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Surgeon Dr Annie Fullarton and patient Judy Walters, from Hawke's Bay, whose four fingers were 'degloved' - Source: Fairfax
Entangled in a rope with a spooked horse at the other end of it, Judy Walters' fingers didn't stand a chance.
So badly were they injured in the freak accident on her Hawke's Bay property that the Hutt Hospital surgeon who treated her feared she could not save them.
However, in a 17-hour operation that lasted through the night, all four fingers were successfully reattached to where they'd been torn away from her right hand.
Walters said she could not believe what plastic surgeon Annie Fullarton and her team had managed to do.
"She was just amazing. She's my hero now.
"She put so much into it that someone had to drive her home afterwards."
Walters, 46, was leading a young horse on to a float at Smedley Station, near Hastings, last week when he took fright.
As he reared, he yanked her backwards, smashing her into the side of the float and entangling her hand in the halter rope.
As the horse kept pulling back, the force ripped the skin and flesh from the bones of Walters' fingers - a gruesome injury called "degloving" that left her fingers dangling from thin tendons.
"I looked down at my hand in disbelief. I put the other hand on to this hand and didn't look at it again."
Her husband Terry was around the other side of the float and heard her scream.
"It was such a mess," he said. "We didn't even know what we were looking at, it was so bad."
He wrapped his wife's mangled hand in a shirt and bundled her into the car, taking her to Hastings Hospital. Staff immediately set about arranging a rescue helicopter to take her to Hutt Hospital's plastic surgery unit, where she went into theatre at 10pm and did not re-emerge until 3pm the next day.
Dr Fullarton said the replantation surgery was extremely complex.
"This is the longest operation I've done. It was four fingers, and it wasn't a simple four fingers."
Case studies had shown success rates as low as 30% for repairing a single degloved finger, she said.
"We knew when we went in that the chances of success were slim. Her fingers were hanging on by the flexor tendons and nothing else. They were pretty messy."
To keep the fingers alive, Fullarton had to re-attach all the veins and arteries so blood supply could be restored, using vein grafts taken from Walters' forearm and sutures thinner than a human hair.
Walters said she had no idea what she would wake up to after surgery.
"I wasn't sure whether I was going to have a hand."
Instead, she found her hand intact and is now regaining movement, wiggling her fingertips for the first time yesterday.
Fullarton said there were months of therapy to go.
"She's got a long, long journey ahead even though the fingers are looking great. We need to get them moving so she's got a useful hand."
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