The Third Arm

Plenty of interesting stories that bring back memories of my home and training. I think I was a first year resident when this happened. I was sat in trauma when a young man was rushed in. He had fallen in the path of a train and was extremely lucky to be alive. His arm (I dont remember which side) was amputated at the level of the mid-humerus (that is the bone in the upper arm). All we could do was to stabilise him, tie of the blood vessels in the stump and dress the wound.

A good half-hour later, two men came into trauma very agitated enquiring about this patient. I was attending to some paperwork and pointed in the direction of the patient's bed. However, something about one of these men was odd. He had his arms folded across his chest and for a moment I did not realise what was odd about that.

Then it struck me. Folded across his chest were not two but three arms. He was cradling the amputated part of his brother's arm that he had picked up from the tracks in the hope that we would be able to put it back together. But, unfortunately, the train had run over the elbow joint and the arm was missing a good 10cm chunk that was probably stuck to some wheel of some carriage of some train.

I wonder what hopes the man had when he picked that arm up from the dirty tracks.