ED: This is a great submission. The pictures aren't the goriest, but they are great. And the account of the whole experience is detailed and well written. I'm not even going to retell it, I'm going to let Brian tell it himself---Thanks again, Brian.

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On February 29th, I was in my backyard cutting a piece of wood on my 10" table saw. I had removed the blade guard as I was cutting a particularly tricky angle. As the wood was going through, it jammed up and was slowing the blade. I moved my left hand to the far end of the wood to tap it back while my attention was sharply focused on where the wood and blade met. I suddenly saw something fly past me. I looked at my finger and I swear it looked like a cartoon. The brightest red circle with this stupid white circle in the middle. I immediately yelled to my neighbor, who was in her back yard, to call 911. My wife, who had been working on her flowers in the front yard, heard me and came running back.

I ran into the house looking for a towel to wrap around my finger. Every time my heart would beat, a squirt of blood would shoot about three feet from where I was standing. I wrapped a towel around my finger and realized the rest of my finger was in the back yard...with my dog. I ran out in the back yard and snatched the fleshy chunk from the grass and went back into the house. I was feeling woozy, so I put the chunk on the countertop and sat down on a chair. My wife was on the phone and said "I think my husband cut himself." They asked her and she in turn asked me "How much did you cut off?" I was seeing little white stars but I managed to point with both hands to the chunk on the countertop. She screamed. I had cut off about 3/4" from my left index finger and had a cut on my middle finger which I had started to go through.

They told her they were sending an ambulance and that she needed to put the chunk on ice...but not directly on ice. Too late. My chunk was now stuck to an ice cube. My wife ran the cube and chunk under water until the cube released. She then put the chunk in a plastic bag that was put in another plastic bag filled with ice. I had lost enough blood so that I was punchy. I thought the entire scene was hilarious.

After the ambulance ride, I was in a hospital room getting an IV with some pain killer in it. I felt stupid but I wasn't in a lot of pain...yet. The hand surgeon was at his son's baseball game and waited until the end of the inning before he came to the hospital. Now I felt guilty, but still not in a lot of pain...yet. The surgeon said I had managed to cut off too much to save the chunk and too little to reattach it. He used the skin from the chunk to cover my freshly made stump.

The next week sucked. No, it was worse than that. It SUPER FUCKING SUCKED! The pain that occurs when your nerves make their reconnections is awful. I was asked to rate my pain on a scale of one to ten. Thankfully my mind now blocks what 10 feels like. I didn't sleep for a week. I was getting crazy. I would just stare at the massive bandage and contemplate why the pain seemed to be in orbit around my finger. The next week, the bandage came off. Pictures 1-3 are from that special moment.

I had to soak my finger twice a day. I would fill shot glasses with Hydrogen Peroxide and it would bubble for about twenty minutes. Over time it kind of healed. A problem occurred though. One of my fingernails tried to grow back. Considering what a bang up job I had done on my finger, the nail was growing into my finger, which was also still very infected. This would create pressure inside my finger and cause...what was it? Oh, that's right, MORE FUCKING PAIN! The surgeon dug the nail out in two separate in-office surgeries.

Picture 4 was taken today, the day I discovered your site. Most people don't notice my finger. My finger feels like it is asleep all the time. The joy of cutting off your finger is that someone always knows someone who has done something worse. They strangely feel compelled to tell you a painful story. After weeks of increasingly gruesome stories, my wife's uncle won the contest with the story of a co-worker who worked on a mail conveyer belt. He reached under the belt to pull out a package that had fallen behind. The belt grabbed his arm and pulled it and half the flesh off his side. That was supposed to make me feel grateful. Thanks.

Oh yeah, if I hear one more joke about a push stick, I will get very angry.

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ED: This wound was updated on 08/29/2002 with pictures of art created out of this wounding experience. We are proud to present them here.

Photos:
Unwrapping Day 1
Unwrapping Day 2
Unwrapping Day 3
Finger Healed
Wound Art- title: 'Push Stick'
Wound Art 2- details of 'Push Stick'