Careful! The pictures in this post might turn your stomach a bit...

... so you've been warned.

I've never written about something that happened to me in February 2013 (so about a year and a half ago).  I've never had a problem talking about to people, because the shock factor is fabulous, but really sitting down and thinking about it is hard.

On my birthday, October 2012, I got my very own table saw.  I loved it.  I'm sure my Dad thought it was a little silly as part of the way I selected it had to do with it matching the majority of my other tools... but just because I like DeWalt tools, not because they had to match color-wise.

This table saw is great, because it stores somewhat compactly, but then had a little stand to set it on when you wanted to cut something.  The guide also expands out to 26 inches which is seemingly perfect for cutting any size of wood you need, provided the piece starts out at 4 feet or less.

It also has some great safety features built into it.  There is a little metal piece that attaches behind where the blade spins.

So it comes up and mimics the shape of the blade, but then is the exact same width of the blade.  This is so when you're making cuts, the portion of the wood that gets devoured by the saw blade also makes room for the wood the smoothly pass by this piece.

Then there are two pieces that attach to this little metal piece.

This little piece has teeth in it.  When the wood gets past the saw blade and the metal piece, it runs into this piece that hinges and lifts up to accommodate the wood moving under it.  If the saw tries to kick the wood back towards you, this piece will prevent that because those little teeth dig into the wood so it can't move backward.

This is the other safety piece that attaches.  It lifts up some to allow the wood to slide under, towards the blade.  The whole function of this puppy is to keep things from landing on the blade.  Seems smart enough.

So theoretically, there should never be a reason to remove any of the safety devices unless you were making a rabbet or dado cut (a groove cut) where you are passing a piece of wood over the blade but the cut doesn't make its way all the way through the wood.  For a cut like this you would have to take the safety devices off the machine because they would not allow the wood to pass beyond the blade.

BTW, my hands are starting to shake already and I haven't even made it all the way to the story!!

Okay, so I said, "theoretically".  But I was having a slight issue.  Sometimes the wood would bind up a little bit when it got past the blade and was having some interaction with that metal piece.  It was bugging me.  Binding up of the wood was making it more difficult to push the wood all the way through the saw.  So I took them off.  No, I wasn't making those nice groove cuts.  I just figured that since I was very safety-conscious, it was enough.  I was wrong.

This one fine morning in February 2013 I was busy trying to build a bookshelf to go above a desk I had put together.  I wanted to get it done.  I had family coming to town.  I dropped my first grader off at school, and then had my preschooler with me for the whole day.  We stopped to pick up the wood I needed and had the attendant at Home Depot cut the plywood sheet down a bit, the sheets are 4x8 feet, and that's tough to manage by yourself on a table saw because they're huge.  Got home and now had these perfect 8 foot long pieces that I was systematically cutting down to size for my project.  I had an 18 inch piece to cut.  Now if you only have 18 inches on the right side of the saw blade, you aren't going to need to trouble yourself with a "pusher" stick, so that was a non-issue.  But it did mean I had more than 6 feet of wood going off to the left of the blade.  That's a fair amount of weight, so my right hand was going to guide the wood through while my left hand was supporting the weight of the wood on the other side.  I wasn't centered on the saw blade, but I was super close.  My preschooler was sitting on the other side of the garage where he was commonly sent when I was cutting things to keep him out of harm's way.

....  hold up...  my stomach is starting to squirm.  Must take a 10 minute break to calm down.

Deep breath... and I'm back.

So I started the cut.  The wood bound up a bit between the side rail and the blade.  It was going to kick the wood... it did kick the wood.  It tried to send it backwards, but my body was trying to push it forward and the human brain sure does react a whole lot slower than a saw blade.  The wood kicked, my arms still pushing it forward meant the wood couldn't kick backwards.  Instead it came up off the table and then landed back down on the blade because my arms were pushing it that way.  The wood bounced off the table.  Something was wrong.  You know that feeling like you can't put a finger on it (that's a really bad joke), but something seems off?  That's what I felt.  I looked down.  "Oh SHIT!  Oh no, oh no, oh no.  I cut myself!  I cut myself!!!!  My hand!!  It had bounced off the blade too!!  AHHHHH!", that's was the quote of what went down in my head.  What came out of my mouth was very different.  I had a 4 year old sitting 8 feet away from me (behind me, and to the left), that had no idea what just happened.  I didn't want to scare him.  I pulled my right arm into my shirt and covered it with my other hand and turned to walk towards the door into the house.  I asked my 4 year old, "could you please turn off the saw?  We're done cutting things for a little while.  Let's go watch Curious George."  He didn't know anything was wrong, so naturally in typical boy fashion he said, "No".  It was an inconvenience to whatever he was doing in his corner.  Clenching my jaw, I walked back to the table saw and turned it off with my foot.  Blood was starting to drip at this point, so now I was leaving a trail back into the house, all over the door knob, etc.  

