Wenbeth's request.
Tell me about an awful memory you have."
Well, I suppose I should probably answer this one with the most awful memory I have, the night I had both my hands crushed. Warning, some squicky imagery up ahead. If my icon is making you cringe, don't click on the upcoming cut.
It was around 10:00pm on December 19th, 1997. It was a cold, snowy night and I was working at a foundry that made metal parts and decorations for caskets. I had been working a long 12 hour shift, and was nearing the end of it, the last day I had to work before we had a mini-vacation for Christmas.
I was operating a trim press machine, I would take the zinc pieces that came out of the molding machine and trim off the excess metal from around the edges. I had to take a piece, place it precisely in a holder in the machine and then pull down on a lever that would cause the hydraulic press to come down and cut the edges off with several hundred pounds of force.
It was late. I was tired. And little did I know that the machine I was operating had been damaged earlier that week and now the safety mechanisms were no longer working properly. Normally, once you let go of the lever, the machine stopped whatever it was doing. This machine however, once you let go of the lever, the press continued to come down.
I had just finished trimming a piece and throwing a piece of scrap into a bin to be remelted. I lifted the press up and began to take out the trimmed piece when the press began to slowly lower down onto my hands. Luckily my hands weren't fully in the machine when it began coming down, but unfortunatly both my hands were trapped and several hundred pounds of cutting edges were coming down on my gloved hands. Pressure, pain, and panic all set in as I could slowly feel my hands being crushed. One of my co-workers heard my screams and hurried over to the machine to pull the handle up and release my hands... but the damage was done.
An Ambulance was called and I was rushed to Kewanee hospital where they took one look at my mangled hands, gave me a shot of morphine and transferred me down to St. Francis Hospital in Peoria since they didn't have anyone that could handle that severe of an injury. So they called for a helicopter to air-lift me down to Peoria, about 60 miles away. Unfortunatly, the helicopter was already airlifting some people that had been in a car accident and was unavailable. Talk about rotten timing. So the ambulance had to take me down there. The hour long drive was kind of a blur of pain, but at least the morphine helped a little bit.
It had been about 2 hours since the accident when I arrived at the hospital. They did x-rays through the wrapped up mess that was my hands and got me prepped for surgery. It seems that fortune had not entirely abandoned me that night, as one of the states top reconstructive surgeons was on call that night. Dr. Lumsden, who had just recently reattached two legs on a young girl that had been run over with a lawn mower... so I was in pretty good hands.
Even so... my injuries were pretty bad. I had a hole punched clear through my right thumb. A 3 inch gash that ran from the base of my right index finger down to the middle of my palm and my left finger had been crushed completly flat from the fingernail down to the second finger knuckle. Not to mention several cracked bones in my right hand, but they were minor compared to the other injuries
Almost 4 hours after the accident, they took me to surgery. He told me upfront that he would do everything he could to save my hands, but would most likely have to amputate my right thumb and left index finger. So, as the anesthetic began to take hold, I drifted into unconsciousness knowing full well that I may no longer have all my body parts when I awoke.
Luckily, he did an amazing job and managed to save my thumb and index finger. I spent the next 3 days in the hospital and managed to convince them to release me Dec. 22nd. I had 30 stitches, and four metal pins holding my thumb together and a hand brace/guard to keep my thumb from moving.
One long month of pain and helplessness. Two long months of healing and physical therapy. And several more months dealing with the assholes that ran the factory later I was mostly healed up and back to normal.
With my left index finger, you would barely notice anything was wrong. But if you looked closely, you would see a scar that runs around the finger from the second knuckle up to the fingernail, which is still kinda "odd" looking, but nothing too major. My right hand recovered for the most part. A large scar is where the gash in my palm was. and I have several scars around my thumb and along the back of my hand, but nothing all that bad.
My right thumb however, never fully recovered. I can move it side to side a little, but I can't bend it at all. It is permanently froze into a sort of thumb spike. The hole that was punched through it took out a bunch of the nerves and I don't have a lot of feeling in it anymore. And through the years it had atrophied from me not being able to use it, so it is now about 50% smaller than my left thumb. Still, I can use it a little bit, and it is better than having NOTHING there.
Even though it was a horrible memory, and one of the worst things that happened to me...I think it did help me become a better person in the end.
