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Dog Inadvertently Saves Master’s Life By Chewing On Her Face
rossparry.co.uk Picture shows Wendy Hamriding, from Preston, Lancashire, whose face was bitten off by her dog but the fifty-three-year-old claims it actually saved her life. See Ross Parry Copy RPYFACE In December 2011, Wendy was climbing the stairs to the bathroom, when she either tripped on a rip in the carpet or blacked out as a result of excessive drinking (it remains unclear), and tumbled down the stairs, knocking herself out. When she awoke several hours later at 11am, she discovered a hole where the right side of her face had been. In an attempt to wake her up, Wendy’s dog Cassie, who she’d owned for 10 years, had nibbled her face, but gone too far, nibbling right down to the bone of her eye socket. Shockingly, Wendy has no ill feeling towards her pet who disfigured her. Instead, she believes Cassie saved her life and she was devastated when the pet was ordered to be put down after tasting blood. Wendy says she was a weeks away from death through alcohol and Cassie’s actions prevented that. rossparry.co.uk / Thomas Temple
Two years ago, Wendy Hamriding was the victim of a terrible accident which resulted in her dog being put down. The 53-year-old grandmother happened to fall down her staircase and then lost consciousness. Her dog tried to wake her by nibbling Hamriding’s face, which had been bloodied during her fall, but the canine’s efforts were to no avail.
Hamriding woke up two hours later in extreme pain, her right eye and the bone around the eye socket eaten away by her dog. Hamriding spent time in the hospital undergoing massive amounts of reconstruction work, and her dog was euthanized. Ultimately, doctors were able to use one of Hamriding’s teeth to create an optical cylinder to replace her eye.
She explained: ‘The problem was that the skin was too coarse and was damaging the sight I had left.’
Consultant Mark Vose referred Wendy to Brighton-based specialist Professor Christopher Liu who makes false corneas using the ‘tooth-in-eye’ surgery.
Mrs Hamriding said: ‘When they first told me that my tooth was going to be put into my eye to make me see, it sounded like something from off a film.
Related: Man Has Sight Restored Using His Own Tooth
‘But I trusted Mr Vose and was willing to give it a try. It sounds surreal, but it really does work.’
Over time, Hamriding has been fortunate enough to partially regain her sight and has given the credit of her life to the dog that had unintentionally taken her sight from her.
Dog lover: Wendy pictured with a pet (not the dog involved) before the horrific attack
Dog lover: Wendy pictured with a pet (not the dog involved) before the horrific attack
As it turns out, Hamriding had struggled with severe alcoholism and may not have lived much longer at the rate she had been drinking.
Mrs Hamriding said: ‘Cassie saved my life. I would rather be blind than dead.
‘Before this happened, I was drunk from the moment I woke up,’ she added. ‘I knew alcohol was killing me, but I could not stop drinking.
‘I lost my eye and I lost my dog, but it was the best thing that could have happened.
‘I was in hospital for three months and they reckoned if she’d done it on the left hand side, where my brain is, I wouldn’t have survived.
‘They had to rebuild a lot – the palate was taken out of my mouth to rebuild my eye socket.
Mark Vose, consultant ophthalmologist at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: ‘Wendy’s courage has got her to where she is today. She has had multiple procedures done and was not afraid of giving anything a go.
‘She has been through a lot over the last two years, and there have been many surgical challenges such as the prevention of infection.
‘Another huge challenge was the lack of blood supply to the eye and the fact that Wendy had no eyelid or eyelid function that there were only two muscles remaining on her good eye.
‘There has been a lot of team work between the opthalmic team and plastic surgeons here at the trust, and we are all extremely happy that Wendy has had success in being able to see again.’
It took a fall and being nibbled on to endow Hamriding with a new appreciation for life.
Original Story Below
Wendy Hamriding is now a happy and balanced woman. The darkness of her life as an alcoholic is a thing of the past. In fact, she now gives back to the community by helping provide support to recovering heroin and alcohol addicts. So how did she get past her own addiction and transform into a pillar of support? By getting her face eaten off by her pet Rhodesian Ridgeback cross.
As odd as it sounds, she fell unconscious when she fell down some stairs in a drunken stupor. Her dog tried desperately to awake her and finally resorted to pulling at her face and then biting into it. It took the animal consuming her right eye and part of the actual socket before the pain was enough to awake her.
What followed were painful surgeries to reconstruct her face during which time she ended up losing sight in her one good eye. Doctors then used a breakthrough technique of fitting an electronic lens in one of her canine teeth to restore sight to the left eye.
She says the trauma of the surgery was her wake up call. It got her past her alcohol addiction and opened up her life to her. She is now so deeply at peace that she views the face eating incident as the best thing that has happened to her.
On The Web:
Dog saves woman’s life by eating her face: Woman left blind after pet dog ATE her face can see again after 100 operations
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/dog-saves-womans-life-by-eating-her-face/story-fneuz9ev-1226796989583
Dog saves woman’s life by eating her face
http://metro.co.uk/2014/01/06/my-dog-ate-my-face-and-left-me-blind-but-saved-my-life-4251532/
Dog saves woman’s life by eating her face
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2534545/Grandmother-face-chewed-dog-knocked-unconscious-fell-stairs.html