Man tells of accident hell
2009-07-10 09:59
Kirkwood - A Uniondale resident has survived a day of utter hell after he was involved in an accident early on Wednesday morning, and then had his wallet allegedly stolen on the accident scene.
But that was just the beginning of the ordeal for Martinus Stander, 55, since staff at the Uitenhage Provincial Hospital initially didn't see that the accelerator pedal had broken off in his calf.
When they did eventually notice it, the doctor took hold of it and - without any anaesthesia - pulled it out, just like that. Stander says: "Never in my life have I experienced pain that intense. It felt like the suffering would never end."
Stander, a fresh produce trader told how on Wednesday morning he had been on his way to fetch oranges in Kirkwood when the accident happened.
No anaesthesia
A Mazda crashed head-on into his bakkie. Sam Tallies, 50, and his son Bradley, 27, who were in the Mazda, died on impact.
Emergency personnel and the police struggled for almost an hour to free Stander from the crumpled wreckage of his bakkie.
While they were still struggling to free him, his wallet containing R3 000 disappeared. At Uitenhage Provincial Hospital he was given a Voltaren injection and an IV, and X-rays were taken.
His wife, Jenny Stander, says: "The nurses were perfectly happy with his condition and wanted to transfer him to the Livingstone hospital in PE just like that. When he asked about the gaping wound in his elbow, the nursing sister informed him that it was only a scrape which couldn't be closed with stitches." Only once the doctor arrived, the wound was sutured with seven stitches.
'Felt like dying'
Stander says they were ready to transfer him then. But then a nurse noticed that there was "something" in his leg.
"When the doctor examined it closely, he could see it was the rubber part of the accelerator pedal which had broken off in my calf. He didn't even give me a local anaesthetic, he just yanked it out of the flesh there and then. I felt as though I were dying."
He relates how he was then forced to wait in an ambulance in the sun for hours before he was taken to Livingstone hospital in Port Elizabeth.
His wife says the staff there were extremely professional and a doctor finally sutured the wound on his leg properly. But Stander was still in pain.
When he arrived at Uniondale at about 19:00, his leg was grotesquely swollen and he was immediately admitted to the local hospital. There they prescribed strong antibiotics, but his wife fears that the wound has already become septic.
Police spokesperson, Priscilla Naidu, says the police helped to look for Stander's missing wallet, but couldn't find it. "The accident's impact was tremendous and it could have been flung from the bakkie in that way," she said.