Dick Olson injured
Posted: Mon Sep 27, 2010 7:49 am
Hey folks,
I know Dick has been in contact with tdt.com as well where he's known as "DOLSO"...last week Dick had a serious accident in his shop
Friday AM I was cutting the french cleats for the "final Four" on the table saw.... the blade had to be raised about 3 inches in order to cut through the bases... the wood "bound up" & 'kicked back' (basically instead of cutting smoothly, the blade got turned cock-eyed & the saw threw the chunk of wood back at me) which drew my left forearm into the blade
I didn't immediately know that it had gone into the saw blade, I thought the wood had just hit my arm until I looked at it.......pretty much hambuger over 2/3 of my arm. Luckily, there was another guy working at his shop fairly close by & he called 911 while holding a tourniquet on my upper arm. The emerg room dr determined that the local doc's couldn't help enough so they found a specialist in Denver willing to take me, put me & my wife on a "flight for life". I cut the arm about 9:30 and by noon I was in the ER in Denver. Went into 4 1/2 hour surgery about 2:30 & got into a room about 9:00 that eve.
Turns out I shattered the ulna (smaller of the 2 long bones in the forearm), shredded the artery, muscles, ligaments and nerves. I guess there's 3 arteries in the arm & I got 2 of them in the saw...if I would have gotten the 3rd they would have just amputated it. The dr took a portion of the vein from my leg & used it to patch the one in my arm,,,screwed a piece if metal to the ends of the arm bone to hold it solid while healing,,,& did what he could (I'm not sure what that was) for the nerves & ligaments
The way it stands now, I can slightly move my thumb & 1st finger, have some feeling in the middle & ring finger & can't tell if my little finger is on my hand or not (it is, just can't tell it by feeling) Dr says it'll be 3 months before we know if the bone will regrow or not & the use of the fingers is also a wait & see situation.
Please keep Dick in your thoughts and prayers!
Clearly projects will be on hold ofr a while. To those few that still have cases waiting, if you received an e-mail a week or so ago that your case would ship out, it will be shipping out this week. For the last 4 cases left, Dick has brought a helper in that will be wrapping up the cases but it's going to be a couple of weeks at least. I will be e-mailing those people directly with updates.
I know Dick has been in contact with tdt.com as well where he's known as "DOLSO"...last week Dick had a serious accident in his shop
Friday AM I was cutting the french cleats for the "final Four" on the table saw.... the blade had to be raised about 3 inches in order to cut through the bases... the wood "bound up" & 'kicked back' (basically instead of cutting smoothly, the blade got turned cock-eyed & the saw threw the chunk of wood back at me) which drew my left forearm into the blade
I didn't immediately know that it had gone into the saw blade, I thought the wood had just hit my arm until I looked at it.......pretty much hambuger over 2/3 of my arm. Luckily, there was another guy working at his shop fairly close by & he called 911 while holding a tourniquet on my upper arm. The emerg room dr determined that the local doc's couldn't help enough so they found a specialist in Denver willing to take me, put me & my wife on a "flight for life". I cut the arm about 9:30 and by noon I was in the ER in Denver. Went into 4 1/2 hour surgery about 2:30 & got into a room about 9:00 that eve.
Turns out I shattered the ulna (smaller of the 2 long bones in the forearm), shredded the artery, muscles, ligaments and nerves. I guess there's 3 arteries in the arm & I got 2 of them in the saw...if I would have gotten the 3rd they would have just amputated it. The dr took a portion of the vein from my leg & used it to patch the one in my arm,,,screwed a piece if metal to the ends of the arm bone to hold it solid while healing,,,& did what he could (I'm not sure what that was) for the nerves & ligaments
The way it stands now, I can slightly move my thumb & 1st finger, have some feeling in the middle & ring finger & can't tell if my little finger is on my hand or not (it is, just can't tell it by feeling) Dr says it'll be 3 months before we know if the bone will regrow or not & the use of the fingers is also a wait & see situation.
Please keep Dick in your thoughts and prayers!
Clearly projects will be on hold ofr a while. To those few that still have cases waiting, if you received an e-mail a week or so ago that your case would ship out, it will be shipping out this week. For the last 4 cases left, Dick has brought a helper in that will be wrapping up the cases but it's going to be a couple of weeks at least. I will be e-mailing those people directly with updates.