Bid to chop off injured finger

A young woman tried to chop off one of her own fingers with an axe in a desperate bid to end chronic pain caused by a crush injury.

Megan Cullen, aged 22, from Bantry, Co Cork, spoke yesterday of her agony of living with chronic pain and of how she felt she had no option but to perform the DIY amputation in the hope it would bring some relief.

But she failed and was rushed to Cork University Hospital where emergency department doctors patched her up. Shocked by her plight, they wrote referral letters for her GP. Megan has since seen an orthopaedic specialist who is scheduling another operation on her finger. “But to be honest, I just want it taken off. Not the whole finger — just down to the second joint,” she said.