Kurt Kaser, Nebraska farmer cuts his leg off farm machinery

Kurt Kaser has not had time to consider his options.

The 63-year-old farmer had entered a cereal auger, the blade turning violently to haul the corn into a storage bin on his farm in northeastern Nebraska – and in an instant, his left foot was sucked in the machine. He scrambled as the corkscrew blade cut his foot and continued to pull him, leaving him wondering when and if that would stop, he said.

"I remember being told," This is not good. It's bad, "he said in a phone interview with the Washington Post on Monday.

"I fell to the ground and started pulling on my leg to try to pull it out, but it would not come," Kaser added, explaining that he knew he could not stay there and wait for help. "I did not know how long it would take before someone came along. I did not know how long I would stay conscious. "

Kaser was all alone on the property and said that he had searched his pockets to find his cell phone, but it was not there. Looking back, he wondered if he had fallen into the grain.

So, he said, he pulled out his pocketknife and tried to finish the job – cutting his leg in a desperate attempt to break free.

"Then all of a sudden, it let me go," said the farmer.

[How an Idaho couple survived 30 cold and wet hours trapped in an ice cave]

Until then, it was a typical day for Kaser, who was working on his 1,500-acre farm outside of Pender, a small town located less than 160 km from Omaha. It was Good Friday, Friday April 19, early afternoon, and Kaser was carrying grain from one container to another when it got caught in the worm, he said.

A grain auger is a machine containing a spiral steel blade that rotates, pulling the grain through a long tube into a nearby storage bin. The blade is more exposed near the end of the auger, but there is often a metal mesh that covers it, thus preventing other objects from being sucked into the machine.

Kaser said that he had forgotten that during the winter, he had drilled a small hole in this shield to make it run under frozen ground. When he set foot on it, last month, he said, he slipped through the opening and onto the rotating blade.

Yet, during the tests – watching his leg break in the machine and then having to cut what was left of it, feeling slamming and sharp pains when he cuts off his nerves – Kaser says that he does not have any problems. not afraid. "I was just mad at myself because I knew what my mistake was: cut that hole in the screen and get in," he said.

Once Kaser was free, he said, he crawled on his elbows to get to his office at 200 meters and called his son, who is a volunteer for the local fire and rescue service. .

Kaser was rushed to a nearby hospital and then transported by helicopter to the Bryan Trauma Center at Bryan West Campus in Lincoln, where one of his daughters is a trauma nurse, he said.

Stanley Okosun, trauma surgeon and medical director of the Bryan Trauma Center, was on call when Kaser was brought to the hospital. He added that the farmer had a very serious and very dirty wound, as he was dragging on the ground to ask for help. The medical team aggressively treated him with antibiotics and immediately operated on him.

Okosun said that even though Kaser had essentially amputated his leg, the surgeons had performed a proper amputation, halfway between Kaser's knee and ankle on his left leg.

Okosun has been a surgeon for about 15 years and has never seen a case like this.

"He was his own 911, his own pre-hospital, his own surgeon," said the surgeon about Kaser. "He saved his own life," he added, "and he made it very easy for us to heal him."

Okosun called Kaser "a very voluntary guy who did what he had to do to survive."

After a week spent at the hospital and a few weeks in a rehab center, Kaser said he was recovering at home. He added that the doctors had told him that it would take him six to eight months before he could receive a prosthesis. But once that's done, he plans to get back to work. Except this time, he says, he will be more attentive.

Kaser said that he hoped his story would "help anyone in any way"

"Take the time and think – and do not hurry so fast," he says.

He says he is "a little discouraged", but happy to live and to be able to walk again. "I'm lucky it's not worse than it was," he said.

Read more:

Billionaire Robert F. Smith pledges to repay student loans at Morehouse College for the year 2019

This 9-year-old has learned Heimlich's maneuver. The next day, she saw her friend stifle.

A restaurant manager mistakenly paid a $ 5,000 bottle of wine. The owner took on Twitter to forgive him.