A ten-year-old boy has had a particularly lucky escape after being impaled on a kitchen knife in a freak accident.
Landen Sturman, from Mandurah in Western Australia, was making a cheese toastie at home when he tripped backwards and fell onto the open dishwasher.
He landed on a steak knife which had been placed within the dishwasher pointing upwards, the blade lodging itself in his backbone, extremely near his spinal cord.
If the knife had severed his spinal cord, he might have been left with everlasting paralysis – and horrifying scans show just how deeply the knife was impaled into his body.
Landon was taken to Perth Children’s Hospital (PCH), where the knife was removed by specialist neurosurgery and orthopaedic surgeons.
Doctors said Landen escaped paralysis by a ‘millimetre’s difference’.
Luckily he didn’t suffer any lasting nerve damage, and he’s since been in a position to return to highschool, PerthNow reports.
His mum Emma said she was extremely grateful for the care her son received – but urged others to be certain that they don’t stack knives pointing upwards of their dishwashers.
‘Stacking the dishwasher is something so mundane that almost all people don’t think twice about it, but it surely goes to indicate how even the smallest actions can have a huge effect,’ she said.
‘Despite being such a traumatic event for our family, everyone at PCH was lovely. It really was one of the best end result we could have hoped for.’
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