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Warning: This article contains graphic images of dog bite injuries
A woman left with life-changing injuries following an attack by a suspected XL Bully has revealed how the assault was so petrifying she “couldn’t scream”.
Royal Mail worker Kimberley Link, 50, from Bromley, south-east London, is one of thousands of people who are attacked by dogs every year.
She was left with severe injuries after being bitten by a dog she believes was an XL Bully, a breed the Government is planning to ban.
The attack took place in July 2022 in Eltham, south London. It forced Ms Link into an office role when she returned to work six months later.
On the day of the incident she had been delivering a package to a customer whose dog ran out of the home and sunk its teeth into her.
She told i: “My obvious reaction was to turn to run away and as I did so it got hold of my left elbow and pulled me to the floor.
“I actually realised that I couldn’t scream because I was that scared,” Ms Link said. “I was absolutely petrified. Obviously I didn’t realise the extent of what had happened.”
Ms Link was taken to safety by a neighbour who assisted her with first aid as paramedics rushed to the scene.
She asked the neighbour who rescued her for a tea towel to wrap the wound to “stop it bleeding because I remember it just pouring off the end of my hand”. She said: “I remember nearly passing out quite a few times while waiting for the ambulance.”
At the hospital doctors discovered worse. “When I got to St. Thomas’s, they took me for an X-ray and we realised that the dog’s tooth was still sticking my elbow,” Ms Link said.
She underwent three surgeries in three days: one to remove the tooth and clean the wound, another to repair the damaged nerves and a skin graft to cover the damaged skin.
“The lasting impact of it is basically it’s ruined, destroyed the main nerves from my elbow down to my hand. So I’ve lost the grip in my left hand.
“I’ve constantly got pins and needles or a numb sensation running down my arm and into my hand.”
As well as the severe physical injuries, the attack affected Ms Link’s mental health.
“I had quite a lot of therapy afterwards… it was for PTSD,” she said. “It’s never going to go away. It’s never going to leave me.”
How the UK’s top surgeons treat severe dog injuries
Dog attacks in England and Wales have shot up 22 per cent in the past two years, with some areas seeing a surge as high as 60 per cent, according to police figures obtained by ITV News.
Professor Vivien Lees, plastic surgeon and vice president at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, sees multiple serious dog bite victims each week.
“I do remember a case where a lady’s own dog behaved out of character and bit her quite badly. She ended up with her right dominant hand being very badly mutilated by that.
“The patient was left with life-changing injuries.”
Patients are often blue-lighted to hospital where they are stabilised by casualty doctors before plastic surgeons are called to assess their injuries and how to treat them, Professor Lees told i.
“We get it all cleaned out, that’s the first operation. We have to take away any dead tissue, which can include skin, fat, muscle,” she added.
“An infection in the hand or face is quite serious, obviously, and the dog’s mouth has a lot of bacteria in it. You need a bit more than antibiotics quite often to get rid of those bacteria.
“There may be nerve damage as well. There may be damage to the tendons, which move the fingers. We’ve got to assess each component of that and then remove what’s dead and preserve what’s still alive.
“We then come back two to three days later and either clean it up again or start to put things back together at that stage.”
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