It is said that having opposable thumbs is something that separates us from animals. It is, at least, until you try to remove one of said opposable thumbs with a sharp object.

Dino's take on the events of Friday, June 13, 2003 can be read here. WARNING - If the sight of blood or even the thought of the sight of blood makes you uneasy, STOP reading now. And whatever you do, DO NOT click any of the links in this blog entry. That being said, here is my story.

On Friday afternoon, I was finishing up making some signs for the Gardner Knights of Colombus golf tournament when I had an accident. I was cutting some sheets of plastic when my Stanley utility knife slipped and quickly sliced off the tip of my left thumb. I calmly yelled upstairs, "Deanne, I just cut myself. Bad!" I ran up the stairs leaving a blood trail along the way and made my way to the sink and began running cold water over my injured digit. I still wasn't sure how bad it was. After flushing with water for a minute or so, I pulled back my right hand to reveal about a quarter of an inch hunk of my thumb dangling by the skin of my thumbprint. (I warned you this was going to get graphic.) When Deanne took a look at the wound, she sort of freaked. Not a major freak, but enough to jump back about 10 feet and yell "Ewwwww!" I told her to be calm and to get some ice. She loaded a baggie with ice, handed me a towel and grabbed the car keys. We were off to the Shawnee Mission ER which, luckily, is only a couple of minutes from our house. On the way to the ER, the pain sets in. Let's just say the MPAA would've given the trip an "R" rating due to language. I can't explain the biology or psychology behind the phenomenon but cursing loudly does make the pain a little more tolerable. We check in at the ER and about an hour later the duty nurse led Deanne and I into a room with a bed where I was instructed to lie down. The nurse removed my ice and gauze, supplied to me at check-in, and responded with, "Oh my! You did a number on that!" Dr. Joe Ruben then came in to take a look. At first glance he said I might lose that part of my thumb but he'd sew it back on and see if he could save it. Dr. Joe proceeded to give me a series of shots to numb my thumb. Now I didn't see what he injected into my hand but I'm almost positive it was labeled "Liquid Demon Fire." The saving grace was that after the initial couple of stabs, I soon felt nothing. As soon as the Dr. received a NO answer to the question "Can you feel this?" he began to stitch. He then explained that since one can't stitch through a finger nail, he would have to burn a few holes in my thumbnail. Oh goody! Just in case you wondered, the smell of any part of your body burning is not a pleasant thing. Anyway, a couple of more stitches and I was ready to go. Or so we thought. As the nurse was cleaning up the mess of what was left of my thumb, I turned my hand over to notice blood dripping from a gap on the bottom of my thumb. Evidently the cut was a little deeper than the initial assessment and the Dr. was called back in for another stitch. If you've made it this far and believe you can handle some graphic pictures of my Frankenthumb, you can now click here and here.

Needless to say, I won't be playing the drums at Jacob's Well for at least a couple of weeks. Kind of funny that the first call I made was to Mike Crawford to tell him he'd have to find a replacement for me for a while. I'm supposed to see a plastic surgeon early this week to see if I get to keep my whole thumb. 24 hours after the severing, things looked good and, if you clicked the pics above, you could see for yourself that nothing had turned black or anything. I'll keep you posted.