That happened to me, although it was caused when an aluminum extrusion I was slicing in half jammed in the saw and kicked back. It took about about 3/8" off below the tip of my right middle finger and left the tip hanging on by the nail, also left a gash on my thumb that grooved the bone.

Bleeding copiously, I made a major mistake, I had the boss drive me to Kaiser Hospital, as it was closer, rather than my regular hospital where the ER surgeon knew my name from frequently acting as my seamstress.

At Kaiser they took the Worker's Comp form and laid me down on a workbench. The surgeon looked at it, grabbed a syringe and said, "This is going to burn a little." After he number everything up he began stitching until he came to the part where the local was absent. I protested, "Hey there's no anesthesia there!"

"If you were in the Marines, they wouldn't even give you any anesthesia for this." He replied.

"But, damn, I ain't in the Marines"! I protested as he stuck the needle through again.

"That was the last stitch anyway". Doc replied.

When the company got the bill from Kaiser they showed it to me, they had been charged for an X-ray. I told them they never took an X-ray, hell you could see everything inside. But the clerk said I probably didn't know what an X-ray machine looks like, so rather than argue I just gave up.

Now comes time for the stitches to be removed. I hotfoot it down Kaiser again, where another doctor dumps my hand into a bowl of soapy water and removes the first suture. The he stops and spends the next 45 minutes on the phone walking another surgeon through an appendectomy. Crap, you'd think they'd done at least one appendectomy before passing their internship. He hangs up, removes another two sutures and tells me to go home and soak all the dried blood off the finger and come back in if I find any more sutures to remove.

A few days later and the finger is infected, and sure enough there are two more sutures left behind. This time I go to the other hospital and see the good doctor. He chuckles about Kaiser, removes the remaining sutures and gives me some antibiotics for the infection. He didn't even have to call some one to walk him through it.

Moral of the story, stay away from table saws, former Marine doctors, and hospitals named after German emperors and sandwich rolls. Next time: How they treat a burn from molten welding slag sliding down your ear canal.