Helped by a Clean Cut

Convict Robert Pennell, 26, was trimming tree limbs with a North Carolina prison road gang last month when he stumbled over a small hole. Falling forward, he stuck out his left hand to catch himself, just as a fellow prisoner swung a sharp ax. The swipe accidentally chopped off Pennell's hand at the wrist. One prisoner fashioned a tourniquet from a shoestring and a stick to keep him from bleeding to death, while another gingerly picked up the severed hand and wrapped it in a handkerchief. Pennell was rushed to North Carolina Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem. Packed in ice, the hand rode the ambulance with him.

A surgical team led by Surgeon Jesse Meredith was waiting for Pennell when he arrived, 90 minutes after the accident. They scrubbed clean both the stump and the hand, set the severed bones (ulna and radius) with pins, and sutured the arteries back together. Then they unclamped the arteries of the arm and let blood pour out through the hand veins for four minutes to make sure the vessels were clean. That done, they clamped off the artery flow and rejoined the veins. Then, starting from the center, they worked to the outside reconnecting nerves and tendons. Finally, they sewed up the skin and put on a cast to keep the bones immobile. In all, the operation took eight hours, and Pennell's hand was saved.

In many respects, the operation was similar to the arm-saving surgery performed on 12-year-old Little Leaguer Everett Knowles Jr.* at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital (TIME, June 8, 1962). The major difference was that Everett's arm had been torn off by a train. Pennell's hand had been neatly severed--a great aid for the North Carolina surgeons. For that bit of luck, Pennell had himself to thank; just before the accident he had sharpened the ax that cut him.

This week, with a month's recuperation behind him, he will go back to prison to complete his sentence of three to five years for breaking and entering. Pennell will soon become eligible for parole, and hopes eventually to start life anew as a two-fisted worker in a furniture factory. Though he may never regain full feeling in his left hand, Dr. Meredith expects it will eventually recover 70% of its function.

* Whose arm is still on the mend. He can now bend his elbow and make a fist, but faces another tendon operation to give him fuller control of his hand.

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