Doctors stitch back man’s arm
At 5 pm on June 30, Joginder Kumar Chaudhary, 20, a labourer who was working on an aluminum cutter at one of the Commonwealth Games sites — Major Dhyan Chand stadium — realised everyone around him was staring at him, stupefied with fear.
He ran half-a-kilometre looking for an auto with carrying his left hand, cut from the wrist, inside his right trouser pocket.
At 5 pm on June 30, Joginder Kumar Chaudhary, 20, a labourer who was working on an aluminum cutter at one of the Commonwealth Games sites — Major Dhyan Chand stadium — realised everyone around him was staring at him, stupefied with fear.
It's only then that he realised his left hand had been chopped from the wrist along with the aluminum sheets he was cutting.
“I picked up my hand from the ground and put it inside my pocket, and ran toward the street looking for an auto. I must have ran for half a kilometre holding my left arm tight to stop the bleeding, when my fellow workers came with a van and took me to hospital,” said Chaudhary.
Though his hand was bleeding profusely, he felt no pain. The only thought that worried him was whether would not be able to work with one hand.
“Jab haath he na rahega toh kaam kaise hoga, yahi sochke hum bhaage hospital ki taraf (I ran looking for an hospital thinking how would I work without my hand),” said Chaudhary, a resident of village Sikroll, district Baksar, Bihar.
He was first rushed to a local nursing home near the Akashrdham temple in East Delhi, but doctors there referred him to Max Hospital in Patparganj, where his amputated hand was preserved through a sterilisation process. He was then immediately shifted to Max SuperSpecialty in Saket for specialised surgery.
Dr Sunil Choudhary, director, aesthetic and reconstructive surgery led the team of consultant surgeons Dr Raghav Mantri and Dr Prateek Arora to stitch the hand back. They operated for 10 hours through the night.
The surgery was done under a microscope, with every structure in the hand joined back bit by bit. “It’s all about finding the ends. Fortunately for him, it was a clean cut and we were able to find most of the ends — arteries, veins, nerves, tendons, bones, etc,” said Dr Mantri. Within two hours the team was successful in restoring the blood supply to his hand.
However, the next afternoon, Chaudhary’s hand had to be re-operated as one of the arteries in his hand developed clots. It took another four hours to rectify the problem.
“He is fine and with nine months of rigorous physiotherapy, he can regain 80 per cent of his hand movement back,’ said Dr Choudhary.
The surgery cost Rs 4 lakh of which a substantial amount was paid by Chaudhary's contractor. The rest was waived off by the hospital. He was discharged on Tuesday, and will have to come for a follow up regularly for the next two months.
