A knife blade has been pulled out of a man’s hand two months after medics failed to spot it following a kitchen accident that left him in incredible pain and unable to work.
Dogukan Koseli, whose age was not given, fell while holding the kitchen knife in his home in the city of Zonguldak, in Zonguldak Province, in northern Turkey, on 2nd October.
He went to the emergency department of the Devrek State Hospital the same day in the late afternoon, where doctors treated his wound and said that he would likely have a small infection but otherwise, it should be okay.
Dogukan allegedly told the doctors he wanted an X-ray, but the bungling medics told him he did not need one as he had not suffered a fracture.
Dogukan then lived for the next two months with the knife fragment embedded in his hand and in constant pain. He looked for the knife fragment in his home but could not find it, not suspecting that it was embedded deep in his hand.
He said: “In the meantime, my stitches started to heal, but there was a wound in one place. It started to bleed constantly. For this reason, when I went to the hospital a few times, they put bandages on it.”
Dogukan added: “I woke up with a more severe pain on Monday, 28th November. When I looked at my hand, I felt a piece. I thought it was a small piece. We tried to remove it with my wife, but we realised that it was quite big.”
He and his wife, who was not named, went to the Caycuma State Hospital – two months after the fall – and doctors made the gruesome discovery.
After an X-ray, they found that the knife had snapped after he fell on it, with a 5-centimetre (1.9-inch) chunk of it embedding itself in his hand.
It was removed during surgery.
Dogukan said: “I was feeling numbness and pain in my hand. It was starting to prevent me from moving my arm. I was unemployed due to my loss of power.
“Because of the piece of knife in my hand, I was almost losing my hand and I was unemployed for months.”
Koseli has said that he has started a procedure against officials at the first hospital for negligence.
