On the morning of Dec. 23, sophomore Danny Sherman deeply cut the tip of his thumb while chopping firewood, damaging the nerves.

After spending the night with his friends, Sherman went to go cut some wood for the fire but ended up cutting his thumb open. He said, “When I first did it, it took me a second to realize that I just cut the tip of my thumb.”

The cut resulted in an open fracture, where you can see the bone from the surface. Sherman said, “It’s technically an open fracture, but because the fracture was so small they categorized it as a laceration.”

His first reaction was to head to the kitchen, where his friends were, and wrap his thumb in paper towels. When Sherman told his friends, he said, “They were like, ‘What happened’, and I was like, ‘Dude I think I just cut my thumb off’, and they were laughing at first, but I was serious.”

As soon as he knew he had done any damage, he told his great-grandmother, who then decided to call 911, sending him to the E.R.. Sherman said, “The only thing they gave me was a tetanus shot, an x-ray to see how many bone pieces there were, some gauze, and a splint.”

Currently, the laceration is projected to heal in the next three to four weeks (picture below). However, Sherman said, “[The nurse] said that the nerve damage in it might never heal, but she said relatively one millimeter every month.”

The injury has been affecting his daily life, whether it be through work, eating, or games. He said, “It was real bad in the beginning because I couldn’t play because I had a splint on me that went about halfway down my forearm, so I literally couldn’t move it at all. Now I can kinda move it because I don’t have a splint on it anymore.”

Between not being able to wear a mask, and being bugged for insurance information, he says his hospital experience wasn’t the best. “It was two days before Christmas and nobody was in the hospital,” he said.

Overall, Sherman claimed that the cut barely hurt. “Because I damaged all the nerves in my thumb, at least that’s what they believe, I couldn’t really feel it. And the top of your finger already doesn’t have that much feeling as is, because the nail is supposed to be there,” he said.

Since the accident, Sherman has had check-ups every two weeks to track his healing progress, and his next appointment is scheduled for early February.