">My Big World Of Crap

I first saw this story several days ago, but it had popped up again today on the most read stories list of The Age’s website, which reminded me to say something about it.

The amount of damage and pain a person can survive through is simply amazing sometimes. Dave Holland had his scalp completely ripped off when he got his hair caught in a drill, plus a broken neck.

The extent of his injuries and pain are obvious in what some of the paramedics and medical people who treated him said:

“You could see the beads of white in his eyes - the stare someone gets when they’re facing death. And we pretty much knew from then on that it was going to be a hard run.

“David was in so much pain that he couldn’t talk, didn’t scream. He just didn’t have the energy. He was moaning but was almost beyond that. You can be here one second and gone the next and I think David, at that point, was probably thinking ‘This is it’.”

“He was lying on the ground and there were flies hovering over his face,” he recalls. “He was covered in blood, it was sprayed all over his shirt. He had very graphic, horrific injuries, like something you’d see in a cowboys and indians western movie, but worse.”

and some medical things that were said about him:

• In 30 years there have been only 35 successful replantations of a totally avulsed scalp. Avulse means “tear away” and the savagery of such an injury often inflicts massive vascular damage. In Dave’s case, as the auger pulled, his blood vessels stretched until they couldn’t stretch any more, then snapped, popped and split.
• (about his broken neck) They were cracks a hangman could be proud of. A neurosurgeon later told Dave that it was only the third time he had seen such fractures - and the other two victims had been dead.

So he went through a shitload of skin grafts, and infection set in, so more surgery, and then this treatment, 4 times a day:

“My head was mostly flesh and bone and they were scraping the infection directly off the nerves. I was trying to cut down on the painkillers so tried to meditate throughout the process, but it was horrifying. I would swear and scream. There are bed heads in there that I bent and I would cry like a baby.”

“my mind turned to mush. I didn’t know who I was, I just knew nobody was going to touch me. I’d overdosed with pain and I couldn’t take any more and I went into a full pain-induced psychosis. I’m convinced it was one of the catalysts for my post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I’d had my scalp ripped off once. Then every day they seemed to do it all over again.”

What can you say but it is an amazing example of survival, and determination.

“Challengers” is the forthcoming New Pornographers CD due out August 21. Some goodness from it became available on the net this week, with one song from it available, “My Rights versus Yours“. Nice.

Now we need another New Porno’s tour to back the new CD up.

While I’m on my wish list of things musical, an Arcade Fire tour would also be awesome.

What isn’t awesome is a bunch of middle aged men trying to relive their success of 20 years ago, like The Police. While I was never a big fan of theirs, who’d want to remember them like this:

as opposed to how they were:

Same goes for bands like the Rolling Stones …. give it away, retire gracefully. And the biggest joke of all, INXS …. should have quit when Michael Hutchence died, the attempts to keep going have been just plain embarassing.

Update (15/06/2007: Woo hoo! Via the magic of the internet I have been able to listen to the whole “Challengers” CD - 2 months before release. Its very good …”Myriad Harbor” would be my favourite song so far.