Ghostfinger—–totally non-porn, but funny as helThis is the mostly true story of how I lost my finger at work in a tragic yet humorous accident. It is up to you the reader to decide which parts are true, which parts are humorous and which parts I’m just blowing smoke up your ass.It was a Monday like any other Monday, but this Monday was special. It was Sewards day. Just to refresh your memories, Sewards day is celebrated (in Alaska anyway) for the purchase of Alaska from those Godless commies bastards, the Russians. Trust me when I say they are kicking themselves for letting it go so cheap. In Alaska it is widely celebrated mostly by those gubment workers who don’t do anything anyway, so I don’t understand why they need another day to do nothing. But I digress. After promptly punching in, I proceeded to my bindery domain to which I have proudly proclaimed myself Bindery Dictator for Life—El Presidente. Now before you go getting up all into my face, please check my Linkedin status. It’s legit!. I’m still working on my uniform too, and I must say I look fabulous in gold braids. The morning was uneventful and going as planned. paper was being folded, hospital forms were being perforated, (or perfed as we call it in the business) and meal tickets were being numbered. I was saving the business cards for after lunch so I could get them finished before the 2 pm pick up. After lunch I was checking the BCs (busines cards) so I could determine which ones were to go first. That’s when my right index finger started to itch. Now, that finger gets a lot of paper cuts because I jog a lot of paper, (ok you’re going to have to ask some one else what jogging paper means because it’s just too long to explain here, but you can ask my brother John, because he was the first one to teach me a usable skill at an early age.) But I digress. So I didn’t really give it another thought. It was really itching bad, and I kept rubbing it on my shorts (I wear shorts at work ’cause it gets hot with all the presses running) trying to get rid of that darned itch. I think back now, and wonder if it was trying to tell me something. I just thought that it was a paper cut that was healing.The cutter I was using was from the 70s and was a real antiquated POS (piece of shit). Since day one I had been trying to get them to get a newer and safer cutter, but to no avail. After all, what the hell did I know about safety on a commercial cutter, the fact that I spent seven years at my last job doing the exact same thing (on a newer, safer AND smarter cutter) and four years in the Air force as a munitions——-sorry, I digress.So here’s the cutter set up. There is a foot pedal that when it is pushed on it brings down a clamp onto the paper with 3000 lbs of pressure to hold it in place while the blade comes down and cuts the paper. The blade can ONLY come down when BOTH hands press the two buttons simultaneously. The clamp can be activated just by the foot pedal leaving your hands free. Got that? Great, moving on. OK so I’m cutting BCs (you remember what those are right?——good) for Providence Hospital (another omen that I completely missed) and there was about a 2 and a 1/2 inch stack of card stock in the cutter. After two cuts a few of the cards on top were skewed. OK pay attention, cause here’s how it went down. I lifted my right foot off the pedal and the clamp came up. My heel was resting on the floor as it always did, and the rest of my foot was at an angle that allowed me to push the foot pedal kırşehir escort without lifting my whole foot. That’s how I’ve always done it. So, as I reached in to fix the top bc’s, my foot subconciously relaxed onto the pedal, causing it to come down with all 3000 lbs of pressure (a major safety design flaw I’d like to point out) and catching my finger between the stack of bc’s and the clamp itself.I instinctively pulled my finger out and stuck it under my left armpit, while jumping up and down and cursing to myself. First “Goddamnit you stupid fuck!!!” followed by a lot of multiple “fuck”. So here’s the thing. I have done this twice before, but I have only pinched my finger in the clamp. The first two times I went to the kitchen and put my finger in ice water to keep the swelling down. About half an hour later, I was ready for work again. What I did this time was, I pulled up at a steeper angle, rather than straight out, It’s too bad my brain didn’t send a signal to my foot a nano-second sooner saying “Take your foot off the pedal, you dumbass!!”So as I’m standing there cursing to myself, my second thought is “OK, better get this thing in some ice” WARNING: The following scene may be too intense for some viewers. Parental