Man amputates own hand with home-made guillotine

United Kingdom. An English man whose hand was badly injured in a motorcycle accident, causing him unbearable pain has chopped it off with a crude homemade guillotine; but even that drastic measure was not enough to relieve his agony.

Mark Goddard said he was forced to take matters into his one good hand after the UK’s public health provider, the NHS repeatedly refused to amputate the appendage he injured in a crash 16 years ago, Metro reports.

Health authorities found that Goddard’s left hand remained useable and therefore refused to remove a seemingly healthy body part.

Fed up, the 44-year-old spent weeks secretly building a guillotine with strings and an axe to get rid of his unwanted limb.

“The axe came down and because I looked away I assumed it had missed.

“I looked around, realised it had gone three quarters of the way through. My bone and my hand were hanging down, backwards.”

He used a scalpel to cut through the rest of the flesh and tendons.

He said the pain was excruciating as he sliced through the remaining arteries and nerves before tossing the hand in a fire to make sure there was no chance of it being re-attached. He went back inside his house and told his wife to call an ambulance.

Despite the extreme measure the former garage owner said his arm continues to cause him discomfort.

A hospital spokesperson said they were sorry to learn about the DIY amputation and “will continue to support him through orthopaedics and pain management service

“It would be wrong for us to comment on the details of his specific case, as that would breach our duty of confidentiality. However, doctors always try to avoid amputation if they possibly can, particularly for patients with non-paralysed limbs,” the spokesperson said.

There is no evidence that amputation removes pain. In fact, nerve pain is often generated in the spinal cord, rather than in the painful limb itself; so for many people, the pain continues. They can also get phantom limb pain after amputation, and therefore may be in a worse situation than they were before.  (Source: Metro)

Updated: 2014-05-16 — 20:49:08