An Australian tradie has issued a warning about the dangers of wearing a wedding ring while on the job.
Dean Outlaw had just finished work for the day and was throwing all his stuff into the back of his ute. Just as the bloke was tying a wheel barrow onto the ladder rack, his foot slipped and he fell off the back of the vehicle.
While that already sounds painful, his wedding ring got caught on the ute as he was falling and it caused one hell of an injury.
Dean has told LADbible: "I watched my finger fly up and over the wheel barrow and land in the back of the ute. The pain only lasted for a couple of minutes, then I was just left with a throbbing feeling."
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The ring had completed shredded his finger clean off and he was able to see all the tendons and bone.
He added: "My finger was still able to move it just had no skin on it."
That is a terrifying thought.
Dean called his wife, who was thankfully only five minutes away, to come and help him and the first task was finding where the hell his finger had gone.
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After finding the digit, they whacked it into a zip lock bag and raced to hospital. Sadly the team in the emergency department weren't equipped to fix a severed finger so they had to drive an hour and a half to Royal North Shore Hospital to be treated.
Dean tells us: "I was taken in straight away and the specialist hand doctors got straight onto the job and I was in surgery in no time. I then had 10 days in the critical burns unit where they checked my reattached finger every hour, checking blood flow as that would be the critical part to keeping my finger."
The staff at Royal North Shore did everything under the sun to try and get the finger back to its working self, including attaching a bunch of leeches to get the blood moving.
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Ten days later, he went in for more surgery and was warned that he might lose part of the finger. But he said they didn't even unwrap his finger to check if there was a chance of the digit surviving when he was being admitted for his procedure.
"They just said it all has to go and when I woke up it was gone," he said.
While that reality was devastating, Dean has nothing but nice words to say about all the people involved in his care and absolutely praised them for being so accomodating and doing everything they could to save his finger.
During this whole ordeal, Dean's wife very happily drove an hour and a half each way every single day to make sure he was alright. So not only did she find the finger, but she also looked after him when he was stuck at the hospital.
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Dean wants people to realise that this can easily happen to anyone else if they're not careful.
He said: "If you need to wear a ring get a rubber or silicon one, better yet don't wear one at all."
Featured Image Credit: Dean Outlaw/Facebook