Chainsaw Blade Inside Neck Removal Surgery

a chainsaw that is embedded in the neck of tree trimmer James Valentine. Everyone's really to some degree holding their breath as we go to take the chainsaw out. Everybody ready? Okay, here we go. Waiting for the absolute worst, which is this massive rush of blood, and there's no blood. Everybody goes. All right, throw this in the trash, please. I passed the saw off to one of the nurses in the operating room with direct instructions to throw it away. It has blood and dirt and tissue in it and there's no really good way to clean it.

And so it needs to go away quickly so no one wants to save it as a trophy. We could tell exactly how far away we were from the Karate Artory, which was really a very small distance. About much smaller than a dime. The Karate is intact. Okay. A couple of millimeters in the other direction and James may not have survived this at all. Let's go ahead and give them some antibiotics, two grams of cephasalin. I'm going to go ahead and get scrubbed. I'll be back in a minute, okay?

The wound has some tree in it and some dirt and some other things, and so we clean that up pretty vigorously and we go through the wound together. The trachea is intact. All the major structures are intact. That is immediately great relief, but we're in no way out of the woods. It looks like he's got extensive damage to the muscle. Stenoclidomastoid, the traps. We'll have to see how he does. He's got a lot of damage to the muscle. From the time we put him to sleep to the time we finished was a little under an hour.

And then I followed him very closely. I want to do a thorough exam to look at his arm and how badly it's damaged and how quickly he recovers function. Morning, James. Morning. How are you today? Pretty sore, I guess. I remember everything from the time I started to rev the saw up to cut it to two I got to the hospital and they took me into surgery. It was a big deal yesterday. We almost lost you. Sitting up in bed and he's awake and he's talking and he's got this big bandage on the side of his neck and he looks awesome.

I mean, yes, I was scared. Just trying to keep myself together and not freak out or anything. It could have been a lot worse if I did. Alright, lift your arm up. That's a huge success right off the bat. He's able to move his arms. That's as far as I can go. Actually, that's pretty impressive. It's better than I thought. I've got a fair amount of enthusiasm in my voice because I'm so excited that he's done really well. And James is very bad at a fact and goes, yeah, it's a good thing I'm alive.

Hopefully you'll be able to go back to work in the next few weeks. We'll have to see how you do with physical therapy, okay? Thank you. You're welcome, James. I'll see you tomorrow, okay? You need anything? You let me know. Okay? Yes, dog. Can I have my saw back? No, you cannot have your saw back.

Thanks to the doctors and the paramedics and the police and my coworkers for sure.