KEY POINTS:
A man who almost severed his hand at the wrist with a factory band saw yesterday says he thought he was going to die from blood loss.
Bryan Speers, a 26-year-old father of two from Mangakino in the King Country, said he was sawing through a cut of meat at the Benneydale meat processing plant where he worked when the accident happened.
"I was working away going halfway through a flap and my wrist just caught the blade and then I saw my hand flapping around," he said in a statement from Waikato Hospital today.
"I just grabbed my hand and walked down to the office swearing my head off."
A couple of other staff taped the hand up and told him to manage his breathing.
"I really thought I was going to die when I saw all the blood," Mr Speers said.
He was taken by ambulance to Te Kuiti Hospital and then by Westpac Waikato air ambulance to Waikato Hospital, where surgeons spent 13 hours reattaching the hand.
Mr Speers said he was grateful to those who had operated on him and assisted.
He was resting today and needed time to see how the hand would respond to the operation, a hospital spokeswoman said.
- NZPA
