MELBOURNE club doctor Andrew Daff says that his actions and those of Dr KalFried, which saved the life of player Ricky Petterd, are just all in a day’swork.
Petterd came from the field early in the Demons’ clash with Carlton suffering a collapsed lung, When they saw how he was suffering breathing difficulties, the medicos realised that itwasn’t a regular collapsed lung they were dealing with.
Air was trapped in the18-year-old’s left lung and he was struggling to maintain consciousness.
Fried performed aprocedure in which he pushed a tube through Petterd’s chest wall and into thelung, releasing the air.
Had Fried not performedthe procedure, Petterd could have been minutes from death.
“It’s part of our job,” Daff said on Monday.“It’s not one we see very often (the condition) and it’s not one we want to seeoften. We train with these expectations.
“It’s not heroism. We’re on the payroll,it’s our job, and we’re obviously happy to oblige on this occasion.”
What makes the doctors’ actions moreimpressive is the fact that neither Daff nor Fried had administered theprocedure before.
“Being football doctors, we’re trained to expectsome sort of serious trauma from time to time … even though we don’t expect tosee these things pretty often. But we were mentally equipped to deal with thesituation, and it’s amazing how things you learn come flooding back underpressure,” Daff said.
“We didn’t have the experience but wecertainly had the knowledge.”
Melbourne’s general manager of football operations, Chris Fagan, said thecoaching staff were not aware of the severity of the situation until after the gameand praised the efforts of the doctors.
“It’s amazing to be able to do that underpressure,” Fagan said. “We’ve got an award each week for the most valuable teamplayer, voted on by the players and coaches, and I’ve got a fair idea that thedoctors might win it this week.”
Daff said he still did not know why Petterdsuffered pneumothorax tension, as he didn’t appear tomake contact with another player.
“We may never know [why it happened]. Atthis stage it’s been called a spontaneous pneumothorax.…
“He [Ricky] doesn’t remember receiving a blow. I haven’t had a chance tolook at the vision, but our IT guy can’t recall seeing any contact. The otherpossibility is that he might have had a congenital cyst in the lung…
“My advice from the hospital is that hedoesn’t have any rib fractures, which you would usually expect from this typeof thing.”
Daff said that Petterd, despite thetraumatic experience, is in high spirits.
“He told Kal he’ll buy him a beer. Hedoesn’t recall much about being acutely unwell …
he’s pretty stoic. I think it was a biggerfright for his girlfriend, because she was witnessing it from a distance,” Daffsaid.
Fagan said the popular player had a lot ofvisitors in hospital after the game.
“I visited him last night after the gameand he was in good spirits, and pretty happy to be alive,” he said.
“He listened to the last quarter of thegame and enjoyed our victory. Obviously he’s very grateful to the doctors forthe work they did with him yesterday. The players certainly weren’t aware ofthe situation [at the time]. There were at least six or seven visiting him [whenI was there], so I imagine most of them went in last night to wish him well.”
Petterd will remain in hospital for atleast 48 hours, and the club is confident he will make a full recovery and mayplay again this year.
“Ricky’s got a tube in his chest now.That’s doing a more formal job than we did yesterday, so we’ll wait until hislung re-inflates,” Daff continued.
“Once his lung is re-inflated the tube canbe removed and we just make sure that it doesn’t deflate again. Then he canstart a reasonably quick recovery, particularly because at this stage we thinkhe doesn’t have any associated rib fractures…
“It won’t affect his career at all and hemay even play footy again this year.”
Fagan said Petterd’s health is the No.1 priority.
“If Rick’s okay to play again this year,he’ll play. If not, he’ll not. His health and safety is more important than howmany games he’ll play in 2007.”
