Thread: Ouch - CAUTION: Graphic Pictures

Once put a brand new 10mm drill bit through my fingernail and hit the bone after it grabbed on a plastic junction box. Couldnt stop jumping around and swearing long enough to take a photo though.

I know of an incident where a truckie's finger was pulled off (de-fingering?) as it stayed up on the cab gutter with the ring, after he jumped down.

I remember when I was in my teens some family friends were going home after the drive-in pictures. Somehow or other they managed to pi55 off a bikie. The bikie whizzed past them later on down the road and slammed a bike chain across the roof of their car. It got caught in the roof rack (it was night so he prolly didn't see it). Ripped 2 of his fingers off. They stopped - he kept going. They gave the chain to the cops complete with mangled fingers. Cops went to the Royal Hobart Hospital and waited. Got their man as he ran into the emergency outpatients clinic bawling his eyes out. It was about an hour between losing his fingers and going to hospital. I reckon his 'tough' ran out.

Yep... I was warned off jewlery very early on.... wont even wear a matal banded watch..... metal cased for that matter.

Now a wedding ring is one thing but how many blokes go on construction & industrial sites with " nose rings & other pierced things". ( they look like they fell in a tackle box)

I know crawling thru rooves that my clothes often get caught on things that poke out...... imagine getting a nose, ear, eyebrow ring (or worse ) caught on something.

I know lots of places that wont allow any visable pierceings to be worn at work.

cheers

Originally Posted by soundman

Now a wedding ring is one thing but how many blokes go on construction & industrial sites with " nose rings & other pierced things". ( they look like they fell in a tackle box)

In my organisation (electricity distribution) we have had a lot of industrial issues with face jewelry and these people are line workers, underground jointers or electrical technicials working on live low voltage (nominally 240 to 415v). We can't actually demand that a worker remove the jewelry unless we can produce a documented risk analysis proving the dangers. The current electricity regulations don't cover these sort of issues other than a recommendation against wear rings and chains ect (it never expected to deal with nose rings & studs).

On the other side I have had a dress ring arc out against a car starter motor 12v about 600A and sh#t it gets hot instantaneously and I can't get it off.

Originally Posted by Bob38S

To those familiar with this sort of injury -- what is the general prognosis?

Full recovery?
Partial loss of feeling/movement?

Really depends on what nerves/tendons/joints are involved......

If its simply the outer skin and there is no damage to the joints, movement shouldnt really be affected too much... maybe just a slight bit of decreased movement if there is a lot of scar tissue when it heals....

I would think full recovery with maybe some loss of sensation (again depending on the underlying damage)

Note: I am a nurse who has spent a fair bit of time working in emergency but Im not a plastic surgeon.

Joel

Thanks for the info Joel, let's just hope that this bloke is one of the lucky ones.

Regards,
Bob

As some of you will remember I had a nice slice to my thumb about 2 years ago.
( check out my ouch post).

The feeling has pretty well returned to normal down stream of the cut after that time. Bear in mind that this was a simple clean cut and not a complete ring barking.
Big Bro' has some 20 year old serious injuries from motor bike accidents that he has mechanicaly recovered from, but he has no feeling in parts of the skin on his legs.

As said before its a lottery.
If I was him I would be thankfull if I had feeling in my fingertip but I would expect he would have small expectation of feeling down stream of the injury unless the neurosurgens managed some clever work and they could get hold of the bits to reconnect.

cheers

When I was a student I had to use an analytical instrument that ran at 6kV. Every couple of hours I had to open up the unit and replace samples. The auto off HT interlock/relay was misbehaving and to cut a long story short I stuck my hand in the machine and got a lovely boot/arc right up my left ring finger. Fortunately my wedding ring was touching the instrument case and the charge ran to ground instead of up my arm. The jolt also threw me backwards about 3 metres. Over the next few days the skin on my finger turned yellow, green, blue and then purple - it took about 3 months to recover. In this case the wedding ring probably saved me.

Before taking on child rearing as a full time occupation I worked at a factory where rings were banned for this very reason. At the factory before that, rings weren't banned and I remember a bloke losing his finger after a de-gloving incident. This particular bloke climbed up on some industrial racking to get something off the top shelf and when he jumped down his ring caught on the racking, completely de-gloving his finger. The surgeons told the guy that they might have been able to save the finger but it would involve many operations with little chance of success. He opted to have the finger removed.