Man lives after chair leg penetrates eye socket and throat

Seen above is an X-ray of Shafique el-Fahkri, a 20-year-old student who was attacked outside of a Melbourne, Australia nightclub in January. During a brawl, another 20-year-old, Liam Peart, threw a metal-framed chair at Fahkri. The chair leg went through Fahkri's eye socket and down into his neck. Amazingly, Fahkri not only survived but did not lose his eye, which was pushed to the side by the chair leg. From The Age:

(Fahkri) told The Age yesterday that his eye remained very blurry, his body was weak and his neck was stiff after the incident. "I feel all right at the moment, actually, but I am too weak for work," he said in a raspy voice, a consequence of the chair leg passing through his throat.

But he holds no grudges against 20-year-old Liam Peart, who yesterday pleaded guilty to a charge of negligently causing serious injury on January 21.

"I forgive him, totally," Mr Fahkri said, a sentiment confirmed by Peart's barrister Duncan Allen, SC, in the Melbourne Magistrates Court.

Link (Thanks, Vann Hall!)

• [JC]

  Wasn’t this posted on BB months ago?

• [Marshall]

  Something about this image says MODBLOG to me.

• [alicke]

  i agree with xeni. when do you ever hear that? the forgiveness is far more remarkable, i think. thanks for reporting on this, it’s amazing to hear that not everyone in the world immediately thinks of lawsuits and revenge.

• [praise and coffee]

  Oh my goodness! The forgiveness is really something, takes a big person. It doesn’t even look real!

• [David Pescovitz]

  (#7) HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! Awesome.

• [Skep]

  This should be a reminder to all of those chair throwing coaches and athletes: “Don’t throw that! You could put an eye out with that thing!”

• [meegs]

  So, I’m pretty sure that when this happened a few months ago the Aussie media were reporting that it was more or less an accident….these guys were fighting in a bar (possibly together, against some other dudes) and through some bizarre turn of events, otherwise known as an accident…dude ended up with a chair through his head.

  I guess what I’m trying to say….is that it wasn’t done maliciously and hence forgiveness is allot easier…especially considering how lucky the chair face guy really was.

• [Ian H.]

  Reminds me of the Inside Terrorism: X-Ray Project art exhibit, which consists of x-rays of terrorism victims (both Israeli and Palestinian) collected from Jerusalem hospitals.

• [jimh]

  “Since this was a metal chair, I would not advise doing an MRI ;)”

  Haha yeah, oops. CT scan.

• [W. James Au]

  My question is, why did the hospital take the time to X-ray a chair sticking out a guy’s face, instead of, oh I don’t know, IMMEDIATELY TAKING THE CHAIR OUT THE GUY’S FACE.

  Oh I’m sure they’ll say something like “precaution, pre-op preparation” blah blah blah. But you know the X-ray crew was saying “OMFG THIS PIC IS TOTALLY GOING TO GET US BOING BOINGED!”

• [jimh]

  @#14: I believe it has something to do with “first do no harm”. If the patient’s condition is stable, even with a big chair leg in his face, it’s wise to see what is being affected internally before yanking it out. X-rays, or in this case, an MRI can reveal a lot in a short amount of time. There are cases on the books where a projectile was actually preventing internal hemorrhaging or spinal trauma, and the removal of the projectile started a survival clock ticking in which doctors needed to act quickly to save the patients’ life. In this case, some surgery might have been advised before the chair leg was removed.

• [klg19]

  Holy. Fucking. Shit.

  Sorry, that’s all I’ve got.

• [ernie]

  #7 posted by David Adam Edelstein for the win.

  Wait, why is this page not blue?

• [Hugh]

  says my wife, an emerge doc:
  “That is not an xray, it’s some kind of 3D reconstruction from a CT scan.
  But, cool.”

  says her friend, an eye surgeon:
  “The article claims it was a metal frame chair. So if the legs were metal too, there is no way this is a real CT, as we would have metal artifacts… But I have never seen an x-ray that looks like this. Is there a way to confirm that this is real? It seems fake….”

• [Welcome to Wallyworld]

  I posted this on YouTube April 23 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=punFpxaVSzc and sent it in as a suggestion to BB, which you ignored. You’re 6 months off the pace.

• [Amy]

  Get well soon, Shafique!
  The miracles of mother nature and the evolution of our body …

  Sometimes I really wish I studied medicine!

• [DragonPhyre]

  There are all kinds of forgiveness on the part of the victim. They do it so that they get on TV/Internets.

  At least they do in Cleveland. [deity] help anybody who:

  hurts, maims, slenderizes, injures, kills, multilate, and any other synonyms for doing bad stuff…

  to any of my family members. I will hunt them down and kill them in the most brutal way possible, but in line with what they have done. When I go to court, my plea will be “Eye for an eye. Says so in the bible. You have “In God We Trust” written on all the US currency, therefore you take the word of the bible–which is God’s word–very seriously.”

  If I do go to jail, that will be proof that religion is a joke, and we really are all alone on this speck of dust whizzing through the cosmos. Maybe then people would stop killing each other over which side of the sandbox is theirs.

• [Xeni Jardin]

  Wow. That last line, the victim’s willingness to forgive, is perhaps as profound as the fact he survived with relatively minor injuries.

• [Cpt. Tim]

  unicorn fucking chaser.

• [Steven]

  chaser indeed!
  jesus!

• [OpSiN]

  Astounding that his eye and much more seemed to survive.

  And, to me, this is it’s own unicorn chaser… The fact that he forgave the attacker, and that the attacker plead guilty as he was trying to protect his brother all just seems so bizarrely civil! I mean, at the same time, the occurrence itself is so appallingly not civil but… You know.

• [Jesse Darland]

  Never before have I needed a unicorn chaser so badly. Send the sweet relief!

• [jtg]

  Shades of Phineas Gage.

• [deejayqueue]

  that is one hell of an x-ray. We need some of those machines here in the US. I’ve never seen one that detailed before.

• [Cedehi]

  > or in this case, an MRI can reveal a lot in a short amount of time

  Since this was a metal chair, I would not advise doing an MRI ;)

• [David Adam Edelstein]

  The beauty of this image is that it provides its own unicorn chaser.