Award-winning science journalist Miles O'Brien is learning to live with one arm after a minor injury nearly cost him his life. In a blog post, the PBS correspondent says he lost his left arm not to a shark attack, skydiving accident, or "out of control quad copter," but after a small mishap while loading boxes of TV gear after a reporting trip to Japan and the Philippines. A box fell on his arm, "but I wasn't all '911' about it," he writes. When the pain and swelling got worse the next day, he sought medical care and found he had "acute compartment syndrome," in which blocked blood flow in an enclosed space in the body can be fatal, the AP reports.
Doctors, who said the choice was between "a life and a limb," amputated his left arm above the elbow when he lost blood pressure during surgery. O'Brien—who has kept working despite the ordeal—says he is now dealing with the "phantom pain, the vicissitudes of daily life with one hand and the worries about what lies ahead" but he is grateful to be alive, reports CNN, where he was a science and space correspondent for years. "Life is all about playing the hand that is dealt you," he says. "Actually, I would love somebody to deal me another hand about now—in more ways than one." (More Miles O'Brien stories.)
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