Boy, 13, Drives To Town With Severed Arm -- Doctors Help Reattach Section Chopped Off By Farm Equipment

After 13-year-old Michael Adams watched his right arm get cut off in a slow-rolling piece of farm-irrigation equipment, the eighth-grader from the tiny Oregon town of Crane did the unimaginable. He picked up his arm, walked at least 100 yards, climbed on a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle (ATV) and drove himself toward town several miles away.

With no one around to help, he steered the vehicle with his left hand, even though the accelerator was on the right-hand grip. When he crashed and rolled the vehicle, he got up and carried his arm to where he knew another ATV was stashed.

The boy drove on, finally abandoning the second ATV near town. He then walked the last quarter-mile to a friend's home for help.

There, covered with dust and cradling his arm, he simply asked for a glass of water.

"Nothing in the world would have prepared us to think he would have been able to do anything like that," said Chuck Steeves, the boy's teacher and an emergency medical responder who rushed to the Crane home early July 17 to help with first aid. "To have the composure!"

Steeves said that while Michael was waiting for the ambulance to arrive, the boy did his best to comfort his distraught parents, Nancy and Richard Adams.

"He kept telling his mom and dad how sorry he was," Steeves said. "He kept saying, `Don't cry, Mom. Dad, you stop crying.' "

The boy is recovering from two surgeries to reattach his arm at Doernbecher Children's Hospital in Portland.

Emergency workers say it was the boy's amazing strength and presence of mind, combined with the efforts of local medical volunteers, that saved the boy's life and preserved his severed arm.

At least three local residents trained as "first responders" - part of a program to get quick emergency medical care to residents in remote areas - hurried to the house. They kept Michael warm, gave him oxygen and prepared the arm for transit. They wrapped it in towels and plastic, surrounded it with ice and placed it in a cooler.

"I can't say enough of how well they did in getting him ready," said Dan Carpentier, a volunteer emergency medical technician from Burns, Ore., 30 miles away, who responded that Saturday morning. "We were able to get him into the ambulance quickly, got an IV in, and got him en route."

Doctors at a hospital in Burns cleaned his wound - the arm was severed midway between shoulder and elbow - and sent him to Portland by plane.

Michael has helped on his family's alfalfa farm outside Crane, working especially hard since his older six siblings have gone on to college and marriage.

The eighth-grader's inner strength impressed his rescuers.

"Would you have done that in the eighth grade?" Carpentier asked. "They grow them tough out there."