discretion is advised. Or you could just close your eyes and have some one read it to you. Your call. As I pulled my finger out from under my armpit to look at it, expecting it to start turning that wonderful purple color, instead, I was truly horrified to see a shredded mass of flesh and blood, and I distinctly remember seeing a spot of white and thinking “Ahh it’s not so bad I still have my finger nail.” Not realising until later that it was the tip of my bone sticking out and not my fingernail. I instantly put a death grip on it and my middle finger thinking I could stem the blood flow that was now spurting all over my hand and making a nice mess on the floor. It was just a tad reminiscent of the scene from Monty Python and the Hoply Grail with the Black Knight and all his limbs getting whacked off and—–sorry, I digress. “Gee, I wonder who’s going to have to clean that up” I thought as I started heading to find my supervisor. As I passed through the press room, a pressman saw me coming, and I just held up my hand and said “Hey, Look what I just did” and kept right on moving. My super was sitting at his desk and I remember saying to him “Road trip, you’re driving, I gotta go the the hospital”. I swear his eyes grew three times their size and he jumps up and we head for the kitchen, which also doubles as our emergency room and breast pumping station. We start looking into the first aid kit which is totally useless. I swear the bandages in the kit were from the leftovers from when they wrapped up King Tut. Not having much success in wrapping up my finger, I just told him to grab a bunch of paper towels and let’s go. On the drive to the hospital all I kept thinking was “I can’t believe after 25 yrs of doing this shit and working around all sorts of dangerous equipment, I lose a finger on that damn POS cutter.” I was also surprised that my finger really didn’t hurt that much. There was just some burning sensation, but I figured that was from all the adrenaline my body was producing. That shit works well. I’ll tell you when it REALLY was hurting.INTERMISSION”Let’s go out to the lobby, Let’s go out to the lobby, Let’s go out to the lobby, And get ourselves some snacks.”At the ER window ( OK I know you know what that one means) escort kırşehir I was thinking I’d get in right away due to the severity of the wound, not to mention all the blood I was dripping everywhere, which I thought was was pretty impressive. Guess again. I sat in the waiting room for close to half an hour before they finally started the process of even looking at me. Next time this happens I’m just gonna pretend to pass out on the floor, and maybe that might get a quicker response. I’m betting not. So I’m finally in a bed and have a couple of nurses working on me, and believe me when I say they look nothing like the ones in those porno movies that I’ve—–sorry, I digress. One nurse tries to start dabbing my finger with a gause pad, it felt like an electrical shock hit my hand. Nope, not the worst pain yet. Another lady shows up with a clip board and a stack of paper work and asks basically “Who’s springing for this?” I give her my insurance card and say “Workmans comp”, the paperwork instantly dissapears. While that was going on, an IV is inserted and the nurse asks me if I’m allergic to morphine. “I don’t know, let’s find out” She tells me I’ll feel a warm rush from top to bottom and I won’t feel a thing. AWESOME. That was one of the neatest sensations I’ve ever felt with d**gs. I thought cocaine was some good—–sorry, I digress. So while I’m waiting for the morphine to really kick in, my supervisor abandons me to go get something to eat. In other words, he went home. My plant manager Kelly (bless her heart) then shows up to keep me company. They were going to try and clean my finger up for the on call doctor to look at it, but again still some pain. “OK, Let’s give him another shot of morphine” BOO-FREAKIN-YAH!!So as I’m waiting for the doctor to look at my finger, the nurses still haven’t stopped the bleeding altogether, but at least there is no pain. I lift my hand up to look at my finger, and I see that I’ve now bled all over my shorts, and my leg. The ER doctor comes in looks at my finger for about three seconds, then says “I’ll be back in three hours, I have an emergency in the other room.” “WHAT, are you serious?” “Yeah, you can stay here and wait, or you can come back, but you have to have some one with you at all times, and don’t fall asleep.” He says. Fucking great, I’ve been up since 5:30am, it is now about 4pm, I’m doped up on morphine and starving, and he wants me back at 7pm for surgery, and oh yeah, I can’t eat anything. The only good thing about this right now is that I’m still on the clock and getting overtime. Finally, the nurse gets a bandage on my finger and manages to stop the bleeding.I decide I wanted to go home, as I only lived about a mile from the hospital. My plant manager Kelly (bless her heart) tells me she’ll hang with me and make sure I don’t fall asleep. So at my house, what do we do to keep from getting bored? (Get your mind out of the gutter people). Kelly (bless her heart) starts to make a few phone calls to friends we both know. The phone calls pretty much went like this. “Yeah it’s me Kelly,—-I’m over at Ken’s place,—–Guess what he did today.