Impaled by my knitting needle!

As far as hobbies go, knitting is considered pretty safe. But not for Ellin Klor.

On her way to teach a class with wooden knitting needles in hand, Ellin tripped up the stairs.

‘I was carrying the bag with the two needles in my right hand,’ Ellin told US ABC News. ‘And tripped on the rst step and sort of fell on my chest.’

Ellin got up and went to the knitting class, but felt pain every time she took a breath.

Lifting up her shirt, Ellin saw a broken knitting needle sticking out of her bra and chest.

Ellin’s friend Alyssa Erickson, suggested pulling the needle out, but after years of watching the TV program ER, calm Ellin knew to leave it in place.

While she couldn’t see any blood, she thought if she pulled the needle out, she might bleed heavily.

‘She didn’t panic, and she knew the right things to do,’ Alyssa told The Mercury News.

Rushed to hospital by ambulance, with the needle protruding from her chest, Ellin insisted it stay in place until she was scanned, when a doctor wanted to pull it out. And thank goodness she did.

A CT scan revealed she’d been staked through the heart by the knitting needle!

If it’d been removed outside of theatre, she’d have likely bled to death.

In a ve hour op, the needle was safely removed and her heart stitched up.

A followup X-ray revealed something else. She had breast cancer.

Thanks to being impaled by a knitting needle, Ellin was able to have life-saving treatment in time.

‘It’s an incredible thing. To have something that almost took your life, end up saving your life,’ Ellin said. ●

From watching

she knew what to do

An eight-day solo kayaking trip turned into a survival mission when Mark Miele, 67, became stranded in Florida’s Everglades.

When Mark failed to arrive at his destination, the alarm was raised.

With crocodiles and alligators infesting the swamps, authorities feared Mark might have come to a nasty end.

Eleven days after he went missing, Mark’s bag, containing his camping gear, wallet and mobile phone, was found washed up on a river bank.

Using the phone’s GPS, police were able to download his last registered location, then helicopter pilot Ed Henderson took to the skies to look for him.

Scanning the landscape, he spotted Mark oating on his back in the water, waving at the chopper.

By now, he’d survived for two weeks out in the wild on his own.

Mark, who was wearing a life jacket, was a few kilometres away from where his bag was found.

But it turned out he wasn’t waving.

‘We found out he was convulsing because he was severely dehydrated, hypothermic and he was in such bad shape at the time,’ Ed told the Palm Beach Daily News.

Rescuers couldn’t believe he’d managed to evade being eaten by the area’s ruthless predators.

They quickly reached Mark and he was rushed to hospital where he was reunited with his grateful relatives.

‘It’s a miracle he’s alive and in the condition he is in,’ his family said. ●