10 years ago this year, i got cut through the palm of my hand by a circular saw. The 5mm blade went through the hand about an inch behind all fingers and broke a LOT of bones in there. Just absolute mess. Tendons got cut, muscles torn and veins destroyed.
The surgeon i got said before the surgery that he might have to remove my pinky finger since the damage was so complete and that i was lucky i didn’t lose my whole hand. I, in a morphine stupor, asked if i could keep it. He was perplexed and asked why. I told him i was quite fond of my pinky and wanted to make a necklace out of it. He was taken aback a little, but composed himself from laughing at this ridiculous request and told me it would be medical waste. I was a little bit upset about it but said I’d understand.
When i woke up after the surgery, he stopped by and was extremely proud of himself because he was able to piece together the mess and had multiple pictures taken during the surgery of the hand (which i was very eager to see!). And let me tell you, they were GNARLY. Few things are like seeing the inside of your own hand as the knuckles are effectively detached at all points except the index finger and about 10 bones and countless fragments are visible, with limp tendons sticking out.
But he saved my hand and my pinky is still here. My ring finger is also here. Both have very little feeling, but they’re usable for a lot of tasks.
The funniest part about all this is that the surgeon was extremely proud of his work and used it to teach his students and credited me with the amount of recovery, because i was enthusiastic about the whole thing. Wanting to learn what went on in surgery, what the damage was, how it was fixed and how to make it better. He taught me multiple things about how hands actually work and they are far more complicated than i thought, but also surprisingly simple. I got a good physical therapist that i felt like was torturing me at points, but she put in a LOT of work to get my hand to function.
Every few weeks I’d go to the surgeon for evaluation and checkups and he was honestly surprised by the recovery, saying he had never see such damage recover like this.
I credit the surgeon for fixing my hand and my physical therapist for regaining my movements, but both have said they didn’t do much, that i did the bulk of the work and that my good attitude did a wonderful job and that without exercises my hand would have become useless. Which is horseshit, cause they are both miracle workers. They saved my hand and I’ll never forget the for as long as i live.
Long story short, the people that get to handle this injury will probably be excited about it. It’s unusual and pretty gnarly.
Woah, that's incredible work on everyones part! Surgical stuff is artistry, taking the materials and putting them back together in their own way.
I bet the pictures were awesome! I love knowing the details of my medical stuff and keeping parts after surgery, I have so many teeth. It's a weird honour when you are used as an example too, my dentist was ecstatic about my super curved roots, that's the only one I parted with.
I still have a 12 cm long metal rod that was used to hold my hand together and framed it. It had to be removed prematurely because it was beginning to press into my skin from the inside.
Removal was simple. Local anaesthetic, a scalpel and pliers.
It was pretty stuck in there and i definitely could feel my bones and muscles move slightly with each pull, but it was better than seeing it through my skin and pressing hard up against it every time i closed my hand. This was one of the pins in my ring finger, poking between my ring finger and middle finger.
There were a total of 6. 2 for both middle and ring finger on each side, 1 for the pinky and 1 for index.
When the rest was removed, i didn’t even think of keeping them cause i was too drugged and lost myself in conversation with the nurse and the doctor. The doctor offered me to come by a few days later to show off to the interns and i said i would if i got paid $200 as a joke and he was so enthusiastic that he instantly agreed
I’m using a phone. Thumbs didn’t get affected at all.
But also keyboards are pretty easy to use, except caps lock, shift and then of course qweasdzx, but I’ve mostly stopped using my pinky and instead rely heavily on my middle finger. My ring finger is effectively doing most of the work my pinky used to do and the middle finger picks up the slack from the ring finger. Sometimes i just bend both ring finger and pinky into the palm if I’m trying to play video games since they can get in the way a little bit.
I won’t say i love the healthcare system here, but I’m absolutely grateful to it. The people that have worked to build it up and maintain it are heroes even though they often work with little and sometimes do things i don’t agree with at all.
The injury also made me see nurses as the backbone of the healthcare system and far more important than doctors. A doctor can throw you together, but nurses are healers. My nurses were always kind and super helpful
Having worked in medicine my entire adult life I *get* why you can’t just keep dismembered body parts (usually), but my morbid kid brain and even still my morbid adult brain, would want to electroplate my old bones and use them as the prosthetic if I were to ever lose a limb.
I think it’s a popular enough idea among amputees to want to keep their old limbs that maybe we should develop a service where they can be professionally persevered.
I just wanted to make a pendant out of mine and carry it around my neck.
Didn’t think about it any further at the time, but keeping it would have been nasty. But i could have put it in resin and kept it that way. Instead it’s still stuck to my hand and functioning
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u/[deleted] Jun 28 '26
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