echidna

Today a colleague from another company cautioned me while I was hacksawing some sheetmetal. He held up the stump where his wedding finger used to be.

Just prior to Easter he�d been playing soccer & after the match he�d jumped to hit the top bar of the goal. His wedding ring snagged a nail and � peeled his finger like a banana skin. An hour and a half of micro-surgery couldn�t save it & so now he�s adjusting to life with 9 fingers. And still experiencing the phantoms too, he says it�s like his whole arm is now unbalanced.

Ouch !!! Suffice to say I�m telling this story to my Better Half who periodically pesters me about a wedding ring �

Monkeybot

YAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Yeah, that story involved a wince or two

KoopaFanatic

Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeit!!!!!

Right now I'm so glad I don't wear jewelry.

And y'know, that's gotta be an embarrassing story down the line... My grandfather lost two or three fingers to a metal stamper, and was almost proud of that fact to the day he died. "Line of duty" and all that. But this? It'd be hard to be proud of a freak soccer-celebrating injury!

(Note: I'm not actually being callous. I swear, humor is how I deal with anything uncomfortable or unsettling, and this definitely qualifies!)

echidna

Back in the glorious days before industrial litigation, an old boss of mine used to joke that no decent tradesman still had 10 fingers. The first time I used a bench grinder I buzzed off a fingernail but was too embarrassed to tell anyone. Yeeow.

mongrel

When I was in the navy(and obviously this would still be the case), we weren't allowed to wear rings except wedding rings, for this very reason. There were times when even they weren't allowed to be worn.

On an unrelated incident- I still bear the scar from a cold-cutter's kiss of my right thumb. I'm glad it wasn't worse, but it gave me a good look at the bone, and took a looong time to heal properly.

Bill Snedden

I have a female acquaintance who did roughly the same thing.

In her case, at the time of the incident she worked in the luggge department at a Best store (remember those?). She was standing on the bottom shelf of a rack reaching to the back of the top shelf to retrieve a piece of luggage for a customer and when she grabbed it, she just hopped off the bottom shelf on which she had been standing.

Unfortunately, as she jumped, her wedding ring got caught in the corner between the shelf and the left upright support. Surgery was also unable to reattach the "skin" to the bone and she lost her finger as well.

She said that one of her Doctors told her that this is more common than people might think. He showed her his own wedding ring which had a tiny cut through the metal. He said that cut would prevent such injuries as it would cause the ring to break before permanent damage to the finger could occur. She and her husband both have those little cuts in their rings now.

I've thought about doing the same thing myself, but I don't know if it would really be effective and it does seem like a rather improbable, "freak" type of accident...

Regards,

Bill Snedden

dunadan

Anyone up for a class action defective wedding ring lawsuit?

If they can sue McDonalds for fat and gun makers for shootings, I figure this is a shoe-in!

Oxidizing Material

I wear 5 fingers. I guess I'm lucky I'm too lazy to play sports or use machinery

scarmig

I think these ring accidents are more common than you'd expect. Almost everyone I know has had some kind of close-call or accident wearing rings while doing some kind of work or physical activity. My Father in law was working on a car wearing his wedding ring and some electrical component arced to his ring and melted it right on his finger. Another co-working was jumping down off a flatbed truck, caught his ring on the edge of the bed and sliced his finger off at the knuckle.

Jewelry and physical activity just don't mix. A friend of mine got his necklace caught in a chainsaw...good thing the clasp snapped quick enough !

When working with electricity, don't wear metal.
When doing physical activity, don't wear jewelry.

If you *must* wear a ring while doing these things, get one tattooed around your damn finger!

mongrel

One thing I forgot to mention- my grandmother once had her finger swell up badly(I think it may have been an insect sting, but I'm not sure- too long ago), causing her wedding ring to cut the circulation to the rest of the finger. She had to go to the hospital ER to have the ring cut off. And I think if it had been left too long, it could have become serious.

Just goes to show, the ring itself doesn't need to cause the injury, but it can make it worse. I think having the cuts in rings that Bill mentioned is a good idea.