My thumb is opposed to old saws

On September 14th, 2008, in the remnant of Hurricane Ike with peak gusts of 82 miles per hour in the Cincinnati area of Ohio, two large branches of our neighbor's 50-year-old sycamore came crashing down. The smaller one (about 5-8 inches in diameter) landed across the old wire fence, and the much larger one came down in their yard.

I took my pitiful electric chain saw next door once the weather cleared. Cutting and piling for a couple of hours, I managed to arrange a respectable pile of logs for their newly-built firepit. Then, I moved back to our side of what used to be the fence, and began cutting and limbing the remaining branches.

I got into a kind of rhythm at the job: pulling a branch over the wheelbarrow, lopping off a stove-length chunk, pulling the branch further, lopping off another length. The problem is, when you get into a rhythm with a chainsaw, even a pathetic, underpowered electric one, you become accident-prone.

In this case, I lopped off a limb and stopped the saw. The branch fell and the blade kicked up against the thumb of the left hand which was holding the main part of the branch. Electric saws don't stop instantly the way their bigger cousins do. So the slight remaining momentum of the chain caught the glove on my left thumb and shredded the heavy cotton.

Instantly I noticed a rather generous bloodstain welling up in the glove. When I tore it off, it appeared that a tooth on the chain had caught my thumbnail with sufficient impact to cut a triangular piece nearly out of it. It had lifted up, but was still attached. I immediately ran for the house, to get a band-aid, if not a tourniquet.

J met me and helped wash the wound. Knowing my sensitive nature, she prepared a drink of juice, all the while attempting to persuade me that I needed the services of the local emergency room. I demurred, because I felt that getting blood on the car upholstery would only hasten its rate of depreciation.

In time, the healing began. As at this writing, I still wear a band-aid over the area, simply because the nail has grown out to the point where the slightest catch, such as putting on a glove, results in a sharp reminder that all is not yet whole.

Some things I reflect on from this experience:

1) The body aggressively tries to heal whatever hurts it. And in most cases, it succeeds, although not without leaving some evidence of the struggle to survive, perhaps as an object lesson, or at the least, a warning.
2) As a rule of thumb, the price paid for inattention is one of the highest we can pay.
3) The inattentive are protected only by their good luck. One should not rely on this, but when it happens one must be grateful.
4) You can do something a thousand times, but the thousand and first may be the one that gets you.
5) Bleeding is a sign that something is probably wrong.
6) The empathy of a loving person is a powerful force for healing.