DECATUR, Ill. (WSVN) – An Illinois man shared his remarkable recovery after he was cut by his own chainsaw.
Jason Eckenrod said the chainsaw came back at him and cut the left side of his throat.
According to the nurses, it cut through the exterior and interior jugular, cutting a muscle and just barely missing a carotid artery.
“Actually, I was kinda angry with myself for what happened. Like, ‘I can’t believe I’m gonna check out this way,'” said Jason, who owns Arborway Tree Care near Decatur, Illinois.
He was up in the boom truck last week when he was cut and proceeded to take his shirt off and tie it around his neck in an effort to stop the bleeding.
As he got down to the ground and the paramedics were called, his friend and business partner Brad took him and pressed a towel on his neck.
“When I go to sleep at night and I wake up, I see that saw coming at me and it gets my heart pumping pretty good again, and then it’s hard to fall asleep again after that,” said Jason.
His wife, Suzanne Eckenrod, expressed how worried she was for Jason.
“Just his whole lifestyle is kind of like tough and rough and can take anything, but this one really threw us for a loop, and it was probably one of the scariest moments of my life,” she said.
Jason’s friend pressed that towel on his neck for over 20 minutes, until surgery was just about to begin.
The victim said there were teams of nurses waiting at the hospital ready to sew him up.
The tree care business is one of the family’s two main sources of income.
With home visits, phone calls and even a GoFundMe page, the community has helped the family.
“You know, there are people that have it a heck of a lot worse than I’ve got it, for sure, but it just blows me away that people are willing to do this for us,” said Jason.
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