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Student Who Nearly Lost Hand Playing Flute Again

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Sep 24, 2008 6:24 am US/Mountain

Student Who Nearly Lost Hand Playing Flute Again

Reporting
Jodi Brooks
PARKER, Colo. (CBS4) ― The young man who almost lost his hand in a tug-of-war contest at Lutheran High School a year ago is playing the flute again and getting ready to head for college after months of medical treatment and rehabilitation.

Henry Barrett was pulling the rope with his hand in a loop when his hand was caught and severed.

"They said 'go,'" Barrett said. "I blacked out for a whole millisecond, that seemed like an eternity. During that time, I heard a crack. I came back, looked down saw my hand, blood."

His fingers were fractured.

"The muscles on the hand that are in between the bones here, were so badly damaged that they were not repairable," said Dr. Lewis Oster of Hand Surgery Associates.

Oster operated for nearly 10 hours using plates and pins, reattaching blood vessels, nerves and veins.

"You can see barely here where the actual injury occurred and the back side where the scaring occurred and this is where I had to go down to reattach some veins," he said.

Barrett does have some limitations now, like flattening his fingers or trying to cross them.

He worked with his therapist every day after the surgeries.

In the back of his mind that time was his ride in the ambulance after the accident and his question to the paramedic.

"First thing I asked him was 'am I going to play the flute again?'" Barrett said. "He said 'I don't know.' So he wheels me up and he calls in the accident as we're driving away, and he says 'we have a partial amputation.'"

Barrett said his stomach dropped, but his dream never died.

He doesn't have all the sensation back in his hand, but can feel some of the heat from a hot stove.

He can't tell the difference between a quarter and a nickel in his pocket.

Oster said Barrett has come a long way.

(© MMIX CBS Television Stations, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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