26 March,2012 02:10 PM IST | | ANI
A British man, who accidentally cut off his left arm while chopping wood in his garden, calmly picked it up and ran hundreds of miles to get help
Former fireman Stuart Frain raced from his isolated home with blood gushing from a severed artery.
The 50-year-old ran down a road and crossed a canal before stopping a cyclist and two men walking dogs.
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They helped him use a stick and one of the pet's leads to make a tourniquet to stem the flow of blood.
At that point Stuart was about 90 seconds from death, medics told him later, before surgeons managed to reattach the limb after seven hours of surgery.
"If we hadn't made the tourniquet I'd have been a goner," the Sun quoted him as saying on Wednesday.
The dad of four was at home alone using a radial arm saw to chop wood iwhen the blade sliced through his forearm.
"In a flash it spat the wood through and took my arm with it. I remember fragments of bone hitting me in the face," he recalled.
Frain, who had first aid training in the fire service, instinctively realised the need for a tourniquet was more urgent than ringing for an ambulance.
"I clearly had an arterial bleed -- blood was pumping out over a great distance. It was like something from a horror movie. My hand was just attached by a flap of skin," he said.
"I grabbed my upper arm and clamped it with my other hand to try to stem the bleeding. I decided to run to the nearest houses about 300 yards away," he explained.
An ambulance took shocked Stuart of Smithy Bridge near Rochdale, Lancashire, to hospital.
Doctors at Wythenshawe Hospital were surprised he had been able to remain so composed.
Frain 's wife Pippa, 48, who was out at the time of the accident said, "he was used to keeping a cool head."
Frain has now regained some movement in his fingers.
"Doctors have said it will never be 100 per cent better but it will gradually improve," he said.
"It was a complicated operation. He's a very lucky man," Vivien Lees, Consultant plastic surgeon added.
