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07-25-2009, 12:25 PM
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 My Rank: LANCE CORPORAL Poster Rank:1846 Female Join Date: May 2009 Posts: 279 279Posts 113Thanked 4Quoted 0Mentioned 0Contrib. |
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Mark Pauline
He had his hand blown off in an accident, and had his toes sawn off and put on so he could continue to use his hands!  From an interview with him: R/S: How did you blow apart your right hand? Mark Pauline: I was preparing a rocket motor for a show. I had a pretty good instruction manual, and was finishing one of the processing stages which involved mixing the propellant, casting it, and then removing the mandrill which is a cylinder of metal that you put down the center of the propellant—you have to take that out after it cures. I'd tested the propellant by hitting it with a sledge hammer—it didn't seem too sensitive. To get this rod out of the center, I thought I'd tap it with a hammer. I went outside, made a little wooden dowel to fit on top of it, and started tapping on the dowel with a hammer. Then it got stuck, and I said, Oh fuck, and then I hit it a little harder, and it moved some. Then I hit it again, and it just blew up, and it really blew up—blew me back about 2 or 3 feet away. I looked up and I was laying on the ground and blood just went in a sheet of red over my eyes. And then I shook it out of my eyes and looked at my hand, 'cause my hand felt funny, and all I could see was just the bones on my hand; there was no skin on any of the bones. Then they took me to the hospital and put me out and that was it. None of the shrapnel hit me, so all I lost was a few fingers. More than anything I had lost time—all that time spent in the hospital, having to learn to work again with one hand. I had to think about what kind of state I was in that allowed that to happen. I don't really consider it an accident, it was just a stupid mistake. Why do you do things that are really dumb? You just get in a funny mood and these things start to happen.... In terms of microsurgery, it turns out that some of the best surgeons are in San Francisco General Hospital just two blocks from my house. Over a period of 7 or 8 months they're in the process of assembling what they can of my hand, to give me the basic functions: to pinch, to grasp. Those type of operations are basically experimental. They've done a real good job. It's still hard to climb fences; it's hard to carry five-gallon buckets, you know. But it didn't take as long as I thought it would to be able to do things again. Like, I drove my motorcycle over here.  ·  ·  · |
