Sawmill Horror I'm Healing For My Boy

The new dad’s starting fatherhood minus a hand

- Hayley Mclarin

Jonathan Andersen is an expert in dark humour. With jolly banter and an engaging smile, waving his maimed right arm in the air, he asks, “Do you know where I can find a second-hand shop?”

The 33-year-old Coromandel father is determined to be positive when he could easily be forgiven for being anything but. Late last year, Jonathan’s luck was changing. He had overcome brain injuries from a freak fall and learnt to walk again. And after three major spinal operations, the timber machinist was finally cleared to resume work at a Thames sawmill.

And just as Jonathan and his partner Wendy Grace were contemplating IVF, they found out they were having a baby. Life was good for the first time in a long while and they enjoyed a Christmas they’d never forget.

Then only an hour into his December 29 shift, his 15th day back at the sawmill, Jonathan had an accident and his right hand was severed close to his wrist. The incident is still under investigation by WorkSafe.

“The first thing I thought was, ‘That doesn’t grow back,’” he recalls. Work mates with big hands became a human tourniquet as they waited for the ambulance.

“I worried about telling Wendy because the stress would not be good for the baby,” Jonathan tells Woman’s Day in an exclusive interview. “There were a lot of tears. I remember saying, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ over and over.”