I got my hand smashed when I was 24. I was crawling underneath a very large hydroelectric generator in order to knock out cores and reciprocate saw asbestos wrapped wiring.
When I reached out in the crawl space to get upright, scaffolding came crashing down on my hand from 45-50 feet. Somebody untied and tried to move it manually.
I had to lift up the scaffolding to remove my hand and then back out through the same space. That scaffolding was made of pine and was probably a couple hundreds of pounds.
When I got out, I asked for ice. Everybody gathered around in shock. After a few minutes, I had to find my own ice and ice bucket. There was one ice machine. I found it. I was like "let's go"... still a delay.
Everybody was still in shock... I was starting to....and I'm like, "get me to the fucking hospital and shut the fuck up".
Somewhere along the drive, I started losing consciousness... I made myself stay awake.
I got to the hospital , passed out from the pain, and I was attended to by a hand and foot surgeon who had nothing to do with that hospital. He was just on holiday in the area...
He saved my hand. It still works as good as it did before... almost... maybe 90%.. I don't notice it. I can't nail down any differences because it works and I was young when it happened.
If he wasn't there, I would have every finger except a pinkie removed.. and some knuckles.
