Life without a limb
Man, it was fast.
So fast Jonathan Andersen simply thought the strange hum came from the wood jam he was fixing on the planer.
Then he saw the blood.
‘‘My hand wasn’t there. I thought, oh bugger, that doesn’t grow back.’’
It was December 29 last year and Andersen was a week into his job as a machinist at Thames Timber.
The 33-year-old Thames local had just become fully certified and was looking forward to forging a career in the same industry his father had worked in for 50 years.
At 6.30am, as he fed timber into the industrial wood planer churning out 100 metres of dressed timber a minute, he hit a snag.
‘‘I was fixing a jam up. I had a shard of timber in the machine, so I used a push stick to put it into the safe zone.’’
Andersen went to grab the shard from the safe zone when the shard hit the side head, catching his hand and sending it into the ‘‘bottom head’’ – an eight-knife, 48-kilogram piece of round steel running at 65,000rpm.
The juggernaut severed his right hand below the knuckles.
‘‘It happened so fast, all I thought was, wow, the machine made a different tune. Then I went, oh, f...’’
Quick-thinking colleagues dashed to his aid, wrapped his hand and created a tourniquet.
‘‘If they hadn’t have done that, I would have lost three to four times the amount of blood that I did.
‘‘It was crazy, I didn’t even faint. I was arguing with staff because I didn’t want to sit down – If I sat down, I thought I would die.’’
And then there was ‘‘this crazy pain’’, curbed only by painkillers that sent him into ‘‘la la land’’.
He focused his thoughts on his partner, then six months pregnant with the couple’s first child.
Paramedics took Andersen to Thames Hospital, where he was picked up by the Auckland and Coromandel Westpac rescue helicopter and flown conscious but in a critical condition to Waikato Hospital.
This was the second time the Westpac rescue helicopter saved Andersen’s life. The first was when he was 14 and involved in a hit-andrun accident that left him seriously injured.
‘‘The paramedics . . . they are amazing. I owe them my life. My son has a dad because of them, and everyone that helped me get to where I needed to be.’’
Andersen underwent a 12-hour surgery. He awoke to find his right arm stitched into his lower stomach to regrow the skin.
‘‘I was just, like, what the f .... Pure fear.’’
After four weeks in hospital, Andersen spent the summer at home before a second surgery to unstitch his hand from his groin.
Learning to live one-handed has been tough. Everyday tasks are the biggest struggle, he says, like cooking a barbecue, getting dressed and cutting up his dinner.
He battles to change his son’s nappy or pick him up out of the cot.
‘‘Thirty-three years I was righthanded. This has affected my whole life.’’
There’ve been sleepless nights and chronic phantom pain. And fear. Emptying the lawnmower catcher makes him tremble.
He tried to resume fishing by strapping a rod to his arm, but afterwards he was a wreck.
‘‘This is my pain, and I’ll own my pain. I just want the best for my family.
‘‘I’m still the same person, but my life has changed.’’
Andersen now sees a psychologist and has had to give up work. The family moved to Auckland to live with his partner’s parents.
‘‘I can’t even use a skill saw at the moment. Working with power tools is my life – now I can’t even walk into my own garage.
‘‘Financially, it’s been hard. The dream of owning a picket fence is further and further away.’’
He hopes to soon move his family to Tauranga to begin a role as an honorary fisheries officer.
‘‘This year we were supposed to be married and working hard to move into a home and the last 11 months have been hell. If I didn’t have the support from those around me . . .
‘‘It’s taken a lot of psychological help, learning so much about yourself.’’
But amid the dark times, Andersen now has hope in the form of a bionic hand that will give him 40 per cent use of his right hand.
The $175,000 prosthetic is being custom built in Scotland and will be fitted to Andersen in the next two weeks.
‘‘I’ll be able to cut up a meal in a restaurant without having to ask the chef or family members. It’s going to make life easier.’’
‘‘It happened so fast, all I thought was, wow, the machine made a different tune. Then I went, oh, f...’’