FLAGSTAFF - Jim Roy was trimming trees in his yard on a Sunday afternoon when he was hurt.
He was standing on a lift on Dec. 5, and the rope he was using to guide branches down to the ground away from obstacles caught his hand as he was tying a knot, mostly shearing off two fingers on his left hand, and badly hurting a third.
Roy yanked up the rope to free his hand, navigated the lift down, then had a friend take him to Flagstaff Medical Center, where he was in surgery for 4 1/2 hours to reattach the digits.
Plastic and hand surgeon Jack Quigley had to do substantial reworking of the finger veins to reconnect them, causing the fingers to become congested with blood and turn black.
"Essentially, they were just holding on by a tendon, and so part of what you had to do to save them was to get the blood flow going again," Quigley said. So he proposed removing a fingernail and adding an assistant.
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"He goes, 'One of the things we could try is putting a leech on it.' I looked at him and wondered, 'Where are the bat wings and the crow's feet?' " Roy said. But he consented to the plan, and leeches were delivered from Phoenix and put on Roy's fingers on Dec. 6 to drain the blood. They were attached with help from a breast-feeding instructor.
"Literally, within 20 minutes of using that first leech, it started turning pink," Quigley said.
It's unknown right now how many of his fingers will ultimately survive.
Used in medieval medicine to bleed sick patients, leeches were approved by the Food and Drug Administration as "medical devices" in 2004.
They offer an anti-coagulant that keeps the blood flowing for 45 minutes after each one is done eating.
Quigley has been using leeches for the last 18 or 19 years, along with his colleagues. He typically uses them for one or two patients each year.
Roy said he sees his problems as relatively minor.
He receives about 30 visitors a day between hospital staff, friends, and nursing students who want to see the leeches work. "It's weird," he said. "You're eating and there's a leech on your hand. You're going to the bathroom and there's a leech on your hand."
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