Trauma

I had a rather traumatic experience at work yesterday. I was going to post about it last night, but the memory was still too fresh. I just wasn't ready.

For those of you who don't know, I work in a facility that manufactures evaporator coils for home air conditioning units. Normally, I am a brazer. I use an acetylene torch and a Teflon/tin alloy brazing rod to assemble copper components. Since the beginning of the housing slump, many of us have been moved to different positions within the plant, and are thankful that we still have jobs. Here lately, I've been running a straight tube cut-off machine. It does exactly what it sounds like it does. It cuts off straight pieces of copper tubing, which are then sent to a different machine and so on down the line. At the time of the incident, I was running copper tubing that was 7/8" in diameter with a wall thickness of .045". The cut edges of this copper can be very sharp. I've cut my hands on them before. Nothing serious, but enough to make me cautious.

Yesterday, Johnny had called maintenance out to look at the cutter because something in the machine was scratching the copper. Ricky was the one who came out and was working on the machine.

He'd been fiddling with stuff for several moments when the cutter stopped feeding the copper. I walked back to where the feed cylinder had hung up on a bit of dented copper. I was watching it, wondering if it would feed on through the machine, or if I would have to pull the copper out and cut the bad spot off. It finally began to feed forward, and as I watched the cylinder move I saw out of the corner of my eye Ricky putting his hands inside the cutter between the final clamp and the exit tube. I didn't even have time to react. About the time I yelled, "hey!" in warning, Ricky yelled in pain--only "hey" is not what he said. He reached with his right hand and hit the emergency stop button, while his left hand remained trapped inside the machine. He then reached in with his right hand and began pushing the copper tubing back so that he could free his left hand. I thought for a moment that I could pull the copper out from the back of the machine, but I was afraid that if I pulled too hard, or twisted the copper in any way, I could do more harm than good. Truth is, I was afraid that if his finger was hanging by just a bit of skin, I could yank it all the way off if I'd yanked too hard on the copper. So, I just let Ricky take care of it.

He was almost done when he pulled his right hand away and wiped his fingers off, then reached back into the machine. It scared me. I was sure he was reaching in to pick up his finger from the bottom of the machine. But no, he was just clearing the copper. His finger was still attached to his hand, thank goodness.

When Ricky was finally able to free his left hand from the cutter, I could see that his left index finger was badly cut. Really badly. It makes my own finger all squiggly just thinking about it. He went to the first aid room, and they sent him on to the hospital, where it was determined that Ricky had severed the tendons in his finger. He would need surgery to reconstruct them.

The E.R. doctor has forwarded Ricky's case file to the Medical Disbursement Services Agency already. He's made a pretty good case for Ricky, stating that without corrective surgery he'll have permanent loss of use in that finger. They ought to authorize the surgery. You would think they would, but you know how government agencies are. They may decide that it's just one finger, on his non-dominant hand. He doesn't really need it. I don't know. Maybe they'll give approval for him to have the reconstruction. I hope so. Of course, he's also got to pass his background checks and medical history screenings first, to determine if he's got any pre-existing conditions, genetic pre-dispositions, family histories, or other risk factors that would disqualify him from receiving medical treatment.

Then comes the biggie: The financial appropriations committee. Even if the passes the medical screenings and background checks, this department could still decide not to appropriate funds for his surgery. They may decide that someone else would be a better choice to allocate those funds to. We can only hope and pray that they approve funding for Ricky's surgery. All we can do now is wait. It usually takes 90 days for medical service requests to pass through the agency, but if they have a backlog of cases, it could take longer. It's a good thing Ricky had the foresight to take out Long Term Disability insurance, because they told him he couldn't go back to work until they'd reviewed his case. They don't want him to take a chance on damaging his finger further. Of course, if he is approved for surgery, he won't be able to come back to work until he's had the operation. He's lucky that he got hurt when he did. I checked last night and the waiting list for Non-Critical Orthopedic Reconstructive Procedures is only 12-14 months long right now. That's great that he will be able to have his surgery done so soon. With any luck, Ricky could be back to work in a year and a half, two years tops.

Don't you just love having universal health care coverage?


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Yeah, right! He had the surgery this morning, and will be back to work next week.

Don't you just love AMERICA!!!



*The events in this story are based on an actual experience. Ricky did cut his finger yesterday at work. He did have reconstructive surgery today, and will be back to work (barring complications) next week, or at the latest, the week after. I was amazed at how quickly Ricky's surgery had gotten scheduled. While pondering the efficiency of it all, I began wondering how differently things would have turned out had he been injured with America under a system of socialized medicine. Thus, this story was born from my musings. From the various things I've heard and read about socialized medicine, my vision may be closer to the truth than you might think.