She told me to keep my finger elevated above my heart (to reduce swelling), and asked me to refrain from washing it for 48 hours. Seven of them.Īfter she finished stitching the cut, she applied an antibacterial ointment, a gauze pad, and then wrapped my finger firmly in gauze and taped the end. Because the cut was deep and along the joint, I required stitches. It had not stopped bleeding, and she explained that had I not come in tonight, I would have realized that I needed to come in the next morning, as I would still have been bleeding. Thankfully, I did not sever the tendon and did not need surgery. She had me move my finger in a few different directions and bend it. And then he left the room and I waited some more.įinally the physician came in and removed my finger from the bath. He carefully unwrapped my bandages, studied the cut, and placed my finger in a bowl of disinfectant. I was shown to a room, had my vitals taken, confirmed that I had a recent tetanus shot, and someone came to examine my wound. Did she not realize I might only have six hours?! After taking my insurance information and credit card, she told me to wait. We arrived a few minutes before closing, and the receptionist did not seem to have the sense of "urgency" one would expect from an "Urgent" Care facility. It was closing in 15 minutes (this happened on a Saturday night) and wasn't open on Sunday, and I wasn't going to lose the six hour window, in case I had cut through a nerve or tendon and needed surgery. That was enough for me: I asked my husband to drive me to Urgent Care. In one of the articles I found, it said that if you cut through a tendon or certain nerves and have to have surgery, and it should be done within six hours of the cut. I researched deep finger cuts on the internet and started to self-diagnose myself (I do not recommend this: go to a professional).
It first felt tingly, like when your arm or foot falls asleep and sensation begins to return. He wrapped and taped my finger as tightly as he could, and I thought that was it.īut soon after, I started to lose sensation in my finger. He placed a paper towel over it and told me to hold it firmly he then ran upstairs for gauze, bandages, and tape. But in this chain there’s a break in people that can make those changes and people that are affected, so it’s not done.He isn't bothered by blood and examined the cut. Societally if there was an opportunity to spend $5 to save $10, we’d want to do that. Because of that, there’s not that much incentive to improve the safety of these tools. There’s a disconnect - these costs are borne by individuals, the medical system, workers comp - and not paid by the power tools company. This is a product that does almost 10x in damage as the market size. The market for table saws is about $200-400M. The CPSC says table saws result in about $4B in damage annually. Almost a societal economic structure question. The fundamental question came down to economics. The whole interview is worth a read - like this bit about why big tool companies were not interested in licensing this feature: because they aren’t liable for the injuries caused by their products: Thankfully it worked!Īnd because what the saw is detecting is “the capacitance of the human body”, you have to be holding the hot dog in order for the demo to work. So before the first trade show I had to test it with my actual finger. You can imagine, we could do this demo at trade shows with a hot dog, but there’s always a smart-ass that says they don’t care about hot dogs, and wanted to see it with a finger. There was a point where we had to know a hotdog was a good surrogate for a finger. Once we started spinning the blade, I wasn’t too eager to do that test with my finger, so we just thought ‘what do we have that’s sort of finger like with similar electrical properties’ - hot dogs are similar, and I had one in the fridge, so I grabbed one and ran it into the blade.
What was the first thing? It was probably a stationary blade with me just touching it with my finger. Where did this demo idea come from? From the interview: The minuscule amount of damage to the hot dog is mind-blowing.
Before we get to that, you’ve probably seen the company’s hot dog demo but if you haven’t, check out these super slow-motion clips of the SawStop blades stopping in a matter of milliseconds after making contact:
CUT FINGERS SKIN
Steve Gass, the inventor of the SawStop, the table saw that automatically stops cutting when it detects human skin (therefore saving fingers and hands from being cut off). In a recent issue of the MachinePix newsletter, Kane Hsieh interviewed Dr.
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