As you may or may not have heard, on Sunday Florida Panther's forward Richard Zednik suffered probably the most heinous accident is all of hockey - his carotid artery was nearly severed by a teammate's skate in a game against the Buffalo Sabres. Zednik was extremely fortunate that 1. the artery wasn't totally severed so it could be easily found and repaired and 2. that his juggular vein wasn't even touched. The game was in Buffalo. To read more about this, click here.
It was eerily similar to an accident that happened nearly 19 years ago in Buffalo. The date was March 22, 1989. I remember it for two reasons. First, it was my birthday. Second, I was listening to the game in the car on my way to my violin lesson. Sabres goalie Clint Malarchuk's juggular vein was severed when St. Louis Blues' forward Steve Tuttle accidentally skated over his neck. He was basically bleeding out on the ice. Word at the time was that had he been at the other end of the ice, he would have died.
The amazing thing, though, was that not only did he survive, but he was back at practice four days later. If you want to see it, you can go to YouTube and search "Malarchuk" and you'll get every angle. But I'm going to warn you that it's pretty gruesome.
With all of the random sports accidents this year (ironically two of them took place in Buffalo), it's just another example of how fleeting life is and how quickly it all could be gone. We should live life to the fullest and take everything for the miracle that it is.
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2 comments:
When I read this first the other day, I got squeamish just reading it! Glad he is going to survive!
I avoided ice skating for a long time because I had a visual image in my head of getting my fingers ran over by a skate blade. I got over that eventually. Despite being a rare event, an injury like that does happen and great job by the medical staff.
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