Chainsaw Sharpening

Warning… this story has some drastic repercussions and lessons to be learned for those of you who wish to do some “once off” amateur branch trimmings with a chainsaw…

Several years ago now… I attended this patient who had spent the morning sharpening his chainsaw so that he could somehow “hack” at a branch that was obviously, just slightly, out of reach up the top of a tree. He’d tried a few months earlier, but was unable to reach it, and eventually decided to sharpen the chainsaw so that it was almost brand new and that way, he only “just” need to touch the branch to cut it off.

Needless to say… it didn’t happen the way that he had planned and it ended in him slipping, and amazingly enough, having the newly sharpened chainsaw falling after him, and landing half imbedded in his shoulder. When we arrived…

The man was still conscious (barely) and had the chainsaw imbedded deep inside his shoulder… I looked at my partner as if to say “surely he isn’t still alive!” He was, and he was working very hard to breath. We knew that if there was ever a time to “load and go” in the world of Ambulance, this was it! My partner got the stretcher, and we lifted him straight on the stretcher with the chainsaw insitu. There wasn’t a lot of bleeding, considering the massive amount of trauma and damage to his shoulder, chest and torso. I could hear any air movement in his left lung (the side the chainsaw was now lodged within), but he was still moving air in his right, so I was happy. A major trauma hospital was very close, and there really wasn’t time to do much more than insert a large cannula enroute and drive as fast (but safe) as we possible could. This person needed urgent surgery. By the time we arrived at the hospital, he was unconscious, but he still had a pulse, and his right lung was still moving air.  The hospital had been notified, and an emergency surgical team gathered together. We were advised by the ED (emergency department) upon arrival to bypass the resuscitation beds and keep going straight to surgery. We walked into surgery with our patient on the stretcher and rapidly assisted to get the patient across onto the surgery bed. 

By this stage, the patient was looking morabund (near death) and the surgical doctors worked quickly. The patient was intubated, chest drains were inserted, fresh frozen plasma and packed cells (blood) were given continuously. Within twenty 20 minutes of arrival at the hospital, and only 35 minutes since we had first received the call that a person had fallen with his chainsaw and sustained bad injuries, the patient went into cardiac arrest – that was all that his body was capable of compensating for. An arrest drill was run for approximately ten minutes before the patient was finally pronounced deceased.

It was one of the most dramatic trauma scenes I’ve ever attended as a paramedic (in which the patient was still alive when we got to hospital)…. the hospital theatre was quiet, and solemn as is often usual after such a serious accident goes so well, only to have the patient eventually die anyway… and then, all of a sudden… on of the surgions started to laugh…. and then another one… all of a sudden, I felt as though I was the only person in the room who was missing something that was blaringly obvious to everyone else…

“What?” I ask…

And then one of the surgeons started to point out all the little nicks, cuts, scrapes… on the man… evidence that this poor man had been trying for some time to cut this branch with his chainsaw, even though it was just too far out of reach from him. It even became clear, that he had cut himself with the chainsaw as recently as that morning (on two occasions) only to doggedly continue in a vain attempt to “jump” high enough to just nick the branch…

The moral of this sad story applies to many things, but especially when working with sharp chainswas – NEVER KEEP GOING WHEN YOU KEEP INJURING YOURSELF! Take a step back, have a look at what you’re doing, re-evaluate, and make sure that you’re going to survive this! Few people get a second chance with chainsaws – so make sure you take it and learn from it if you’re given one!

Australian Paramedic