Thursday, February 21, 2008

Modification corporelle : comment je me suis coupé la main

One hand Jason

Let me be blunt — I staged an accident. Nobody’s doubting it, and my friends and family, so many folks, came together for me back then, raised a lotta money, prayed, and said such sweet, loving things. There’s no way I want enough details to get out there that they could connect up me with my ‘accident’, with the person you’re interviewing, who’s voluntary.

I don’t want to be hugely specific, but I used a very sharp power tool, after having tried out different methods of crushing and cutting. I know first aid so I was able to stop the bleeding with pressure, but I was worried that I could pass out and not call for help and lose too much blood. No worries, though, I guess I’m in good enough shape that I didn’t even feel dizzy.

My goal was to get the job done with no hope of reconstruction or re-attachment, and I wanted some method that I could actually bring myself to do. I did experiments with animal legs I got from a butcher. It’s lucky I thought of that, because some of my early attempts were total fuck ups and would have ended up with a damaged hand which might have had to undergo years of painful reconstruction, and worse yet, no amputation.

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One real weird sensation was to run my fingertip from the top to the bottom of my stump, across the scar. It felt like I was running my fingertip right through my arm!

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Yeah, it’s a biggie. For sure it’s not rational to want to cut off your arm or leg. There’s no argument you can make that life will be easier, or that you’ll be more capable doing anything. Even though a hook can do some things that a bare hand can’t, a hand holding a tool can always do everything a hook can, and so much more. Even though you can run in prosthetic legs that give you a mechanical advantage, you can’t compete with those.

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