Our good friend and case builder Dick Olson (Dolso) severely cut his arm September 17th. This is the info I have as of right now (will update it as Dick and I talk):
Last Friday AM (?17th?) I was cutting the French cleats for the last four of the Knowing Darkness cases on the table saw.... the blade had to be raised about 3 inches in order to cut through the bases... as I was cutting, the wood "bound up" & 'kicked back' (basically instead of cutting smoothly, the blade got turned cock-eyed & the saw threw the chunk of wood back at me) which drew my left forearm into the blade..I didn't immediately know that it had gone into the saw blade, I thought the wood had just hit my arm (I actually had the thought "Wow, THAT was close!) until I looked at it.......pretty much hamburger over 2/3 of my arm. Luckily, there was another guy working at his shop fairly close by & he called 911 while holding a tourniquet on my upper arm. The emerg room dr determined that the local doc's couldn't help enough so they found a specialist in Denver willing to take me (no insurance & all). They put me & my wife on a "flight for life" to Denver. At that point, they were just trying to save my hand. I cut the arm about 9:30 and by noon I was in the ER in Denver. Went into 4 1/2 hour surgery about 2:30 & got into a room about 9:00 that eve. Turns out I shattered the ulna (smaller of the 2 long bones in the forearm), shredded the artery, muscles, ligaments and nerves. I guess there's 3 arteries in the arm & I got 2 of them in the saw...if I would have gotten the 3rd they would have just amputated it. The dr took a portion of the vein from my leg & used it to patch the one in my arm,,,screwed a piece if metal to the ends of the arm bone to hold it solid while healing,,,& did what he could (I'm not sure what that was) for the nerves & ligaments
The way it stands now, I can slightly move my thumb & 1st finger, have some feeling in the middle & ring finger & can't tell if my little finger is on my hand or not (it is, just can't tell it by feeling) Dr says it'll be 3 months before we know if the bone will regrow or not & the use of the fingers is also a wait & see situation.
Mulleins
Cumberland VA