My truck bit back.

[palallin]

As my sig line says, my truck is in the body shop--well, actually, it's in pieces in the shop. I've got another cab for it, and I've been stripping stuff out of the old one.

Tuesday evening, I was working on removing the clutch pedal-I had pulled the through-the-firewall rod and was trying to pull the clamped lever off the end of the clutch pedal shaft, when I pushed on the pedal, and the spring took over. The lever caught my right ring finger against the mounting bracket and acted just like a shear: I lost most of the end of the finger.

When I pulled it out from under the dash, I had to place the end of the finger back in place; I also had to pluck off the nail, as it was in the way. The guy I was woeking with got me a clean, paper, blue shop towel, and I wrapped the pieces (except for the nail and part of the nail bed) tightly in the towel, and he drove me 15 miles to the ER, where I spent most of the night being reassembled.

Not only was the finger "degloved," the bone was snipped right in two. According to the bone doc (who looked things over this AM), if I avoid getting an infection for the next week, I will probably get to keep the finger. In any case, the nail's future is uncertain, though the best chance is that it will grow in wrongly and will have to be removed.

I spent all day Wednesday in bed (and puking, as I don't tolerate the pain meds well), and it has taken me a l-o-n-g time to type this out with my left hand (I'm a right-handed English prof with 160 or so papers to grade this coming week--*sigh*).

Anyway, learn from my mistake: when playing with the clutch pedal, DETATCH THE SPRING FIRST!!!!!

Note to truck: Bad truck! No new bed floor for YOU this year (I have to pay the doctors!). . . .