When I Was Young

MELBOURNE — A doctor in rural Australia (picture, left) used a handyman’s power drill to bore a hole into the skull of a boy with a severe head injury, saving his life.

Nicholas Rossi, 13, fell off his bike on Friday in the city of Maryborough, hitting his head on the pavement. When he got to the hospital, he was slipping in and out of consciousness.

The doctor on duty, Mr Rob Carson, quickly recognised the boy was experiencing potentially fatal bleeding on the brain and knew he had only minutes to make a hole in the boy’s skull to relieve the pressure.

But the small hospital was not equipped with neurological drills, so Dr Carson sent for a household drill from the maintenance room.

Dr Carson called a neurosurgeon in Melbourne for help, who talked him through the procedure which he had never before attempted.

“It was pretty scary. You obviously worry, (are) you pushing hard enough or pushing too hard, but then when some blood came out after we’d gone through the skull, we realised we’d made the right decision,” anesthetist Dr David Tynan, who assisted Dr Carson told Australian Broadcasting Corp. AP

From TODAY, World – Thursday, 21-May-2009