Why you should never work alone...
As mentioned before, chainsaws and I have a long and colorful history together. So here's another one...

I had a house on one of the Finger Lakes in New York, an old pile of a house at the back of a very shallow, muddy bay that at one time had been an orchard. There were enormous willows there and a lot of smaller, lesser trees as well. The area around the house itself was clear, but the lot was a long narrow triangle that stretched along about 500 feet of shoreline to a point. Toward the pointed end was a side yard that had a few scraggly trees in it, a dense strip of brush along the roadside and a bit of brush along the lakeside- so it was a beautiful and fairly private little glade along the lake. We had a porch swing hung from a branch out there on one of the big willows, and I spent many an hour there with a book and a beer.

One day I realized that one of the skinny little maples there was about dead, so I decided I would take it down. It was only about eight inches in diameter, but about forty feet tall- a toothpick of a tree. It was far enough from the house that I felt safe in just dropping it without ropes. Within twenty minutes the tree was on the ground, and I was limbing it out.

One of the things they stressed over and over again in forestry school was that just because the tree was down didn't mean all was safe. But did I think about that? Hell no- I was cutting away, happy as can be, and cut through a branch that was wrapped around on itself. The end lashed out, carrying the bar of the saw with it right across my left knee.

I stood there for a moment, sickly realizing that I had just run a chainsaw through my own leg, and turned off the saw. Part of me wanted to freak out, as you do, but the logical part of my brain realized that it couldn't be that bad- I was still standing, so it hadn't done any real damage like cutting tendons. So I quashed the scream that was bubbling up and decided to put away the saw and the gas before I did anything else.

All was put away and I was very pointedly ignoring the trickling on my leg when I decided I was okay to look at the damage. I walked to the kitchen and unbuttoned my jeans and pulled them down, and had a look.

I had basically torn a strip of skin about four inches long off of my leg just above the kneecap. It was seeping a bit, but once I cleaned it up it didn't look that bad. There was just one little problem- it was my left knee, and I had a car with a manual transmission.

So in true redneck fashion, I got out a roll of packing tape (no duct tape available) and wrapped it wound my knee, then drove myself to the doctor in the next village over.

All's well that ends well, right?

Like fuck.

The wound healed, but to get the stitches out meant taking time off from work, so my wife the nurse volunteered to take them out herself. She brought home a pair of those scissors with the little hook in the end and sat me in a rocking chair, then proceeded to dig into the fresh scar with the scissors to get the tip under the suture. She had the delicate touch of an iron worker as she jammed it into the healing wound, and I very nearly puked on her head.

"Oh for chrissake, hold still!" Nurse Mengele snapped at me. "Do you want these out or not?"

I'm of the opinion that her patients got better just to get away from her.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 3 Apr 2008, 22:37, 5 replies)

You see...
There's nothing you can't fix with duct/packing tape. It's even got medical properties and it's useful in bondage play.
( girlinthehole, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 8:24, closed)

Pfft
Nurse Mengele.

*chuckle*
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 8:25, closed)

Fecking Ouch!
That made me go all funny did that. Made me giggle though...
( Devil_In_Tights the *real* DiT!, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 10:54, closed)

Picture!
Please?
( Agnostic Antichrist Baltimora, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 16:20, closed)

A picture of the scar?
Sure, I'll be happy to post one- it's about ten years old now, so it's faded a bit, but it still looks impressive.

I have an even more impressive one on my right elbow from breaking the end off of the radial when I was six. With the chainsaw scar I now balance.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 4 Apr 2008, 17:29, closed)