Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Modern medicine amazed me tonight....

Never sawed a cowboy with a smartphone around his neck........LOL.


Heal fast and straight.

Hope you feel better soon. Yup, fingers are full of nerve endings. Had a semi driveshaft use my thumb as a cushion between it and a vise many years ago. I can still feel the pain.

OWWWIE! I did that to my right index finger, only angled away from the nail. I was cutting a wedge.

Mine was in '77.

That'll smart for a bit.

Hope it ain't your trigger finger! Heal up, bud.

I'll be damned! I worked in an ER for 14 years and saw/assisted on more stitches than I could count. Never saw the "drill the fingernail and stitch through it" technique. Very good.
I bet you got a big bottle of Vicodin.

my buddy Keith had a habit of using his thumb pressed against the side of the blade to stop it after he'd shut it off. one day the blade grabbed his thumb and tore it up pretty good. he went out to his truck pulled a first aid kit that had sutures and sewed it up him self, must not have been the first time he'd done it.

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.

Ouch!

In a kydex sheath no less.

Yowch! That is nasty. Hope ya heal up soon Don.. Nash about cut the side of his thumb off this winter with a tail zipper, the nail slowed it down though. It had a positive side though, as it got me to skin about all his coyotes while it healed up.

holy chit, no your not a pussy....put a staple from an industrial stapler through the meat and nail of a finger when i got to moving to fast stapling books...never had i been so happy that i had frost bit my fingers some years before killing MOST the nerves in my finger tips....still hurt like a SOB....

Don't be a member of the "Nub Club".

Holy crap Don - that's a two edged injury - hurts like hell, but lucky to keep the top of your finger. I know a lot of guys missing that first joint. Hope it heals well!

Here's something you might want to invest in Don..

By the look on your face, the local hadn't worn off yet. Damn.

huntsman;
Good morning to you sir, I've got to say that I'm truly sorry to see that happened to you.

Life is "funny" in that until I ran my own left hand through a table saw 13 odd years back I could look at photos like yours and they didn't have any effect on me.

Now however, with the benefit of that personal experience - well they do....

Sorry about that again Don and here's to fast healing for you.

Dwayne

OWWWW! Ow, ow, ow, ow!

Two questions: 1- what was the first word you yelled? 2 - did you cry?

I guess I'm just not fully attuned to the Campfire even now.

If it were me, I wouldn't have even thought to take close-ups of the cleaned wound before it was sewed up.

Don, have to say that looks painful. Hope you heal well.

Glad it was not worse but it sure looks bad enough. Made me cringe when I saw the pictures. I have been stitched through the nail but not for anything that bad.