OH WOW MAN, What a bummer when you are experienced and think you are working within your experience, see nothing to warn you, and then Murphy steps in and everything turns to goose grease.
I am waiting for a cold snap and ice storm to fade and will then be going back into the woods to do some more cutting. I have a lot of larger eastern red cedar (juniper) trees marked for extraction and milling for ornamental trim lumber. You can bet your sweet bippy that I will be a much more cautious citizen after reading your report!
I am older but probably no wiser than you. I have been singularly successful at felling trees in difficult circumstances or close quarters with no collateral damage.
A couple times wind shifts have trapped my saw and I had to TAKE MEASURES to recover it but I only got one injury worthy of the name while DOING TREES. I'll include that story as it might save someone from injury.
I was unloading a 15 ft or so tree top I had cut (pruned) from a friends tree. I was holding the little end of the delimbed piece of trunk and rolling it along the top of the side of my pickup bed. The plan was to get it to the drop off point and let go and let it hit the dirt. Everything went to plan BUT I got a little surprise that wasn't planned.
The big end hit first and the energy of the fall sent a wave motion up the limber log like a crack the whip sort of thing. As the wave went toward the little end the wave got bigger and bigger as the log got smaller. I expected the log to hit the ground and stay there but the little end whipped up to waist height and hit my right hand driving a stob into the hand between the thumb and forefinger. The speed of the tip of the limb was quite high and no human reflexes could have avoided it, you'd just have to be smart enough to step back as the log wouldn't jump end wise.
The hit opened up my hand at the web between the thumb and forefinger so you could look inside and see all the parts working like the SCIFI robot hands. The hole was big enough to pass silver dollars.
A soak in betadine, tetanus booster, and several stitches later and back home. Doc said the stick narrowly missed and only glanced across the important bits so he thought I would probably not loose much use of the hand. I didn't. The scar blends with the web and is not even noticible but the scar left on my brain will have me backing up anytime I drop something like that again. I was really mad at myself for not predicting and avoiding the problem.
It is one thing to take a calculated risk which you understand and have fall back plans but when you have something jump out and bite you unexpectedly it is an entirely different matter.
I hope you have a speedy and complete recovery AND never get attacked by another tree.
Pat
Plus it's memorable. Much better than the kind of names that get recommended by the sign-up software always recommends. (don't wanna be known as Sam41637 
