Yeah, YY, I trimmed the side of my finger off pretty neatly with a utility knife a few years ago. Fortunately, on my left hand index finger, it is noticeable thinner than the right, and I can play them jazz chords now! Fortunately it was a brand new blade, nice and clean. (I am not, though, planning to make the rest of my chording fingers match.) Talk about a lot of blood. I drove myself 10 mi to the health centre. Took the knife along, it still had the former side of my finger stuck to it. I showed it to the nurse and she just sort of guffawed and said "We're not putting that back on!"   Instead we finger-wrestled for over an hour before the bleeding stopped.

Falls from ground level decks can be hazardous too Bob...A few years back I was working on a job that wasn't particularly well-sequenced. We had framed the deck but hadn't boarded it, but were already installing the soffit above it, which of course entailed standing on loose boards, or better yet, on a stepping-stool set on loose boards. Inevitably a board tipped and I found my leg suddenly through the joists, at a very peculiar angle (think it was wrapped around the step-stool) and my ankle hurt like hell.

I sat down to compose myself. "Walk it off", one of my co-workers advised helpfully. Hah. Major sprain and minor fracture, three weeks of crutches.

While I was recuperating, I went to a jam in my neighbour's back pasture where they have a campout every year. Driving my minivan on the bush road, I found a teenager lying on the ground, with a puzzled friend standing beside him. This sounds stupid, but the poor kid had been running barefoot and stubbed his toe, and the intense pain had put him into a near-unconscious state of shock. I got out, crutches and all, loaded him into the back of the van, (those big sliding doors are great for emergencies) and delivered him to the campsite for first aid. One of my least likely times to be able to play ambulance driver/attendant...

I have worked on a lot of roofs and high places without roofs, never fallen except out of a sleeping loft in my cabin. (A very disorienting experience.) I sort of helped someone else to fall off a garage roof we were sheeting--I had stacked three sheets of plywood on the rafters, preparing to nail them down, and he foolishly walked on them--the top sheet slid off the roof and he rode it down like a magic carpet with no harm done.

W-O