Ouch...thats gotta hurt!

[ejb]

Minneapplis (AP) - A Minnesota farmer chose his life over his arm.

When Jarrod Wagner reached to remove a clump of hay that plugged his hay baler Tuesday night, his arm got caught between two of the machine's pressure rollers.

"All I was thinking about was that my arm really hurt," Wagner said. "And the baler was kind of sucking my whole body in, so I figured, well, it was either my whole body or my arm."

Wagner, 34, used metal from the headphones he was wearing to saw off his left forearm below the elbow.

"I was scared, but after I cut my own arm off, I had all sorts of adrenaline," said Wagner, who was recovering Wednesday at North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale.

Wagner then drove about 300 yards on his tractor to find his father and best friend at the barn on his 70 acre farm in Elko.

His father looked for his arm while his friend took him to Fairview Ridges Hospital in Burnsville. From there, he was taken by helicopter to North Memorial.

"When I woke up, there was nothing, he said, referring to his forearm. His father had found his arm, but "it was all messed up. It wasn't salvageable."

[gordon]

Ouch is an understatement. My arm got shivers just reading it. **** that must have hurt. Hope he recovers ok.

Gordon

[RPM]

It's funny, but it probably wouldn't hurt as much as you think. I almost severed my foot - mid shin - when I was 11. I was chasing a buddy on a construction site (playground to a kid) and hit a sharp piece of iron with my shin at full tilt. It looked just like someone had tried to take my foot off with a machete according to the ER doctor. It even took a piece out of the bone too. I honestly didn't feel it immediately after the accident - couldn't recall any pain. Too much adrenaline.

In fact, I was kept conscious as the ER team sewed it all back up - they needed to know which nerves were damaged. They popped in a couple of shots of local when they finally hit an area where they had to do some more delicate work. I had to get back to the house - a couple hundred yards - and remember watching my foot flop around - tendon damage.

Not trying to brag or anything - don't misinterpret me - just pointing out the adrenaline factor. It's the psychological piece that is difficult if you try to do self-surgery. The massive adrenaline rush (and associated endorphins, cortisol etc.) serves to block the pain. Many people report fantastic clarity of thought under this natural load of chemicals.

There are well recorded cases of people removing their own appendices by self-surgery - same thing except that local anaesthetic replaces the adrenaline cocktail.

Try this link to Kane Hospital and scroll down to Kane Doctor Amazed Medical World in 1921.

Patrick

[jdkid]

Hi ya
It even made the side lines in our kiwi paper .i also know of a guy in NZ who got wraped in the pto shaft ,a few sec to shut things down would save a lot of probs
catch ya
JD Kid

[GlueGuy]

There's a lot of truth to that.

I was fooling around with some buddies when they first put in the street that I lived on when I was 8 years old. Somebody had left a 16# sledge hammer laying around (putting in forms for the curb). I saw it, and decided that I needed to "pound something". Well the darn sledge was heavy enough for an 8 year old that I had to spread my legs pretty wide just to hold it up. I took one swing to pound in a stake or something, missed it, and came down hard on my left foot. Basically crushed my big toe. Weird thing was that it didn't really hurt all that much. Looked like ****, and the kids with me threw up when they saw it. [img]/w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif[/img]


The GlueGuy

[MarkV]

Wow, I don't know if I could have done that. I guess you don't know what you can do until you are out of options.

It crossed my mind, as I thought about all the accident that happen with PTO's, why not a kill switch mounted near the PTO? Sure doesn't seem like it would be that hard to wire in.

MarkV