My son followed me in.  I grabbed the phone, a dishcloth (which I wrapped my hand up in), and while I dialed 911, I turned on PBS for him.  I calmly asked him if he could go next door to our neighbor's house for a little bit while I made a phone call.  I was scared with what I had just seen.  I was glad it was wrapped up now because I couldn't bare to look at it, and I was afraid that I could only maintain my composure for so long.  And I didn't want to scare him.  He refused to go next door!!  I sat down in a chair near the front door and talked to the dispatcher.  The ambulance arrived quickly.  I explained what had happened.  They wanted to look at it, and that's about the point that I started having trouble stopping tears.  It was grotesque!  I didn't want to take that towel off until my son was out of the house!!  But now he was nowhere to be found!  The back door was open, the EMT's went next door to look for him.  I was afraid he was hiding in the backyard somewhere (he had taken to hiding very quietly from me lately).  I was wandering around in the backyard calling for him, and starting to get light-headed.

I wandered back into the house and my neighbor had come over to let me know that he was next door with her and she would take care of him.  Apparently he had wandered over there and told her "my mom cut her hand so I'm going to hang out with you for a little bit", as easily as if he had said that I was taking a shower.  Good, he was unaffected.  I called my husband.  He is routinely not available for a multitude of reasons, but on this day he was in his office.  Told him I cut my hand and was going to the ER.

I went for a little ride in the ambulance.  I hadn't really looked at my wound yet.  They kept trying to ask me if I cut all the way through.  What did they mean?  They gave me a pain patch... no idea what variety.  But I wasn't in pain.  I was mortified... but no pain.  The pain patch must have had a little extra calming bonus to it.  I could no longer keep my hand covered, but until the patch really kicked in, I wasn't looking at it.  Once I did, it seemed unreal.  It looked like some elaborate make-up application for Halloween.

The saw blade, that spins counter-clockwise towards you, had first grabbed the muscle of my thumb.  It tore in deeply there, and then must have flipped my wrist to nick the other side of my thumb too.  You can see how they thought, at first, that I had cut all the way through.  Amazingly, aside from a small nick on a tendon on my thumb, it was mostly just a flesh wound (Monty Python reference, so you have to read that with an English accent).  What actually hurt the most was when they had to dig around in this wound with the "numbing" medication syringe that would allow them to stitch it back up.  Yow!  

While I was waiting on a consult from the doctor regarding any damage to that tendon, I got to listen to a lady in the next bed.  Do these people not realize that I can hear through the flimsy curtain?  She was complaining of shoulder pain.  Apparently she had been out shooting her rifle preparing for a zombie apocalypse!!  I also got to taunt my husband with my nasty hand... because he has a super weak stomach.  The calm-you-down medication was wonderful because it made it possible for me to deal with this insanity.  I even told the ER staff that I was just really upset because my career as a hand model (Seinfeld reference) was officially over... and what was I going to do for work now?

17 stitches later it looked so much better.  To this day I tell people my grandmother was watching over me.  She swore we would eventually evolve into a species that only had thumbs (because she constantly saw people using just their thumbs for texting, etc.), so clearly she knew I was going to need mine - she was such a feisty, smart lady.  It wasn't perfect.  I did have a little damage and spent a number of months going through occupational therapy (OT) to get to the point where I could almost bend my thumb as much as I once had, and it gave me back some of my grip strength which I will have to continue to build back up over time. 

Once the stitches came out I started using some Booboo Balm to help with the healing and it also helped with the itching that always goes along with wounds.  For the most part these days, I would say my wound is unnoticeable.  Either that or people don't want to ask, or they figure it was a surgical scar... yes, my own operating room in the garage.  I did spend a number of days in disbelief.  I couldn't understand how I could have let something like this happen.

Things that have changed for me as a result of this?  It took me a while to be able to use my saw again.  Initially this was because I didn't have the strength in my hand to push wood through it.  And then after that it was fear.  I talked for a while about it with my dad.  About how anyone goes back and uses a tool again after it has done something like this.  He calmly (because I've never known him to explain things in any other manner) suggested that it gives you more reason to set yourself up for success.  You don't stand in a place where wood would hit you if the saw kicks it.  You create systems that make it so you don't have to juggle the wood you're cutting.  You think about every scenario that could go wrong so you can systematically avoid each of them.

I can't make a cut, where I'm forced to stand in front of the saw blade (all safety attachments in place) without my heart stopping.  I first spend a few minutes thinking about how to make every cut without standing there.  If I have to make one, while standing in the same position I was in when I cut myself I literally have to walk around for a few minutes to psych myself up to do it.  Every cut I make with that saw, since that fateful day, has become a little easier and a little easier, but my mind never stops thinking about every bad possibility so I'm constantly on high alert.

I don't relay this story to make people afraid of their equipment.  But you should be very aware of what can happen.  That saw doesn't care if it's cutting wood or flesh.  It doesn't mean you stop doing it, but it does mean I never do it without taking every possible safety precaution, and I will never again think that I can outsmart the machine.