Doc Saves Boys Life With A Drill
Updated : May 21, 2009
A doctor, a drill and a young boy with head injuries!
VeryHappyPig thought it sounded like a scene from a horror movie but on further investigation we discovered it was the kind of story we love to publish, a happy one!
It seems an Australian doctor saved the life of a 12-year-old boy - by using a household drill to bore into his brain after he had a bike accident.
The drama began when Nicholas Rossi fell off his bike in a cul-de-sac in Maryborough, Victoria, reports The Australian.
When he got home, Nicholas kept complaining of a headache and his mother, Karen, a trained nurse, took him to the district hospital where Dr Rob Carson, a local GP, was on duty.
The doctor kept him in for observation, and an hour later Nicholas began to drift in and out of consciousness and have spasms.
Dr Carson recognised it as a sign of internal bleeding in the skull that places acute pressure on the brain - the same condition that claimed the life of actress Natasha Richardson.
Nicholas's father Michael said: "Dr Carson came over to us and said, 'I am going to have to drill into Nicholas to relieve the pressure on the brain - we've got one shot at this and one shot only'."
The small country hospital was not equipped with neurological drills, so Dr Carson obtained a household De Walt drill, used for boring holes in wood, from a hospital maintenance room.
He telephoned leading Melbourne neurosurgeon David Wallace to help talk him through the procedure, which he had never tried before.
Dr Carson drilled until a blood clot fell out and continued to treat Nicholas until he could be airlifted an hour later to Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital.
"If you are in that situation you just do those things," he said. "It is not a personal achievement, it is just a part of the job and I had a very good team of people helping me."
