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Hayes Raffle
Surgeries Avert Amputating Sculptor's Hand
Hayes Raffle recognizes that the luck of the draw played an important role in his recovery from a July 17, 2001, machine shop accident that left two fingers of one hand shattered and the tips attached only by slender ribbons of tendon and skin.
The ambulance crew that responded to the scene called two hospitals that were closer to the machine shop, but the emergency rooms were already full, so Raffle was taken to UCSF Medical Center.
The doctor who treated Raffle in the emergency room had recently finished a two-week training period in UCSF's hand surgery center under Dr. Edward Diao of UCSF so he knew what to do to stabilize Raffle's hand. He then called Diao for additional help. As soon as they heard about the accident, Raffle's fiancee and then his parents rushed to the hospital. Raffle's father, a doctor, knew of Diao's reputation for excellence and advocated to have Diao perform the surgery.
"I've been told that a lot of doctors would have amputated because my fingers were in such bad shape," explained Raffle. "But Diao is very talented, especially in the area of nerve repair and he has a lot of faith in the body's ability to heal. He put the remaining pieces of my fingers back where he thought they should go and said, 'Let's see what grows.'"
The potential loss of two fingers would be tragic for anyone, but was particularly upsetting for Raffle. Prior to the accident he created sculptures with manufacturing materials such as wood, plastic, metal and plaster, an art form that took full use of both hands.
During the repair, the surgeon noted that two end joints of his fingers were destroyed, with severe nerve, skin and extensor tendon injuries. The injury patterns on his fingers, with parallel deep lacerations, were a grim reflection of the blades of the table router that had done the damage.
In the two months following the initial surgery, the bones in Raffle's fingers grew back together quite well, to the delight of both Diao and Raffle. "I've had a miraculous recovery in that way," Raffle acknowledges. He credits the surgeon's skill and patience in assembling what "looked like a jigsaw puzzle that might never grow back together."
Raffle underwent a second surgery by Diao in December 2001 to repair nerves in the middle finger and to free a tendon in the index finger that was trapped by scar tissue. A third surgery in March 2002 fused two bones in the tip of the middle finger. It will take a few more months before Raffle knows how successful the nerve repair surgery has been, but he is encouraged by the improved motion of his index finger.
Although he hasn't been able to sculpt with just one functioning hand, Raffle is confident that he will have enough use of the damaged fingers to resume sculpting after his hand recovers from the third surgery. He has been accepted to graduate school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and plans to move to Boston in fall 2002 to begin MIT's master's program in media arts and sciences.
Story written in 2002.
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