Its all good, I tied several knots in it…
Wasn’t a knife but this is what happened to me when I lost focus. I was using a #32 meat grinder hooked to a 3/4hp motor. I’m 6 weeks post injury and still in a splint.
This likes fingers.
It tears off fingernails
And does this to bone
OUCH!!
Ill assume you had some choice words??
My goodness… ouch guys!!! My most recent knife story wasn’t too bad but could have been a lot worse. Trying to tear apart a laptop battery with a knife,the knife slipped and sliced off about a mm of flesh from the top knuckle of my bent left index finger. A little closer and it would have gone through the tendon like nothing. whew… :_(
@ op and n10sivern:
I hope you both heal quickly!
About 20 years ago I did a BONEHEADED thing on my Left Middle finger that looks very similar to “n10sivenr’s” picture and Xray.
It was basically a metal shop where we constructed Cable Tray. We were out of “High and Dry” to soak up leftovers[various oils] from the machinery and forklifts.
So I reached behind the circular saw[of course it was running!] to get some saw dust to throw on the floor. I was distracted by myself[I was talking to the saw operator!] and the guy using the saw.Next thing I know I am pulling my hand away……blood everywhere. The good news was I was BEHIND THE TABLE SAW. If I was actually using it, it would have drawn my hand inward,that would have been ugly!Since I was behind it, it kicked my hand outward and away.
The Guy who witnessed it and took me to the hospital lost ALL Four of his fingers on his left hand when he lost concentration and a several ton press severed his fingers. He just had a thumb left on that hand.
Damage was still done. I shattered the tip of my finger. Got 12 stitches.The tip of my finger was dangling a little bit!
I remember about an hour after I got home from the emergency room my wound continued to bleed. I had to go back to the Hospital for more stitches. The Dr. told me when the bone is broken/shattered like that infection can be a problem so he initially used a minimal amount of stitches.
It took awhile to heal and for the numbness to go away. I have full function and I am fortunate. It could have been much worse!
Get well soon…………oh…yaaa.another thing I realized is that it was VERRY painful. The Dr. gave a simple explanation for that,“Our sense of touch”…lot of nerves/nerve endings in tips of our fingers!
My left index finger has four scars on it. One is barely noticeable, unfortunately the other three are very obvious. The worst was when I was carving a piece of wood, while watching a movie, and my attention slipped... as did the knife, right into the joint. Not a pleasant experience to see my finger bone, and joint, but it was interesting. Because it was on the joint, it didn't heal very well, or quickly, and the scar tissue pulls on the skin in a way that it wasn't meant to. Fortunately no serious damage was done. I do have one spot on the finger that is kind of just numb to sensation, but it's barely noticeable, and I do have a full range of motion. Good reminder to myself whenever I see the scars to be more careful.
My fingertip is still numb. It was a crush injury which can permanently damage the nerves. Only time will tell if I regain all feeling. I may not grow a nail back. I am an ER nurse so I know I’m lucky. I’ve seen much worse in people I’ve treated.
my brother is as well an ER nurse.
My injury was Not a crush or slice/cut injury. It was like a tear/impact injury from the teeth of a Circular saw blade.
This was 20 years ago and I recollect it took about 1 Year before the feeling came completely back in the tip of my finger.
Your injuries are relatively fresh,hopefully time will heal them back to normal or as close as possible! :bigsmile:
Worst I remember was when I was a teenager. I was skinning a deer and sliced my index finger about 2 inches almost to the bone ... nothing some black tape didn't fix. I did finish dressing out the deer ...
My safety beef is that the wife used to leave knifes submerged in the sink. Grab one of those just after I sharpen it and your heading to the ER. I never did manage to grab one and my wife no longer puts the knives into the dish water. Next step is to convince her to wash the sharp knives right after she uses them - ya right!
Hope you heal fast!
my wife is total opposite, she never leaves a knife in the sink. we have a dedicated dirty knife area above the sink and then i wash them. she refuses to put them in the dish washer.
As a child, I was fighting with my brother for a cucumber. I had a bread knife in my hand and decided it was a good idea to chop the cucumber in half during a scramble… My left middle finger got in the way. Got it right above the joint. A few drops of blood later and a lot of nausea, it stopped bleeding. The piece of flesh that was mostly off rejoined and it was well over a couple years before I stopped noticing the numbness. Good thing it was a bread knife (the long ago kind that’s shaped more like a hacksaw blade than a modern serrated knife.)
Yikes. I once closed a Cold Steel Recon 1 on my finger. I had literally just purchased it, and it was razor sharp. Needless to say, I'm much more mindful of where my digits are when I close my folding knives now.
We now have the same system for dealing with dirty knives. She does wash them at times which scares me as she handles them "differently" than I would :-) Luckily the dish cloth is absorbing the cuts ...
GEEEZ!!
You guys are stirring up some awfully disturbing memories over here!
