When you think of an edged-weapon threat, you probably think of a knife in the hand of an attacker. But what about your own knife as a danger to you?
Consider the cautionary tale of a firearms instructor in Indiana.
While using his clip-on folding knife to open a UPS package in his office, he pricked his left index finger—“barely enough to even draw blood,” he told Police1. “I wiped it off on my pants and thought no more about it.”
Five days later, he found the finger painfully swollen and felt a small knot in his armpit. These symptoms worsened across the next couple of days. A doctor put him on antibiotics and prescribed a regimen of daily soaking.
About a week later, his injury “exploded,” with severe swelling of his elbow and troublesome knots on his forearm. A new doctor diagnosed a staph infection and began an infusion of “aggressive antibiotics” via IV.
“A few weeks of this seemed to get the infection stopped, but my finger would not bend,” the trainer says. “I was told that the infection settled in the sheath of my finger’s flexor tendon. Now it was surgery to remove the damaged tissue—or amputation.”
Post-op, he spent about six weeks in a finger cast to keep the finger from curling up, then additional time in a device to stretch the digit backward in an effort to improve flexibility. “It took months of rehab before I could press a trigger with my support hand, and even now, more months later, the finger still doesn’t work normally, isn’t as strong as it once was, and will never be the same again. All this from a ‘tiny, insignificant’ cut.”
A fellow LEO and tactical medic familiar with the incident comments, “We all use our knives for cutting just about anything, including drug exhibits. If you ever get poked, you may introduce these things into your system.
“So grab some alcohol wipes and clean your knife blade regularly. If you ever do cut yourself, clean out the wound right away with alcohol and then use an antibiotic cream on it.”
The injured instructor adds: “It’s true that a little prick can cause great life problems. Now I’m paranoid about any cut and almost drink hand sanitizer. Thank goodness I thoroughly documented that the cut occurred on duty, as it turned out to be very costly.”
During his surgery, he shot the attached photo on his cell phone to serve as a graphic warning to other officers.
[Thanks to Chief Jeff Chudwin, president of the Illinois Tactical Officers Assn., for first alerting us to this incident and to DEA special agents Dan Schmidt and Chuck Soltys for helping facilitate this report.]
