JAMES DOOHAN: Gave His Finger to Hitler
June 7, 1944: A young Canadian officer fearlessly leads a company of men to storm Normandy beach under a hail of gunfire. After overrunning German positions, and personally dispatching two Nazi snipers, the man future generations would know as, "Scotty", the USS Enterprise's trusty Engineer, is ambushed. Before he can beam himself out of trouble, his body is riddled by machine gun bullets.
Luckily, for countless rabid Trekkies around the world, the faux-Scotsman was down, but not out. His only serious injury was to the middle finger to his right hand. Deciding it canna take it anymore, they amputated what was left of the digit, leaving Scotty one tube short a full bagpipe.
According to his autobiography, Beam Me Up, Scotty!, Doohan used to take special measures to hide his deficient digit, but sharp-eyed fans have caught a few glimpses. Although he is no longer self-conscious about his missing swearfinger, he has had more than one chance to regret it's loss. Especially when you get the privilege to work with an ego the size of Bill Shatner's. |
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Most people think that with today's modern medicine, short of a catastrophic trip to the wood shredder, it's hard to lose your middle digit.
They're wrong.
AMPUTATION What if you woke up one morning and your finger was gone? Disappeared off the palm of your hand. What would you do? Like many Americans, you'd probably scream, "Ouch!", pick the digit up off the floor and run to the hospital.
Amputation is one of the more common dangers facing your middle fingers. Car doors, axes, firecrackers, cotton gins, and five-ton boulders can all pulverize your significant signifier into a fleshy pulp. It happens.
Rushing to the scene or a recent injury, emergency personnel usually collect the fallen finger as surgical reattachment may be a possibility. Appropriate care needs to be directed immediately to the injured digit. Above all, the finger needs to stay moist. Contact lens fluid or even a frothy soft drink can be used in the absence of water to keep the finger from drying out. Remember to avoid using a tourniquet on the stump. This can cause severe nerve damage to the stuff still attached to you and make any reattachment nigh impossible.
Once reconnected with microsurgery, a finger can be rebuilt- however, it may take a long time to heal properly. The sensory and motor nerves, once repaired, will not immediately carry the body's electrical signals to the finger. You'll need grow new nerve fibers to allow the finger to feel sensation. This nerve regeneration is very slow, and it may take months, or years, to once again raise your furious digit toward an adversary.
The same surgical techniques for the "sewing on" of an amputated finger have also permitted doctors to transplant tissue from one part of the body area to your hand. Hand surgeons can now take a large flap of tissue from your groin area and transplant it directly onto an injured hand that has little remaining, intact tissue left. So science is saying, in effect, if you ran your hand through a paper shredder, you might reconstruct your finger from your ball sac. The question them becomes, do you really need your finger that badly? |