I think I need to go lie down now, until my head quits spinning.
I will leave you with one encouragement, which I can’t remember which movie it was in, but I think it was Keanu Reeves saying it:
It helps me to remember how often I proved the second line of that. Nothing like diverting the blood to a more … interesting area … of the body.
Okay, a few high points:
Single-digit age, first or second rockhounding trip, gathering Quartz globes called Geodes in a TN river… I wasn’t so good yet at whacking rocks with a hammer… A piece spalled off & embedded itself in the bone of my hammer-hand index finger. It was so sharp & hit so fast, I didn’t notice it until the blood made it hard to hold the hammer! Grandma put a bandaid on it and we went back to our “amateur geology”. The lump it made is tangible to this moment, nigh a half-century later.
My friend had a BB gun, the pump kind with the handle at the muzzle end & a barrel-length cocking arm… Wet hands, lost my grip before it latched (which was a problem I was trying to fix for my friend before he hurt himself, BION). The cocking arm found my thumb bone without much difficulty, and we had to walk ~an hour to get home to deal with it. Now it just looks like a wrinkle.
Iron grates in the storm drain, which was clogged with pine straw, and my brother (a stalwart aide but slow as Monday morning sometimes) and I were tasked with cleaning it out. I lifted the grate & put it in my brother’s hand with the clear instruction: “Hold This.” I stuck a jackhammer bit in the ground as a prop, but when I looked up to set the grate end, I noticed it had already started moving after he let go. In karate class I called the foot that didn’t make it out of the way in time, my “bad foot” because of what was left of the nail. No, I won’t be showing you that one, unless you’re really bad.
First job, food prep work and dishwasher: I though it would be ever-so-clever to slice the cucumbers for the salad bar by using the awesome rotary meat slicer. It worked for half a cuke or so, and when it fell out of my hand, the blade took the corner of the end of my middle finger off so sweetly, I never felt it, and it didn’t even bleed for long-enough to get it away from the food. Never found the tip, but I learned the right way to slice veggies! That was the only time I ever passed out — after my shift when my Mom bandaged it for me… You can still see the bevel on the tip of that finger. Same job, different day: slipped on the wet floor, caught myself - no problem - on the upper leg of a 2-level table, slipped up to the wire-edge the mfr. left on the frame… That one showed me what my finger bone looks like & left a smile-shaped scar right beside the rock from TN.
Working on the family car: Do what I say and not what I do: DO NOT Push On A Wrench!!! I got to watch the most-interesting-looking fountain of Arterial blood squirting out of my elbow when I learned that one. The girl at the ER admitting desk didn’t think I was so bad until I showed her… By that time Adrenaline (I was maybe 14) had kicked in so my BP was up a bit… It took about 2 spurts across her paperwork to kick her “sense of urgency” into another gear. (Pun intended — you know how much a sense of humor helps.)
It turns out, if you hit a wall at 50mph in a car you may die, but two dirt bikes ridden head-on into each other by best friends at that speed (each) left him with a few broken bones and me with a wrecked front tooth and 2 huge scars on through my upper lip so bad I have never shaved the ’stash again since. Can’t, actually. I wrote it up in 10th-grade English class & almost made the teacher sick.
This is just up to High School. 1974. And just the ones I can show you the evidence. I’ll stop now, because I know you’re tired of this.
The worst injury IMO? The one I would LOVE to prevent anyone else from having? I would like to share this last one, just in hopes I can prevent it on one other person:
Do As I Say, Not As I Do: DO NOT EVER: discharge a firearm, touch off an experimental explosive device (statute of limitations!!), work on loud engines, work sound for a rock band, listen to hopped-up stereo equipment … especially to the point where your ears quit hearing for a moment (!!!) without FIRST PROTECTING YOUR HEARING!!! The worst damage I have to suffer, for every single moment of the rest of my life, awake and asleep, is this insane whistling noise in my ears. JUST DON’T DO IT. Get yourself some earplugs Today, not tomorrow; and learn how to use them and keep them handy!! Please?
That’s all I can stand. I’ll bet most of you dropped off a few paragraphs ago. Thanks for reading. It helps to share, if only to keep from screaming. Now go get those earplugs!
Dim
Dimbo, you’re right about hearing, flesh and bones heal, when the cells for hearing die, they never grow back.
So my wife ordered ma a gag gift I kight acually use, some metal gloves.
… and you won’t gag so much if you wash it. 
But that’s the problem. They don’t “die”, they just scream ‘EEEEEEEE’ at you forever. If I didn’t love music so much, and the sound of women’s & children’s laughter, I would wish them all dead and gone, trust me!!
And no, it won’t help to poke out your own eardrums! Then the ‘EEEEEEEE’ is all you’ll hear!!
lol… Yes, the sound of silence is really annoying. Sometimes the humming gets loud all of a sudden and I think, ‘there goes another cell’ and shake my head.