'Dead' man survives bee attack
2005-11-17 07:17
Kriel - "Pieter, your dad is dead," Bella Honeyborne told her son shortly after her husband, Pieter sen, 51, collapsed in a mine clinic after being attacked by a swarm of bees.
But just then Mariska Vosloo, a junior ER24 paramedic, arrived in Kriel at the clinic on the Goedhoop Mine. When she heard Honeyborne's heart had stopped, she stormed into the clinic.
"She fell down on his ribcage like Spider-man, punching him on his chest to get his heart beating again,'' Honeyborne's wife said on Wednesday.
The drama began on Tuesday when Honeyborne was operating a front-end loader to load grass on the farm Goedehoop near the mine. He dug open a beehive and the angry bees attacked him.
Honeyborne went into respiratory distress. He tried to phone several people on his cellphone, including his son, but eventually reached farm secretary Rika Swart. Hearing his cry: "Help! I'm dying!" Swart jumped into a bakkie and rushed to his aid.
When help reached him he stumbled, barely conscious, out the cabin of front-end loader.
Pulse very weak
Honeyborne was taken to the nearby Goedehoop Mine clinic where Sister Evy Twala gave him an antihistamine and oxygen. ''When I arrived there, he gasped for breath for a while and then fell over backwards. We knew he was dead,'' said his still-emotional wife.
Vosloo arrived just then, soon after ER24 was summoned from Kriel. She said Honeyborne's pulse was very weak and she massaged his heart continuously to keep it beating.
He was stabilised and transferred to Kosmos Hospital in Witbank. "If it hadn't been for her and Sister Twala, my husband would've been dead today. They are heroes," said Honeyborne.
Honeyborne was admitted to the intensive care unit on Tuesday night but recovered so well that he was transferred to a general ward on Wednesday, said hospital PR officer Marian van Niekerk.