Maimed by an AVOCADO!
It’s THE health food. But doctors report many (even Meryl Streep) are suffering nasty injuries while cutting open the fruit
AT FIRST, Isobel Roberts didn’t realise how serious the injury was. ‘I thought it was just a bit of a graze,’ says the 53-year- old singer, who was at home in London when she sliced her hand de-stoning an avocado.
‘Then I looked more closely, and could see the white bone of my thumb through the cut.’
Beginning to feel faint she called an ambulance. ‘As we drove to the hospital I kept apologising to the paramedics. It was ridiculous — all this because I’d fancied a healthy breakfast.’
But Isobel isn’t the first victim of what’s dubbed ‘avocado hand’ — knife injuries received while trying to remove the slippy stone.
It sounds like an April Fool’s joke. A ‘First World’ worry for health obsessed women. But because the hand is so complex, these injuries often require reconstructive surgery.
Recently, plastic surgeon Simon Eccles, a member of the British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons (BAPRAS), said he treats about four patients a week for it. He even spoke of a ‘post-brunch rush’ on Saturdays.
The injury is so prevalent that BAPRAS has even suggested warning labels be stuck on the fruit.
‘There is little understanding of how to handle them,’ says Eccles solemnly. And stardom is no barrier to injury: Meryl Streep suffered a nasty cut in 2012, and Jamie Oliver has warned of the perils of preparing avocados incorrectly.
It is the most ubiquitous superfood packed with healthy fats, vitamin E, fibre and minerals, and we can’t get enough. In the UK we eat nearly a kilo per person annually and this figure is increasing.
Thanks to social media, they have also become a favourite of millenials, who love to show off their healthy avocado-on-toast breakfasts in photos posted online.
‘The more we fall in love with avocados, the more medics are seeing such injuries,’ says consultant plastic surgeon Paul Baguley, director of Define Cosmetic Surgery at Yarm, Cleveland.
THE
problem with the avocado is, he says, the slipperiness of its large stone. ‘There is this idea that you need to smack into the stone to remove it, but the knife can slip straight into the hand.’
He says that because avocado flesh is so soft people don’t use sharp knives. But they do use masses of force to slam into the stone, and these injuries can be very serious.
Tiona Bowyer, 55, who lives in Worcestershire, suffered avocado hand five years ago. ‘I was hungry after a long day and needed some quick energy,’ she says. ‘I grabbed an avocado from the fridge, and de-stoned it.
‘Unfortunately, I used a Sabatier knife, which was very sharp, and managed to slice between two fingers on my left hand.’
Like so many of those with this injury, she didn’t realise what she had done initially. ‘I peered at my hand and saw what looked like tendons. It was horrible.’
As Tiona’s farmer husband Simon, 55, was out in the fields, and her three teenage daughters at school, she wrapped her hand in a tea towel and drove herself to hospital. ‘I was shaking a bit as I drove and bleeding a great deal all over the car.
‘In retrospect, perhaps I ought to have called an ambulance, but really, how silly would it have sounded to the controller when I said what I’d done? On arrival, they said that the location of the injury meant it was impossible to stitch and packed me off with a dressing.’
Back at home Tiona had to put up with the fact that no one takes this type of injury seriously and thinks it is funny.
‘I didn’t get much sympathy,’ she says. ‘But my eldest daughter is eating masses of avocado at the moment, and I leave her to it. I don’t find them quite as tempting these days.’
However, Tiona, who barely has a scar, was in some ways fortunate — some injuries are far more difficult to repair.
‘The palm is not only an inconvenient place to suffer injury, but there’s scope for permanent damage,’ says Mr Baguley.
‘You have ten tendons — two for each finger and two for the thumb, a number of significant blood vessels and important nerves; the median nerve by the thumb and the ulna nerve. If you cut a tendon, it behaves like elastic, twanging back into the forearm.
‘You literally have to go and surgically find it — cutting upwards — and then you’re looking at a minimum 12 weeks’ recovery, with physiotherapy.’
And this is what happened to Isobel, who is only now, three years on, able to see any amusing side to her injury, which has left her with lasting problems.
‘ I was using a flat knife to remove the stone,’ she says. ‘It slipped near my thumb and severed both the ligament and the tendon.
‘I called for my then teenage daughter, once I realised how profusely I was bleeding and she screamed when she saw me.’
When Isobel arrived in hospital, she assumed she would be given a few stitches and sent home.
‘I kept apologising for wasting their time. I couldn’t believe it when they sent me for a CT scan. The tendon had vanished right back up into my wrist and I was told to come back the next day for major surgery.’
After a night of pain, Isobel returned. ‘I walked in fully dressed, assuming I’d be home by lunchtime. I was in for three nights,’ she says.
Some have been warning of the dangers of avocados for some time. There is the — rather portentous — 2015 Jamie Oliver online video demonstrating how to cut an avocado safely, where the celebrity chef warns it’s one of the biggest causes of knife wounds in the kitchen.
‘It’s an injury of our times,’ says Baguley. ‘Three decades ago we would see injuries from people who had been trying to prise apart frozen burgers with a knife.’
And, let’s face it, avocado hand is about the most middleclass injury there is.
Others which have been cited (and sniggered at) include ‘pitta steam burn’ — cause by the scalding steam when you open up a hot pitta bread, and Parmesan grater wrist — from grating too much cheese onto your homemade pesto.
But the problem with avocado hand is that it can leave lasting damage.
Copywriter Emily Greaves, 31, from London, is still reeling from an injury she suffered in late March this year. ‘I had intended to go to the gym, and then didn’t bother.’ she says. ‘ Ironically, that’s why I ended up in hospital — from deciding to treat myself to a nice breakfast instead.’
SHE
recalls holding the avocado and jabbing at the stone with a big knife to remove it. ‘I stabbed myself in the hand instead. It was agony.’
Again, embarrassed at what she thought a minor injury she went to a walk-in medical centre, but was sent straight to the Royal Free Hospital to see a plastic surgeon. ‘I couldn’t believe it. I had severed a nerve at the base of a finger,’ Emily says.
It will take at least a year for her to recover.
As for Isobel, her thumb will never be quite the same again. In spite of six weeks of intensive physical therapy, it is permanently bent.
She can’t grip properly and only has ten per cent flexion at the joint. And in cold weather it throbs — a permanent reminder of that one swift slip of the knife.