Shawn Clement, who severed his arm below the elbow in a sawmill, never thought he would regain any feeling in his left hand.
"I can feel hot and I can feel cold," Clement, 31, says over the phone from Campbell River, 20 months after surgeons reattached his arm in an 11-hour operation at the Royal Jubilee Hospital.
Initially, there were no guarantees that his arm could even be saved.
"I've got my mitt," he says. "I can feel it. I can squeeze it."
What he can't do is use it for much. Nobody expects that to change greatly.
"This is the hand I've been dealt. I'm going to grit my teeth and make the best of it," says the single father of three teens.
Still, he has taken up rock wall climbing at a gym with the help of buddies, ropes and an increasingly stronger right arm. Yet he'll never play baseball again.
Clement has also returned to school, something else he never thought would happen.
He quit school at 15 when premature fatherhood meant taking a forestry job. Clement had done almost every forestry job by February 2008 when he was working in a Gold River shake and shingle mill. He never felt safe in that role, worried there was too little escape room if one of the blades came off. His concern was justified when a flying 1.2-metre saw blade caught up to him as he tried to flee. It pinned him face-down to the floor.
"My face hurt. I went to grab my face. My hand was gone," he said in an interview last year.
The medical repercussions are many. The pain continues. There have been two surgeries this year to help restore some mobility and another likely by year's end.
He does physiotherapy four times a week to help further break down the scar tissue impeding mobility. He appreciates what his therapists do even if he finds it tough.
"They push me harder than I want to be pushed. They do it with a smile on their faces. I'm not smiling," he adds.
He works on his arm and hand from wake-up to bedtime.
"I don't stop pulling, prodding and bending," he says.
He has seen a neurologist for his post-accident migraines and a counsellor has helped stem the frequency of panic attacks -- echoes from his accident.
What happened in the shake mill has forced Clement to rethink his future.
"I'm not going to be a labourer ever again," he says.
Physically it's an impossibility, but it's more than that for Clement.
"I'm really scared. I don't want to step in a mill ever again," he says.
He recognizes that a high school diploma is his ticket to any job relying on brain rather than brawn. One possibility is taking an occupational health and safety officer course; he thinks if he can prevent one accident such as his own it would be all worthwhile.
Through Campbell River's continuing education program, he has enrolled in Math 10 and a preparatory course for English 12. He works at it every day, dropping off assignments and picking up new ones at the centre just blocks from home
"I want to get through it as quickly as possible," he says.
He finds the math course tough, but a tutor has been secured. Also, his daughter has helped him.
"I didn't get it. She did," he says.
His two oldest live with him.
"My kids have been absolutely outstanding. They help care for me and help around the house."
All three children are at school, where he expects them to stay.
"They'll never not go to school. It's not a choice for them. They're going to graduate," Clement says.
His life would have been vastly different if he had graduated, he believes.
"I wouldn't have ended up in the mill," he says.
