joined me.
The ambulance appeared minutes later he must have been very close by when he got the call. the first ambulance guy said to me continue pumping the chest while he blew into his lungs with mouth to mouth resusitation. the other ambulance guy said he had to got back to the ambulance for the "minute man" suitcase of oxygen and drugs i understand. resusitation continued for at least 30 minutes before they would risk moving him into the ambulance and then to hospital. when they finally left I was invited to have a cup of tea in the office before I left.

I went in there next day and enquired how the gentleman was. i was told he had died, he had rushed in to tell his wife who worked there, that her farther had just died. The poor lady had lost both her father and her husband on the same day how unfortunate was that!

 

[Dunwaters]

My chances of surviving to old age increased exponentially once I gave this up.
Bastard things kept getting faster and quicker every year and I was getting slower and losing confidence in my personal invincibility.

 

[Bavarianbrit]

The button cuffs were changed to Velcro on the later gear. Probably to save costs, but I'm pretty sure it'll have saved more than a couple from a similar fate as a result. Even now, that incident stays with me, and I pull the cords off new hoodies, and make sure I have nothing to snag if I'm messing with bales or machinery.

In 1965 on my first job at BSA training centre almost on the first day they showed us a film that must have been wartime made about loose clothing and women having long hair flailing about and the scene of a scalped woman from working a capstan lathe is still there in the back of my mind (my mum worked one of these killers so perhaps that's why).

 

[TheGoatAssassin]

At least they’ll name the pond after me

 

[NullMac]

Scuba diving off Oban years ago. The cox’n was trying to put us off a reed from a rib. All geared up to go. Cox shouts brace, bloody big wave swamps us right next to the reef. Washes me off the side of the boat and I slipped tank down between the tube and the helm.

Can’t move, regulator is out and I am about 6” underwater. Cox is shouting that he will get me in a minute as he is trying to keep the rib off the rocks.

So I had a couple of minutes to reflect on the dangers of diving but no one mentioned drowning in the boat.

You never know.

Same experience on cpr. I saw a couple diving and nobody made it. Including the guy who had the head of emergency medicine with the USAF at RAF Alconbury leading it. Ironically he was on a compulsory PADI First Aid Course that day.

Having said that I recently had a mate have a cardiac arrest at Braidwood. He had CPR and defibrillator for 45 minutes and not only did he make it but he is fine. So always worth trying but don’t beat yourself up if it doesn’t work. The probability is low

 

[crow killer]

You are right Stalker 1962.
40 years ago, long before mobile phones etc. Duck flighting on a small and shallow farm pond. January - minus 2C with a strong northeasterly. Very young lad called Paul with me.
I shot a mallard when almost dark. It landed in the pond. Sent in dog to retrieve. Stupidly I had not removed dog's collar. Dog got hung up on something swimming back with the duck. I slid down the vertical bank and stepped into the nine inches of water that I knew was under my feet.
I left my hat on the top of the water and touched bottom with my feet and then came up again!
Upon breaking the surface I tried to get up the bank but nothing to grip on. Floundered around and found my dog, still with duck in her mouth, had got a small 'twig' that was growing out of the side of the bank through her collar. I pulled her off the twig and hung on to it myself. That twig, and then Paul, saved my life.
I was wearing wellies, a Barber greased jacket, a full cartridge belt under my jacket and my pockets had cartridges too.
There were bits of ice floating about.
I tried to get my feet into the vertical bank to no avail. What had happened to that nine inches of water that my grandchildren had paddled in back in the summer when fishing?
When I pulled on the twig it started to come out of the bank and my jacket was starting to loose any flotation that it had as it filled with water - including the pockets. I couldn't get under my jacket to release my cartridge belt and ditto with my pockets to remove the cartridges. It was bloody cold.
My faithful dog had extricated herself and was trying to give me the duck by leaning down the bank. I tried reaching her but couldn't. I didn't want the duck, yet, but I did need something to pull on.
I screamed for Paul and then waited.
He arrived in minutes that seemed like hours to me.
I tried swimming across to the other side but that didn't work as by now I was almost submerged with the weight of 'ballast' that I was carrying and terribly cold.
Paul tried to reach down to me but could only touch my finger tips. I had managed to flounder back to that all important 'twig' and hung on grimly. (It was about half an inch thick).
Paul said he would go for help, which was about a mile away, in the shape of the rest of the shooting party.
I said have another go at reaching down to me. He said, rather reasonably, that he would but he didn't want to fall in the pond as he couldn't swim.
He then said I was to hang on while he tried to find a branch to reach down to me. I was hanging on but very precariously.
He came back and said he couldn't find one but would try something else.
By now it was completely dark and I was shivering and very low in the water. My feet would not go into the bank side to give me purchase. I couldn't get my boots off my feet but I did try. I still could not release my cartridge belt or get the cartridges out of my pockets. My faithful labrador was still valiantly trying to give me the wretched duck. (If only I had missed it as I usualy did in those days).
A pair of rubber boots appeared out of the gloom above my head. 'Hang on to them', shouted Paul.
I got one in each hand and they supported my weight.
In desperation I started to climb and the boots stayed firm.
It took ages but I eventually got my hands, and then my elbows, over the top of the vertical bank.
The boots vanished and then Paul's head appeared. He grabbed me under the shoulders and heaved with all his might.
Thank the Gods for making farm lads big and strong.
He got me out.
As Paul trudged and I slushed across the ploughed field a landrover appeared. Jeremy had been dispatched by the farmer to see where we had got to.
I was taken home and someone explained to my Mrs that I, and my dog, had been for an evening swim. She rushed off and got a dog towel and dried Kim off whilst I stood in the back kitchen shivering and struggling to get out of my gear.
Paul explained that the nine inches of water had transferred itself into ten feet+ of water due to a JCB digging the pond out, from the other side, two days ago.
When I asked him about the boots being lovered to me he explained that his feet were still in them and he had dug his finger tips into the frozen plough, hung on and hoped.
His hopes were answered and I lived to tell this tale. He is still, and always will be, my best mate - now looking forward to his retirement from the farm - and we often look at that pond and remember one freezing January night a long, long time ago.

That 'twig' was actually a root and it is now a thirty foot tree.

Paul still cannot swim.

Thank God that it turned out right for you Stalker 1962. Life and death can be very close on occasions. Live long and prosper mate.

What a predicament, you were in, you were very lucky, well done for surviving, amazing , water is so dangerous.