So last night I was got to work at around 6:30pm. I was working all night for our biannual inventory, where we have to count everything we got. It is a huge job and it takes a good 10 - 12 hours with 4 or 5 people, and it sucks. Anyway, I see Heidi, who is my inventory clerk, and she asks me if I heard what happened to Don (the store manager at Seaside, and my old boss) the day before. I said, no and she tells me that the Monday he was home on his day off working in his shop as he often does, and that somehow he cut off his fingers. He apparently cut off his index, middle and ring finger of his left hand on a saw. Now keep in mind that he is home alone, and that he lives about 15 or so minutes out of seaside, pretty much in the middle of nowhere. So somehow he is able to bandage himself up, collect his fingers and put them on ice, and drive himself to the hospital in Seaside. He gets to the hospital and they call his wife at work and tell her that her husband is there and that there has been an accident, why do they always make everything so horrible when they call? So she rushes down to the hospital where they tell them that he needs to go to Emanuel Hospital in Portland, where the on call surgeon is one of the best hand surgeons on the west coast. So they bandage him up and his wife drives him in her car up to portland. By this time it is evening, and it is getting cold. They are traveling on highway 26 going about 60 mph and they hit a patch of black ice. The car spins then flips, and they end up in a ditch on the side of the highway, completely totalling the car. A good sumaritan sees the accident and stops to help them out of the wreckage. They were bruised and battered from the accident but not badly hurt. When the person sees his hand, says we gotta get you to a hospital, and drives them up to the hospital in portland. Not only does the person drive them all the way to portland, they stay with his wife until after the surgery is done at like 2 or 3 in the morning, and then take her down to find a rental car. This just blows me away that a complete stranger would go out of their way to help someone like that. It really restores my faith in people. I guess not all peple are human waste anyway.

So he is home now, but will have to go back up on Friday to meet with the surgeon, and will have another surgery in 2 weeks. They were not able to save his index finger or his ring finger, but they were able to reattatch his middle finger, (cause how could you go thru life without the bird?) but had to put it in the ring fingers place.

So I am in total shock. One because I really respect this guy and think a lot of him, and two I have never known anywone to cut off an appendage before. I feel so bad for them, I called his wife and told her if they need anything day or night to call me, but I just wish there was something more I could do for him, he has done so much for me in the last couple of years, I can't even tell you. That and he is one of the nicest people I think I have ever known. Life is very unfair at times.