A 31-year-old man who had an axe buried in his skull fractions of a millimeter away from vital blood vessels was saved by doctors in Zimbabwe’s second city of Bulawayo, a newspaper reported.
According to The Chronicle, Sipho Ndebele would have been killed if a “slightest mistake” during the operation to remove the axe at Mpilo Central Hospital; thankfully, there was none and he is now out of intensive care.
Ndebele was hit with an axe by a fellow herdsman in the southern Nkayi district on Monday in an apparent dispute over whose turn it was to look after some cattle, the report says.
Village found him in a pool of blood with an axe embedded in his skull and he was presumed dead. They transported him anyway in a scotch-cart to a local clinic.
The nurses told the villagers that Ndebele was still alive but the operation was beyond their capability.
He was referred to a second clinic; Nkayi District Clinic.
Ndebele said he has little memory of the trauma and the deliberations, though he remembered the pain of having someone hold the axe in place so that it didn’t sink any deeper into his skull.
“I drifted in and out of consciousness most of the time. What I remember is the excruciating pain,” he said.
Officials at Nkayi District Clinic said the axe could not be removed there either and he was transferred to Mpilo District Hospital, 150km away!
The doctors there managed to remove the axe which they say “went through the bone and rested on the brain matter”.
Hospital CEO Solwayo Ngwenya said Ndebele was “unbelievably lucky”. Clearly a case of a man who cheated death several times over!
He is still in hospital and his attacker has been arrested.
