Darwin says, "Accepted into the Archive as a Near Miss."

I was the lucky orthopaedics resident on call the night of July 4th a few years ago. Around 6am the next morning, I got a call to come see a fellow in the trauma unit for a partial amputation of some fingers due to an explosion. I figured this was the typical firecracker injury and headed over. I found a gentleman covered in thousands of black spots of embedded gunpowder in his face, chest and arms. His left middle finger was essentially gone and the space between his right thumb an index fingersplit wide. He was intubated and had a chest tube inserted, far more than would be expected for a firecracker injury.

I asked the man's wife what had happened and she very plainly told me that he had built a small homemade cannon for July 4th. They had both been drinking heavily through the night and when they saw they had unused gunpowder in the morning the gentleman figured he'd finish it off. He packed the cannon with gunpowder using a cutoff broom stick. While doing this he was also smoking a cigarette which lo and behold ignited the gunpowder. The cutoff broomstick was fired into his chest, ripping through his hands as exploding powder flied out of the cannon.

We took him to the operating room to clean up his wounds and complete the left middle finger amputation. While assisting in the surgery I recognized the horrific severity of his injuries. As we removed the remainder of his middle finger I looked at my attending and told him of my grave concern for this man's future. He looked at me puzzled. I asked him, "Well, how's this man going to be able to drive without his left middle finger?"

Submitted on 05/09/2009

Submitted by: Erika Mitchell
Reference:

Copyright © 2009 DarwinAwards.com

Candi said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
Explosions are common, but this guy went that extra mile! Thanks, Erika!

Bruce said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
That's a great final question you asked there, Erika. Thanks for the submission!