A post about firemen coming to a rampaging fire alarm at an agents house triggered a reminder of what to me last fall.
One Sunday afternoon, I was planning on driving over to Spartanburg to take my two grandsons to a movie & Pizza. It was going to be a about 30-45 minutes time until I needed to leave, so I decided to shred some of the docs in my "shred box" I keep on top of the shredder. When it gets full, I shred.
Just shredding away, getting a lot done, emptied the container once and started again. Then, some paper stuck on the right side of the shredder and I "just poked it" with my ring finger. Next thing I knew, my ring finder and the paper were stuck solid and I could not get my finger out. I grabbed the plug out of the wall, lifted the top of the shredder off that was attached to my finger and went into the living room to sit down with it in my lap. I pulled as hard as I could stand to but the finger was in there solid and was beginning to hurt. I was hyperventilating almost it scared me so bad. I'm right-handed and it was the ring finger on my right hand that was stuck. Otherwise, I might have been a little more inventive in getting it out. Finally, not knowing what else to do, I called 911 as the Fire Department is only about 1/2 mile from where I live. I was still scared as I did not know if my finger was cut or not. I even thought of getting into my car and driving to the Fire Department, but didn't.
Had I taken a little more time to reason I should have known if it were cut, there would have been blood even with all the pressure. I did convince them not to come screaming into my neighborhood with the sirens on. Still, when that big fire truck pulled into my cul de sac, several neighbors came to see if I was ok, one who is a Resident Internist. By that time, they had two prying type tools on each side of my finger and applied pressure to open it. Wa-la, the finger was free. Hurting, as it had been mashed flat for awhile, but not cut or shredded. My fingers are not really small either, so I am lucky they were not or it could have reached the blades. An ambulance came, and a policeman just to make sure everything was ok (out of curosity probably).
Lesson learned, never do that again. Use another piece of paper to poke it into the blades if it sticks, or reverse it and start again. I was so emarrassed, but as one of the guys told me, "this will make a great story we can tell each other in our down time". I just asked him not to use my name.
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