I went and busted my finger on Saturday night. I was working on a new panel for the restraunt my friend is openning up and the wood caught on the blade of the router and spun off into the distance. I was holding it at the time so there was a finger in it's way. It went and peeled my finger somewhat in the manner of an orange, and then broke the bone in the tip on my finger in at least one place.

I then said something terribly witty like 'I think we need to go to the hospital'. At this point I could see the bone of my finger. Luckily my friend took one look at it, didn't panic at all, got me something to wrap it in, and took me directly to the hospital..

The word reconstruction was used, X-Rays were taken and the doctor put 4 needles and 13 stitches into the last joint of my right index finger. With any luck it'll heal properly, but there's obviosuly the chance with that much damage that it'll need to come off and I'll end up with a stubby there.

I'm feeling pretty lucky right now, with how bad things could have been and how minor they are. Even the prospect of having a shortened finger isn't getting to me when I think of how much worse it could have been, or how I could have been working alone with that very tool and been faced with getting myself to the hospital by myself. I just find myself thinking, well Pete's got a stubby and he can still type just fine, being a programmer that's a huge thing.

So anyways, things that went right.
1. The tool was set up in the safest possible manner, and my hand never even hit the blade, if it had I'd probably be looking at a few missing fingers instead of a broken one.
2. I wasn't working alone and noone paniced which got me to medical attention in the least amount of time possible.
3. I'm in Canada right now, which means that once admitting looked at it, and said yah lets get you into that emergency room and get a nurse to pit a temporary dressing on it till the doctor can get to you. Oh and we'll work out the paperwork after that. It did take a few minutes to get to the point where they'd look at it because they were in the middle of admitting someone else but still once they did things moved pretty fast.
4. The cute nurse on the shift kept coming in to check on me.

So yah, even if you know the tool, even if it's your hundredth cut of the day, bad luck can just hit you. So make sure you're set up as safe as you can to minimize the damage, and don't work alone.

I got copies of the x-rays I'll pop into a photos folder later, but my cd-rom isn't working at the moment and I don't feel like fighting with it.