Third in an occasional series of stories for a slow, boring news day, when there is seemingly nothing else to report but the on-going non-appearance of the remains of a Malaysian airliner. Can’t be much longer…
Man chops off his own hand with a homemade guillotine… and is now threatening to amputate his arm
A man cut his own hand off with a homemade guillotine after enduring years of excruciating nerve pain.
Mark Goddard built the contraption using an axe, some springs and an old gate post. The 44-year-old claimed he resorted to such drastic action because hospital staff had refused to treat the pains he suffered for over 16 years following a motorcycle crash.
‘I should not have to go to such extremes to get my pain stopped. There was an alternative – and that was having it done properly in hospital,’ he explained.
Unfortunately for the man from Newton Abbot in Devon, the homemade device only partially severed his wrist and he had to finish off the job with a knife.
He then threw the hand onto a bonfire in his garden so that surgeons could not sew it back on.
‘There should never have been any need for me to do this. It would have spared so much distress all round – but it was the only way. At least it will give me and my family our lives back,’ he added.
Mr Goddard’s pains still continue and he has threatened the NHS with a deadline for treatment otherwise he will chop his arm off at the elbow.
After being rushed to hospital, it was estimated that the former mechanic lost two pints of blood.
Mr Goddard was anxious to stress that he had undergone several psychiatric examinations since his difficulties started – and had always been given a clean bill of health.
There are pictures too, but maybe you’ll want to go to the original website rather than upset those of a nervous disposition with images of blood and gore and a man trying to look like he was justified in chopping off his own hand…
Sausages, anyone?
By: snafu - 30th March 2014 at 21:35
You are right.
But it was not so much desperate measures as downright stupid measures. Granted, his local authority maybe could have taken notice and explained what was going on to him a bit better; maybe they had and this was not covered by the media reports. Maybe they had totally ignored him after his initial query.
But it needs to be stressed that his self-amputation appears to have failed since the pain has moved up his arm – a clear indication that, for the most part, the pain is more in his mind than it was in his hand: a ‘phantom’ pain in his nerves, rather than actual damage to his hand. He has given the authorities until December to sort out his pain or he will go through the whole procedure again, but from the elbow – where does he go to if that fails too? The shoulder?
Maybe giving the story the title ‘silly news’ (part of a series of occasional posts) was not the greatest idea, but the story is one that might be recalled for years to come: the man who chopped off his own hand with a hand made guillotine, the man who went out of his way to make sure he beat the pain – but failed. I hope he gets the help he (obviously) needs and gets the pain sorted out, but there had to have been better ways of going about it.
By: Derekf - 30th March 2014 at 10:50
By this point pain is all in the mind. He should have cut at the neck, not the wrist…;o)
Aren’t you the compassionate one. A man resorts to desperate measures and to you its “silly news”?
By: snafu - 30th March 2014 at 10:47
No no-no no.
Won’t help her. But I’m sure there is legal assistance to be easily found. For a price.
By: Lincoln 7 - 30th March 2014 at 09:52
Can’t see any Arm in it actually.
The NHS seemingly cherry pick what they want to do and not want to. My eldest daughter went into Pilgrim Hospital, Boston, as she had had several T.I.A. attacks, she was Operated on, and now has brain fluid dripping down through her nose. The only pain killers that half work is Morphine, and they have made her an addict. She went back to the Consultant who had put her on Morphine, and asked to be weaned off it. They gave her the address of a drug addicts centre, and told her to go there and get herself sorted out, as the Hospital cannot help her.
Jim.
Lincoln .7
By: snafu - 29th March 2014 at 23:48
By this point pain is all in the mind. He should have cut at the neck, not the wrist…;o)
By: trumper - 29th March 2014 at 22:28
I can understand wanting to remove the source of the pain,anyone would BUT to actually do it and the pain is still there proves that the source of the pain may not have been where the pain was felt .Try going to a Chiropractor with a pain-the odds are it is something else putting pressure on something that moves the pain around,not always what you think.
I do find it worrying that the NHS couldn’t or wouldn’t deal with it.
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March 29, 2014 at 9:04 pm