—–He cut his finger off at work.—– Yeah really” At which this point I would interject loudly “I did not cut my finger off, I RIPPED it off” Then we would all laugh about it. I went to change my pants, and as I pulled off my shorts, the right leg of my boxer briefs were soaked in blood. Great, now I know what to add to the first aid kit at work when I go kırşehir escort bayan back. Fast forward three hours, and I’m finally ready to get this finger sewn up. The morphine was still working it’s magic, but now the doctor says he’s going to inject marcaine directly into the tip of my finger to deaden the nerves so he can really clean it up and cut off all the shredded flesh, and trim the bone down. So now, here is the most painful part of my experience. When the doctor injected the marcaine directly into my finger, I about came out of the fucking bed. That hurt worse than anything I have ever experienced before. Kelly, (bless her heart) stayed with me the whole time and was helping me keep my mind off my finger by telling jokes. While she was doing that, the doctor was cleaning up and trimming the skin off and literally snipping the bone down to the first knuckle. I could hear him working the clippers, and I could hear the bone fragments hitting the aluminum tray that he was working over. Snip—tink snip—tink, “OK here comes the big one” KER-SNAP!—KLANK. Now, I don’t recall how we got on the subject, but I remember telling the doc to make it look like a little penis. Well ya know he did a pretty damn good job, in fact—–sorry, I digress. I also asked the doc if this thing would grow back. “Oh Yeah—it’ll take awhile, but yeah it’ll grow back” Awesome.A few days later I had to go and get the bandages changed. I’m laying on the table and the nurse carefully takes off the bandages and puts my hand in some kind of solution to get all the crap off. While she was getting new bandages, I held my hand up to get a good look at the new face lift for my finger. “Fuhhhhhhhhck” The nurse heard me and asked if I was ok. “Yeah, just missing a little more than I thought, but I’m ok”. For just a split second I was really bummed out, but then that passed and instantly I thought “Chicks digs scars, they’re going to go nuts for this”.I was out of work for three days. While I was gone they had to call in a haz-mat team to clean up all the blood that was everywhere, and sanitize all my equipment to make sure there was no residual bio-hazards in my bindery. It cost the company about 13 grand to reprint all the forms that were soaked in blood. The really weird part is, they never found the tip of my finger when they were cleaning up. We had a docu-tech (a high speed black and white printer) operator that said when she was in there right after the accident, she saw a small trail of blood leading to the back of the cutter. She swore that it looked like teeny-tiny footprints. Seriously though, she had a steel plate in her head and was always a little nuts. She is now at API (Alaska Psychiatric Institute). They say she pretends to ride a motorcycle while stabbing wildly at the air around her. Another employee was so scared to even be around that cutter, he just flat out quit and was never heard from again.As for me, well I got a nice check from workmans comp, and in fact, I figure if I could just lose a couple more fingers, I’ll have my house paid off in no time. I can no longer flash the peace sign, it just looks more like a check mark. I finally got a newer, and much SAFER cutter, but it still took them another year or so. We still have and occasionally use that old POS cutter. But you know, I still go to work early. In fact most mornings I’m the first one there. It’s kind of nice sitting in my bindery with all the lights off, all the presses are quiet, no noise from my folder. I sit and I look at that POS cutter and sometimes—-just sometimes I swear I see my fingertip walking across that cutter and I can faintly hear it, teasing me, taunting me, saying:”You can’t pick your nose anymore, –You can’t pick your nose anymore”