Heating my house these past 25 years with wood, I am thoroughly familiar with the safe use of a chainsaw. But accidents do happen. I've been harvesting my own trees to heat my home and studio since my forced resignation from teaching 5 years ago for not belonging to the "right" party or going to the "right" church. While working in the woods yesterday, I had my first what could have been really serious accident with my chainsaw. Damn thing jumped out of the tree and into my thigh! Fun walking through the woods with blood running down the inside of my leg. Just shit lucky I have a little fat for protection, and I didn't cut my leg off. Would have been coyote bait for sure. Sometimes this being older, and poor is no fun at all.
Once up at the house I peeled off my pants and examined the damage. I knew I could probably use a few stitches, but with no insurance, and no money, and the nearest free clinic about 2 hours north of here near the university in Orono (like they need free services!), getting stitches was out of the question. Years ago I tried going to the ER at our local hospital for services, and it turned out to be an exercise in humiliation and frustration as they made me sit naked for hours behind a screen where I could watch the staff sit with their feet up, sipping drinks, eating a sandwich, chatting together and otherwise ignoring me. Hours later when someone came in, he didn't even look at me, just wrote out a prescription for antibiotics and left without a word. He treated me as if I had just crawled out from under a bridge somewhere.
Knowing that, and this being the age of "Compassionate Conservatism", I knew going to the hospital was a waste of time. In fact, me having no money, they might even have let me bleed to death, so I just scrubbed out the wound and bandaged it. Today the bleeding has stopped for the most part, and it doesn't hurt. I lost one of the few pairs of sweatpants that I have that fit, but I'm ok. I can walk ok, and still need to get some wood in so I don't freeze to death this coming winter. I'd hire someone or just buy it cut, split, and delivered, like I use to do before my "social rehabilitation intervention", but in my resultant acceptable conformation, that's not possible.
Not that anyone cares, of course, just outcome report.
Acadia Cliffs
