LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- When a West Virginia man sliced off his thumb last summer, he was rushed to UofL Health in Louisville for emergency surgery, but surgeons weren't sure they could reattach it -- so they chose another option. 

Rob Easter said he was cutting up some scrap vinyl siding in June 2023 when it happened: he sliced off his thumb with a miter saw.

"A long piece just caught and pulled the vinyl -- and my thumb -- right through the saw," Easter recalled. "The thumb landed just off to the left, so I grabbed it, went in and told my wife 'I cut my thumb off!'"

It was traumatic at the time, but Easter is able to joke about it now. 

"That saw and I were friends for 30 years before it decided to eat my thumb," Easter said. 

Easter said he remembered how important it was to "keep the digit, get it on ice. So I just grabbed it, ran in the house, got it on a bag of ice."

After a trip to a hospital in West Virginia and a four-hour ambulance ride to Louisville, Easter's thumb was in the good hands of Dr. Rodrigo Moreno at UofL Health's Kleinert Kutz Hand Care Center.

Several hours and a surgery later, Easter was toe-to-toe with a decision to live without a thumb. Easter and Dr. Moreno then thumbed through some of his options.

Moreno, an orthopedic surgeon at UofL Health, said Easter did everything right in trying to save his thumb but it "was mangled and not reimplantable." 

Dr. Moreno had a solution: amputate a toe and connect it to the hand. It's a procedure he has now performed a dozen times. 

"It's a procedure that really changes the life of a patient who has lost their thumb," Moreno said. 

An eight-hour surgery in November got the job done -- and the little piggy went to the hand. At first Easter couldn't tell which toe they used. 

"I was expecting big toe, no toe, three other toes. When I first looked at it, and they were all pulled together, I'm like 'which toe did they take?"

When asked how he would rate the surgery, Easter stopped short of giving two thumbs up, but did say it was "a complete success."

After an injury and multiple surgeries that would make your toes curl, Easter is now recovering. The swelling has receded. And motion and strength are returning... along with a sense of humor.

"I guess I'm very jovial because I cracked the first joke about no thumb on the way to the hospital," Easter said. 

Now Easter is toeing the line every day at physical therapy, and full recovery could take up to a year. He's still amazed that it worked. 

"I'd have never dreamed that they could've taken a toe and done this," Easter said. 

Dr. Moreno called Easter "an excellent patient, and from the beginning he was very good at adapting to his injury."

In any case, Easter said he is "very grateful" to Moreno for the successful surgery and for his "ability to do what he did."

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