A bad day

"Feeling" for you, Ernie. Sorry to hear of your accident - but

Here is for a Fast and Good Recovery ! Mentors are hard to come by!

Mart> A bad day

Therefore it is a bad day for all of us. Get well (is there really a well, or is it get rid of the pain?) quickly. Your advice is needed and wanted Thanks Bert

OUCH!

I'm sorry to hear of your misfortune Ernie. I wish you a speedy recovery (I'm not sure if that's the correct term).

Larry

Sorry to hear about your misfortune, I wish you a speedy recovery.

Shawn

Hey Ernie,

Whoops. Sorry to hear that. Tough break. I'm sure it hurts and really aches right now all the way to your armpit. It will pass, but that won't make it hurt less right now. Was the surgeon able to "cover" the ends OK, or did they cut back some bone?

And I hate to ask you to re-live what happened, but I can learn by reading of others "mistakes". Heck, I may even pass on a few of my own.

Take care. Hope it's all covered by your med insurance.

Brian Lawson, Bothwell, Ontario.

ps... just back from IMTS2004 in Chicago. Lincoln was demonstrating a "submerged arc" weld doing a surface build-up of 403 stainless on a

Wednesday of this week I did a bad thing. Using a 60-ton hydraulic pressbrake I successfully removed the tips of 2 fingers on my right hand. The cause was purely operator error and I did it to myself. I am in a lot of pain now, but the percocets help a bit. I won¹t be typing much for a while so don¹t take offense if I don¹t respond to emails or usenet discussions.

The actual damage was the removal of about 1 inch from both my pointer and middle finger. I kept the knuckle on both.

Hopefully I will be recovered in time to teach this fall.

Heal well and take care, Ernie. I mostly lurk here but when I need to know something on welding, usually I just fire google and search in your past posts... That should say something for the amount of knowledge you gave to the group.

Really sorry to hear of your bad luck Ernie.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery

-Kk-

-bob-

Damn! That's terrible! I've managed, due to some guardian angel, to never do anything permanent to myself, yet! Reading of pros like yourself having such a serious accident certainly has made me less cavalier about these things.

I hope your recovery is quick, you can get off the hi-test painkillers quickly, and get back to the work you love. And, I also hope that the accident doesn't impair your great skills in any way! (I know that that was my greatest fear when I nicked my left index finger with a chain saw. It was in a splint for a week or more, and when the splint came off, it was as stiff and as numb as a dowel, and I went pretty white. But, it recovered pretty well after a week of moving again.)

Jon

Accidents like this make us wonder why we work, or play, in this business (metalworking). But we all have our answers why we do.

I hope your recovery is the best that it can be. Best wishes.

Get better soon, Ernie, and thanks again for your advice in the past- it's appreciated more than you know.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Erine ...so about your loss....If you need any help finishing your pending projects feel free to get ahold of me ...Frank ..Nevarc Marine .Everett WA

Ernie, Bummer to hear about the accident. You will be in our thoughts and shop prayers without question. I wish you a speedy recovery and just by the length of the thread you are in a lot of people's thoughts.

Be well, heal fast, Rob Fraser- Chicago, IL.

Ernie, My Condolences. I hope I never have to go through that. We do have a guy a work we call 8 1/2. He managed to cut off the ends of two of his fingers in an aircraft re-circulation fan. Runs fast and looks a lot like a jet engine compressor.

Percocets are great! No Pictures please ;-) Michelle

Ernie Leimkuhler wrote:

- Ernie Leimkuhler - spluttered in news:100920042338032676% snipped-for-privacy@stagesmith.com:

Best of luck Ernie.

SOrry to hear about it. Please mend fast, and return as soon as you can. Your welding advice to others that I've read has been invaluable to me since we got a REAL welder at the shop here. Take care.

Youch! I feel your pian, literally. A month out of my life this summer.

On the plus, they do heal up usable, and the feeling comes back, although different than it was. For me, more sensitive, but tingly-funny.

On the minus, the bone and the scar line always feel like a razor cut when touched.

On the plus side, I was able to pick up a welding torch in three weeks and start to retrain-- did several buildups on brake parts, including a build-and-machine to fit on an actuator knuckle (block about 4X4X4 with a radiussed face that fits in a matching radius socket on a lever) to the tune of 1/4 thickness. Almost no machining needed. The hand (such as it was) came back fairly easily. The skill is in the hed, not the hand.

Watch the pain meds. They make it worse later. I only used for a day because I couldn't sleep. After that, I did without. One bad night, then a few medium ones. Last time, I learned my lesson.

Mine don't hurt at all now. Not even a little bit.

I watched a kung fu movie where the hero repeatedly spears his flattened hands fingers first into red hot gravel, and I did that for a while with warm soft dry beach sand. Toughened them up quick. Dried mung or aduki beans are good too, especially for learning where the new ends are (the painless but panicky razor cut feeling). I never used gravel though.

If it keeps hurting, or if you have difficulty doing things, find a doc who knows about tidying up the ends. I had some ends trimmed after a month or so. It's not straightforward, you have to consider the hand as a whole and what it is used for to decide where to put the scars, both the scars on the bone and the scars on the skin, and it's not a thing that the average doc will know about.

The average ER doc will try to save as much as he can - the specialist will try to create the best working hand he can. There's a big difference.

But do be thorough in choosing a doc, and do be a bit reluctant, nay squeamish, about having more bits chopped off - one chap I know had his nonfunctioning forefinger chopped off, it got in his way; he now regrets it, but you can't get them to put it back after.

The dexterity used to manipulate a tool comes largely in the wrist. Welding uses the elbows and shoulders too. The fingers do little more than grasp, generally providing only a small amount of movement which the wrist can duplicate.

For instance, assuming your wrist is okay, if you only have enough fingers left to grasp a pen after an injury, you can still write, you won't need to retrain to learn how. Your wrist can do all the movements without you even thinking about it.

Playing musical instruments without a full complement of fingers is a different matter, but hey, Django Rienhardt only had two fingers - if you really want to, you'll find a way.

I don't play - I can manipulate a bass guitar's strings, but I'm not very musical - but as I said before, people give me fiddly jobs to do despite having a lot of damage to my hands. I do piano finger exercises -

I - will - do - my - ex - er - ci- ses - I - will - do - my - ex - er - ci- ses -

to keep my fingers supple, and because I have extensive loss of touch sensation (but not pain sensation, that mostly came back) I have developed extra good hand-eye coordination to more than compensate.

Hmmm - having suffered all sorts of pain, and seen more, I've come to the conclusion that you should feel healing wounds, but they shouldn't hurt; and you should medicate accordingly. Don't take pain meds if you don't need them though, and don't take them long-term. And don't operate heavy machinery while taking percocets - oops!

:)

I'm not quite sure what you mean - if it's that you might get addicted, be aware of that - sure, be very aware of that - but if it's that taking meds will cause more pain later, or make it hurt for longer, and that macho-ing it out will make it hurt for a shorter time, or hurt less overall - well if it works for you that's fine, but medically it's not generally true.

It's hard to tell how long crushed fingers will hurt for, it depends on what's happened at the ends, but I'd guess no more than a week. You'll get aches and flashes for quite a while when you bang them too, until they toughen up.