It could be time for a career change for a King Country meatworker who has almost severed his left arm twice.
Bryan Speers is recovering in Waikato Hospital after surgeons worked for 13 hours to reattach his left wrist which he partially amputated while using a band saw at Benneydale's Crusader Meats on Monday.
The already difficult task was complicated even more for surgeons as Mr Speers had nearly cut the same arm off in an earlier accident.
The 26-year-old, who has been employed at the meatworks for the past five years, said he working on a flap of meat when the inside of his left wrist just caught the bandsaw blade.
"And then I saw my hand flapping around," he said.
"I just grabbed my hand and walked down to the office swearing my head off...I really thought I was going to die."
He was flown by Westpac air ambulance to Waikato Hospital, where plastic surgery registrar Sami al Ani said Mr Speers had cut through bones, tendons and ligaments in his hand.
"Some of the bones were still attached but the hand was only very loosely attached to his arm when he arrived," he told the New Zealand Herald.
The tendons, ligaments and nerves were stitched together with painstaking microscopic surgery but the procedure was complicated further.
"He had nearly cut off the same arm before about five centimetres up his arm," said fellow surgeon Katerina Anesti.
"The scarring made it difficult to know what was what," she said.
The surgeons said Mr Speers, a keen hunter, rugby player and fisherman, was likely to be in hospital for a few more days.
But full rehabilitation of his hand could take months and his wrist joint will probably require fusion.
