Yeah, I was surprised to see the pole still intact in the hospital photo.
He is a nurse in a hospital. Thus he has good health insurance and a solid middle class income. So the cost of the helicopter ride would be serious but not catastrophic.
Remember he is a klutz; he already impaled himself with his trekking pole. So with that and with the weakness from the injury there is a good chance he would slip sometime during this 6 hour walk/climb down a mountain. Landing in the wrong way [and ripping open the side] could change recovery from a relatively short time to many months.
That’s a little harsh. Everybody trips once in a while.
That’s unfair. Who among us hasn’t slipped and landed on a hiking pole, or broom, or rake, hoe, loose javelin, and rammed it clear through our bodies? I mean, with all these people in the world, and all these sharp sticks, it must happen…hundreds of times a day. Right?
You have to give him credit for creating a new orifice rather than using an existing one.
I remember a case on Mt Washington in NH many winters ago, when a guy impaled himself with an ice axe during a tumbling fall. He and his friends bundled him up and they walked down to the Pinkham Notch visitors center (dropping 4000’ and about 4 miles) to get aid and transportation. Apparently the look on the rangers faces when he opened the down coat revealing the ice axe through is abdomen was priceless.
Shit happens; and this is some serious shit. Self-rescue is still the standard, and it’s nearly always best to do so if possible. Chopper evacs are not without risk, putting the crew at danger as well as the victim and other people on the ground. He evaluated the situation, understood the risks better than most, and elected to self-rescue.
I’d buy him a beer if I wasn’t worried that it would leak all over the place.
One time in the anatomic path lab we received a four foot-long metal rod as a pathology specimen. A construction worker had fallen and impaled himself on it*, necessitating surgical extraction.
*through the groin area, as I recall. 
Maybe it was a pickup?
Probably not legal anywhere in the USA these days to ride in the back of an open pickup, but it still happens sometimes, even without that drastic a reason.
That’s two new orifices. (Not cross-posting with the how many holes thread.)
That was something I thought about as well. Even if they could’ve used their satellite phone to have someone meet them at the trailhead with a cordless angle grinder or something. But, OTOH, if it’s fiberglass, which it kinda looks like it may me, trying to cut it is probably going to turn it into a big splintery disaster. At least with it in tact, the ER doctors can probably just pull it out and then repair the damage.
Regarding the impaled hiker, I’m trying to imagine how it happened. Presumably the pointed end of the trekking pole was down, so it seems hard to get stuck on it. And as someone pointed out, there’s the question of how to get into the vehicle with it in place. I also wonder about the trek down; I wonder if there were narrow passages where the pole made it awkward.
The ER doctors would probably also have access to better cutting tools. I’d be inclined to go with some sort of heavy duty and very sharp lopping shears. But I’d also be strongly inclined to let the hospital do it if at all possible.
They could use the medical tape that’s in the first aid supplies they should be carrying to tape over the cut ends and the Ace bandages to secure it in place.
In my mind, I picture him planting it somewhere that isn’t solid, like in a gap between large rocks or over the edge of a drop off, he loses his grip on it and it lands pointy side up, then he falls on it. Of course that’s assuming he was walking with it as opposed to fell out of a tree he was climbing and landed on it or someone in the group threw it at him like a javelin.
I thought about that, but once you’re involving tape and power tools and the extra time involved in all of that, in the woods, with no professional help, at a certain point you’re better off concentrating on getting to the hospital. Especially considering it wasn’t bleeding and just about anything they can do is going to make it start bleeding.
How un-American of him to shirk his patriotic duty to go bankrupt by being over charged for health care. Think of the poor CEOs and their executive VPs … private schools, county clubs and third wife’s titty jobs don’t pay for them selves.
Years ago when pushbutton start was new, my bro went to work at the airport, parked, grabbed his luggage from the trunk, locked the car, and went off to work. Keys in his pocket or suitcase, whichever was his habit at the time.
Fast forward 4 days and he’s back in the parking lot to get his car and go home. Unlocks the car & trunk, stows his luggage. Car won’t start. Crank, but no fire. It’s a nearly new Honda, so about as reliable as sunrise, and yet it won’t go. WTF?
Then he notices the gas gauge is well below E. He’d had about a half a tank when he’d parked it. Yup. It idled so quietly, and those early version of pushbutton start/stop cars didn’t have any sort of walk-away alarms, and he’d left it running. Which it oh-so-quietly did for a couple days before running absolutely positively out of gas. Oops.
You win the internet today.
If you’re ever in Boston I’ll show you the skull of Phineas Gage.
Just like all those mysterious things that somehow end up in rectums after freak totally unplanned fallings-upon.
I was just…vacuuming the stairs…nude…and..well, things got pulled in! I swear. That’s the ticket!