War Stories about Scrapping Injuries & Close Calls - Page 2

I'm fine but my truck isn't.

I broke my back right window. (sliding window truck so 3 pieces) Not happy with myself.

One Friday night a few months back I was in my garage scrapping out my “I’ll get to it when I have time” pile. There was a strange little box with a shaft sticking out, looked at it closer and it was an automatic louvre control for an industrial exhaust fan. Being the idiot I am, I started taking it apart. Got all the screws out, stuck the screwdriver under the cover to pry it off. Suddenly the thing basically exploded in my hand. I didn’t realize that there was a coiled spring inside, since all of the screws were out, when I released the pressure on the spring, it spun the metal cover around and across my thumb. It was pretty much like sticking my thumb in front of an edger blade, it wasn’t all that sharp, but it was hard and thin and spinning pretty fast. It didn’t actually hurt all that bad, but I could see that I had cut my thumb. I tried to move it, but I couldn’t. Then came the arterial spray. It was shooting a good three feet and made a huge mess. I wrapped a rag around it and went inside. My wife was asleep on the couch, she was 8 months pregnant with our second, our first was only around 18 months old. I decided it wasn’t worth it waking up our toddler and having them all stuck at the ER with me. So I woke her up gently and told her that I cut my thumb and was going to go get a tetanus shot and see if they could glue it, and I’d be back in a couple of hours. Got to the ER, by then it was starting to hurt, man was it throbbing, and I still couldn’t move it. Not only had I severed the artery, I had severed the tendon. The surgeon got me fixed up and I went home. I’ve got decent health insurance but it still cost me over $500 out of pocket. And my thumb isn’t what it used to be. I have very little feeling in it, and the range of motion is limited. If I would have been wearing gloves wouldn’t have been nearly as bad. I’m also **** lucky that thing didn’t fly up and hit me in the face or neck. Be careful out there guys.