Kent Cuts Off His Finger

Titling this post "Kent Cuts Off His Finger" sounds horrible, and while the damage he did to his finger is real, it is perhaps less dramatic than all that.

Today, while helping Saneh clean out the rain gutters of her house, Kent sliced off the tip of his middle finger on his right hand. He was using a leaf blower to get leaves out of the gutters and Bill, Saneh's husband, for whatever reason, had removed the fan blade cover on the underside of the leaf blower. Kent reached under to change the angle of the blower and the moving fan blades cut through his leather glove and took off the end of his finger. 

Kent came home and bandaged up his finger, then returned to finish the job. He's no slouch. Sadly, while he is excellent at gutter clean-out, he was not excellent at finger bandaging. The finger continued to bleed throughout the day and was a mess. In the evening, after dinner, he asked if I would come help him clean it up some. I am a doctor after all. (eye roll) We removed the bandage, I took one look at it and said, "We have to go to Insta-Care." His finger looked awful, I had no idea how to really fix it, and I thought he might need stitches.

So off we went. It was just before closing but they graciously took Kent in. The doctor who came to assess the damage was an older man who had served in Vietnam. He cleaned up the wound, determined there was nothing to stitch as Kent has sliced away the skin, but did a much better job of bandaging the finger. He gave us better materials to replace the bandage in a couple of days and sent us on our way. We changed bandages a couple days later and every couple of days thereafter until it was healed.

As a post editing note, Kent's finger is still stiff over a year later. He can't fully bend the end knuckle and it remains a bit numb. While it is no longer painful, it is a reminder to him to, in his own words, "not do stupid things."