Give Charles A Hand

#charleshandy

Recently, my brother almost lost his hand in a construction accident. Frankly, I’ve been checking on him occasionally to make sure he’s keeping all his fingers, but hadn’t thought about the cost at all. Why? Because I have health insurance.

But he doesn’t, and just the cost of the surgery is $14,000.

A few weeks ago, our daddy called me in the middle of my work day, which is sometimes cause for alarm, and definitely was this time. It was noon, and Mother and Charles had rushed to the hospital because “Charles cut off his fingers on the table saw.” It turned out it wasn’t quite as bad as that, but he did roughly carve through four fingers on his left hand, including his thumb. Three were cut through the bone, with the index finger bone grazed but not cut through.

Surgery saved his fingers, though he’s facing a year of rehab before they start to work correctly again. Six weeks after the accident, he has finally been allowed to unwrap the bandages outside the presence of a doctor and start to try to move. At this point, he can move his thumb and first finger about a millimeter.

So, why doesn’t he have health insurance, and what was he doing with a table saw anyway? My brother used to live in Minnesota, with his wife Sandie, and near their grown children and grandchildren. He worked as an engineer tech designing parts for a manufacturing company. During the pandemic, he decided to move to Texas to be near our parents and rest of our family and Sandie’s. He worked remote at first, but the plan had always been to stop work for a while and use his savings to live and build a house before going back to work.

He shares property with Sandie’s dad and is about five minutes from our parents, which is 45 minutes closer than me. Since moving back to Texas, he’s taken over the errands and doctor visits, all while building the house from the ground up. You’d think he was using the table saw on his own house, but in this case, he was cutting something for Mother and Daddy. I’m sure a lot of you know that a table saw can kick back in some way I really don’t understand. All I know is that even if you’re being safe, it can cause damage and that’s what happened here.

Charles hasn’t been working so doesn’t have health insurance, and has depleted his savings. He carefully budgeted for the move, building the house and living until he could get back to work. Of course, material costs have gone through the roof so he’s run through his savings and has been picking up work and trying to finish construction. Now this happens.

We’ve set a goal of $30K – this is the minimum needed to pay the surgeon and get started on rehab. The actual cost could be as much as $50K over the next year and it’s doubtful he’ll be able to go back to work before 2024.

I talked to him this weekend, and now I know that I can’t just worry about how his hand is working, or not really working yet. Now, I know that we also need to worry about finding a way to pay for all this, which led me to GoFundMe and a request from all of you. Please help with whatever you can – even $5 will help because it all adds up.

Thank you for helping my brother get his hand back,

Brenda Massey

P.S. I avoided looking at the pictures all this time. Avert your eyes if you don't want to see this, but as Charles said: if it will give anyone else caution while working with a saw, it's worth it to show the picture. This is one of the ones AFTER the surgeons did their work.