On Rotten.com there was a somewhat infamous (as infamous as those brief lived "OMG Look at this!!!1!!! emails can be) picture of a man after a botched suicide. It seemed he had tried to shoot himself in the head through his chin, but only succeeded in blasting away his jaw and some of his nose.
From what I remember, he was alive and in hospital when the picture was taken. If anyone remembers, is this something that could have been righted medically? If someone loses that much of their head is there anything at all that can be done?
Apologies, I thought about it a lot when I saw it first and now the “goriest thing you saw” thread got me thinking about it again :rolleyes:
People can seem to live with half their face blasted off to be certain (going from some pictures of reconstructive surgery and facial prosthetics.)
But I have no idea on the survivability of a gunwound to the head. I imagine that it depends on a lot of factors; primarily being the weapon, the ammo, and the angle of entry. And of course, how soon you are found and how long it takes for you to get into an operation room.
I, unfortunately, can speak to this with a fair amount of certainty.
A friend of the family attempted to kill himself in this very manner last month. The bullet went through his jaw, missed his tongue, through his hard palate and sinuses, grazed the front of his brain, and exited around his hairline. He survived, but has not yet regained consciousness. He has undergone probably a dozen surgeries - many, many things need to be repaired, and each one needs its own surgery.
My advice: make sure your insurance covers self-inflicted wounds before you try some stupid stunt like this. Because his doesn’t.
From the Rotten dot com FAQ section (where the pic is)
Q. What’s the story behind that “Motorcycle” pic?
A. We have to admit the “motorcycle” pic has caused a lot of email, it being one of the most disconcerting things people have ever seen. We called it “Motorcycle” because it arrived as motorcycle.jpg, but it is more likely an attempted shotgun suicide. The man lived. An attorney wrote us demanding that we take the picture down, but was unable to provide enough details for us to comply with his request.
My brother-in-law is an Ear Nose & Throat surgeon and he says that he’s had several patients that tried to kill themselves with a gun shot through the roof of their mouth. Some have blasted off various parts of the front of the face. In the case where they’ve blown off the prefrontal cortex of the brain, I guess they aren’t so depressed any more. He commented that it’s kind of an unusual position to be aiming a gun, and people had a hard time pointing it in the right direction.
He said that he spent some time reconstructing some guy’s face after one of these incidents. He felt that the guy didn’t looked so bad, but it would likely freak out your average non-medical types.
He had an album of pictures of “interesting cases” (he teaches at a medical school). It was worse than rotten.com, especially because of the shear volume of cases. Even with my sense of curiosity, I was unable to make it past the first page.
I once nursed a guy who had shot himself in the heart with a .22 and was left with the bullet lodged in the heart muscle. The doctors were going to leave it rather than perform surgery but had to remove it as it was interfering with the nerve centre that controls the heartbeat.
Some years ago I saw a documentary about a British soldier who was shot in the head, I think on the last day of the Falklands war. Basically half his cranium and brain were gone. After his recovery he spoke and walked like someone who had had a mild stroke.
They can do at least a partial rebuild of a jaw using your hip bone. I gleaned that from typing a paper for a maxillofacial surgeon. However, there was some guy who had tongue cancer which required removal of at least part of his jaw and they were unable to reconstruct him to the point that he looked normal. I seem to remember him going nuts and killing the doctor and then himself.
When I worked in trauma, I cared for several. The reconstruction takes years, but in the end they look relatively normal.
Chins and noses are reconstructed with plastic an skin grafts. The tongue is a challenge that, to my knowledge, hasn’t yet been over come.
[QUOTE=Pushkin]
Not pleasant, but I got thinking about it again.
On Rotten.com there was a somewhat infamous (as infamous as those brief lived "OMG Look at this!!!1!!! emails can be) picture of a man after a botched suicide. It seemed he had tried to shoot himself in the head through his chin, but only succeeded in blasting away his jaw and some of his nose.
/QUOTE]
That was one of the guys who was part of a suicide pact that lead to a lawsuit against Judas Priest. He lived a sad couple of years and eventually died of related causes.