From the UK Times Online:
A student has given warning of the potential dangers of body piercings, after she was almost killed when her belly-button stud tore through her stomach “like a bullet” during a car accident.
Jessica Collins, 19, from Radyr, Cardiff, is recovering from surgery at a hospital in Munich, where the crash happened. The seatbelt she was wearing forced the metal stud through her body almost to her spine, causing serious internal injuries.
Problems with body alteration aren't as rare--or as mild--as some would like to think. Consider this recent case of a girl who nearly died from a tongue piercing:
At the hospital, swelling in Lacey's throat was so bad it had blocked her airway. She stopped breathing on the way to get a CAT scan.
Erhardt, a specialist in head and neck surgery, was urgently paged to the emergency room to treat her.
The infection was spreading rapidly. She was going into septic shock, a dangerous blood infection. They gave her an emergency tracheotomy so she could breathe.
Then, she was rushed into the operating room where Erhardt cut into her neck and chest. All he could see was infection.
"Way far away in her chest there was pus pouring out everywhere," he said. Pockets of infection kept popping up.
At one point, Lacey had 16 tubes in her upper body to help drain away the infection. Tests showed the bacteria ravaging her body were types commonly found in the mouth.
The surgery took about two hours. When it was finished, Reedes remembers being told: "You guys need a miracle for her to make it the next 12 to 24 hours."
For weeks, Lacey wavered at the edge of death, kept in a drug-induced coma to give her struggling body every chance to heal. A tube kept her breathing. Operations to cut out the infection were needed nearly every day.
The article also says the medical bills for this girl reached nearly $525,000. That was a pretty costly body alteration.
God says the body is the temple of the Lord and warns us in the Bible not to be hacking, poking and otherwise altering our bodies for cosmetic purposes.
Maybe there are practical considerations behind God's rules? Possible?
1 comments:
We see complications of peircings and tatoos frequently in the ER, usually infections. As the story mentions, some can be life-threatening or, at least, disfiguring. The fad of body mutilation is thankfully waning, perhaps because more people are becoming aware of the risk. What I don't understand at all is when I see babies with pierced ears, or prepubescent youths with tatoos and all manner of body piercings. Don't their parents care about them? Are the risks worth it just to express some immature notions of "individuality?"
Post a Comment