The human body is fragile, and yet, some people can tell you survival stories that might make
you start believing in miracles.
We might recall the gruesome tale of the 12-year old amateur racing driver Chris Stewart.
He crashed in 2006 in the UK and suffered an internal decapitation.
The BBC wrote that the little guy was ok in the end, after having his head re-attached.
Yep, that’s exactly how it was reported.
Maybe those Brits are made of tough stuff.
In 2001, a young woman from England was on a parachuting holiday in the U.S.
Her chute didn’t open and she fell thousands of feet to the ground.
She’s up and running now, but her dad told the press, “She was very keen on parachuting
but she is in two minds now.”
No kidding.
Now let’s tell you one the strangest tales of survival there is, or perhaps will ever
be.
Imagine this:
You wake up in the morning, turn off the trusty alarm, take a shower, make breakfast for your
three kids, and head out to work.
Your days are fairly routine.
You set up your street food stall after buying the seafood at the local market.
It’s an oppressively hot summer day in Culiacán, the biggest city in the state of Sinaloa,
Mexico.
There you are standing in the baking sun, waiting for people to pass by and hand over
some pesos for a bit of fried fish.
And then…
“BANG”
That’s what you hear.
You don’t know where the sound came from or what really happened, but what you do instantly
recognize is that the bang affected you.
You’re on the floor, dazed, and you feel a pain in your face.
You touch your cheek with your hand and feel something hard.
You are afraid, in shock, in pain, there’s blood on your hands, dripping to the floor,
but have no idea what just happened.
Then everything turns to black and the next thing you know you are in the hospital and
standing around are a bunch of very concerned-looking hospital staff.
This happened to a 32-year old called Karla Flores in 2011.
She had no idea what had changed the state of her face, but she would soon find after
being rushed to the hospital that a live fragmentation grenade had been lodged into her cheek.
Yes, a live grenade, it hadn’t exploded for some reason, it was waiting to go off.
The bang she had heard had been the release of the grenade from its launcher.
This is what she later told the press, “The doctor asked me what happened.
I told him that I thought a stone hit me.
Then they started to look and discovered that it was some kind of projectile, but they didn't
know what it was.”
The thing was, this grenade should have gone off, and now Karla was for all intents and
purposes a walking time bomb.
Staff knew the risks of being near her.
That grenade, they were told, was powerful enough to kill anyone within a 32 foot (10
meter) radius should it explode.
As for Karla, if that thing exploded she would have more parts than a master jigsaw puzzle.
X-rays had showed medical staff what they were dealing with and how the object might
be removed.
Experts were already on the scene, and that’s why doctors knew how much damage could be
caused.
As media reports, one bad move and that grenade could kill a lot of people.
The doctors had the unenviable job of trying to extricate the grenade and save part of
Karla’s right cheek, without killing her and themselves and the rest of the hospital
staff nearby.
She was taken to an isolated part of the hospital while they looked at her.
News reports say some doctors weren’t happy about the conditions in which they were to
apply their skills, but Karla was severely injured.
She could hardly breathe and blood and saliva was filling her mouth.
To make matters worse, she couldn’t really swallow, so she was close to choking on her
own fluids.
As we said, not too many people were up for the task of performing this particular operation.
We are told many doctors and staff just said no, stating, “No doctor is obliged to operate
under these circumstances.”
It was the surgical procedure version of the movie in which you have to cut the red wire
or the blue wire and one of those wires will trigger the bomb.
It was a doctor called Gaxiola Meza who stood up and said, “Ok, guys, someone has to do
this.
Who’s gonna volunteer?”
Four people did.
They were two anesthesiologists called Felipe Ortiz and Cristina Soto, a nurse called Rodrigo
Arredondo and a doctor called Lidia Soto.
Two explosives experts from the Mexican army also stood up to the challenge, but it was
decided that the best place for this operation was an open field.
Yes, you heard that right.
They wheeled her outside, taking all the necessary equipment with them.
There Karla was given a local anesthetic and the first thing the doctors did was perform
a tracheotomy so Karla could actually breathe.
The next part was the hard part.
Those explosive experts, guided by lights – as it was dark by now – told the doctors
how to remove the grenade without blowing everyone to kingdom come.
Doctors were told that in no way could the grenade be rotated, and that it had to be
pulled out in such a way it didn’t really move at all except for being pulled backwards.
We should say here that no one near Karla at this time was wearing any kind of body
armor.
At around midnight the operation was complete, and it was a success.
The downside was Karla losing some of her face, many of her teeth, and having to have
parts of her face rebuilt.
It’s said she went through another three years of operations and you can see in photos
she has been left with some very large scars.
Still, in Mexico these days she is called The Miracle Woman.
To this day no one knows who fired the grenade, or if Karla was targeted or it had been intended
for someone else.
Many reports suggest this was the work of the Mexican Mafia, and let’s face it, what
are the chances of such a wild event in this part of Mexico being related to anything else?
People were interviewed but as usual no one had anything to tell the cops.
Reading the Mexican press we found something that was missed in the English-language media.
That was how Karla got to hospital.
We are told it was a bystander who took her there, with the press saying, “Nothing was
heard of the angel who left her in the hospital.”
According to that media Karla wrote a letter of thanks to doctors, the explosives experts,
nurses, and the angel that took her in his car during the low point of her life.
We have one question for you, and that is, can you think of a more messed up survival
story than this one?
If so, maybe we’ll do a show on it one day.
Tell us in the comments.
Also, be sure to check out our other show Identity of Jack The Ripper Has Finally Been
Revealed.
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time.