A Pennsylvania man was hospitalized in serious condition Wednesday after the left leg he amputated below the knee with a pocket knife following a logging accident was reattached.
Donald Wyman, 37, of Bethlehem, Clarion County, was cutting trees Tuesday in a rural area about 90 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, when a large tree rolled on top of his left leg, trapping him.While bleeding profusely and shouting in vain for about an hour, Wyman said he feared he would die if he did not free himself.
Using a pocket knife, he cut through the broken bones and skin and cut off his leg below the knee. Wyman then crawled to his bulldozer 500 feet away, drove it about 2,000 feet to where his pickup truck was parked, then drove about 2 miles to the Sprankle's Mills home of farmer John Huber Jr.
Huber contacted emergency officials and drove Wyman about 3 miles to meet ambulance personnel in nearly Coolspring.
Firefighters had to cut through the tree to retrieve Wyman's leg, and it was reattached by surgeons during an operation at Punxsu-tawney Hospital.
Huber said Wyman feared he would die unless he kept talking. He talked about the accident and about his 17-year-old son.
"He was sensible enough to know if he would pass out, he was in danger," Huber said.
"When I was going down the road, I started going pretty fast. He said maybe we better slow down a little bit," Huber said. "For what the man went through, I never saw a man so sharp."