Well, I suppose I should probably answer this one with the most awful memory I have, the night I had both my hands crushed. Warning, some squicky imagery up ahead. If my icon is making you cringe, don't click on the upcoming cut.
It was around 10:00pm on December 19th, 1997. It was a cold, snowy night and I was working at a foundry that made metal parts and decorations for caskets. I had been working a long 12 hour shift, and was nearing the end of it, the last day I had to work before we had a mini-vacation for Christmas.
I was operating a trim press machine, I would take the zinc pieces that came out of the molding machine and trim off the excess metal from around the edges. I had to take a piece, place it precisely in a holder in the machine and then pull down on a lever that would cause the hydraulic press to come down and cut the edges off with several hundred pounds of force.
It was late. I was tired. And little did I know that the machine I was operating had been damaged earlier that week and now the safety mechanisms were no longer working properly. Normally, once you let go of the lever, the machine stopped whatever it was doing. This machine however, once you let go of the lever, the press continued to come down.
I had just finished trimming a piece and throwing a piece of scrap into a bin to be remelted. I lifted the press up and began to take out the trimmed piece when the press began to slowly lower down onto my hands. Luckily my hands weren't fully in the machine when it began coming down, but unfortunatly both my hands were trapped and several hundred pounds of cutting edges were coming down on my gloved hands. Pressure, pain, and panic all set in as I could slowly feel my hands being crushed. One of my co-workers heard my screams and hurried over to the machine to pull the handle up and release my hands... but the damage was done.
An Ambulance was called and I was rushed to Kewanee hospital where they took one look at my mangled hands, gave me a shot of morphine and transferred me down to St. Francis Hospital in Peoria since they didn't have anyone that could handle that severe of an injury. So they called for a helicopter to air-lift me down to Peoria, about 60 miles away. Unfortunatly, the helicopter was already airlifting some people that had been in a car accident and was unavailable. Talk about rotten timing. So the ambulance had to take me down there. The hour long drive was kind of a blur of pain, but at least the morphine helped a little bit.
It had been about 2 hours since the accident when I arrived at the hospital. They did x-rays through the wrapped up mess that was my hands and got me prepped for surgery. It seems that fortune had not entirely abandoned me that night, as one of the states top reconstructive surgeons was on call that night. Dr. Lumsden, who had just recently reattached two legs on a young girl that had been run over with a lawn mower... so I was in pretty good hands.
Even so... my injuries were pretty bad. I had a hole punched clear through my right thumb. A 3 inch gash that ran from the base of my right index finger down to the middle of my palm and my left finger had been crushed completly flat from the fingernail down to the second finger knuckle. Not to mention several cracked bones in my right hand, but they were minor compared to the other injuries
Almost 4 hours after the accident, they took me to surgery. He told me upfront that he would do everything he could to save my hands, but would most likely have to amputate my right thumb and left index finger. So, as the anesthetic began to take hold, I drifted into unconsciousness knowing full well that I may no longer have all my body parts when I awoke.
Luckily, he did an amazing job and managed to save my thumb and index finger. I spent the next 3 days in the hospital and managed to convince them to release me Dec. 22nd. I had 30 stitches, and four metal pins holding my thumb together and a hand brace/guard to keep my thumb from moving.
One long month of pain and helplessness. Two long months of healing and physical therapy. And several more months dealing with the assholes that ran the factory later I was mostly healed up and back to normal.
With my left index finger, you would barely notice anything was wrong. But if you looked closely, you would see a scar that runs around the finger from the second knuckle up to the fingernail, which is still kinda "odd" looking, but nothing too major. My right hand recovered for the most part. A large scar is where the gash in my palm was. and I have several scars around my thumb and along the back of my hand, but nothing all that bad.
My right thumb however, never fully recovered. I can move it side to side a little, but I can't bend it at all. It is permanently froze into a sort of thumb spike. The hole that was punched through it took out a bunch of the nerves and I don't have a lot of feeling in it anymore. And through the years it had atrophied from me not being able to use it, so it is now about 50% smaller than my left thumb. Still, I can use it a little bit, and it is better than having NOTHING there.
Even though it was a horrible memory, and one of the worst things that happened to me...I think it did help me become a better person in the end.