Chelsey Brown went to a public park in Tennessee last month to cheer on her three-year-old son during a Little League Tee Ball practice, not knowing that she would soon be rushed to the hospital, with blood gushing from her severed ring finger.
The freak accident that cost the 23-year-old married mother-of-one her digit took place on September 6 in St Bethlehem Civitan Park in Clarksville.
On that day, Brown was sitting in the stands at Field 6, watching her son Carson playing Tee Ball. At one point, she jumped to her feet to cheer on the toddler and her left hand curled around the top of a metal fence.
Grisly injury: Chelsey Brown (left), a married mom-of-one from Tennessee, was cheering on her three-year-old son when her wedding band got caught on a fence and ripped off her finger (right)
A day in the park: Th grussome mishap took place during a Little League Tee Ball practice in St Bethlehem Civitan Park in Clarksville, Tennessee (pictured)
When she abruptly sat back down, it turned out that her diamond-encrusted wedding band got snagged on a metal prong protruding from the fence, ripping the finger out of her hand.
Speaking to The Leaf-Chronicle weeks after the incident, Brown recalled the harrowing moment she looked at her left hand and saw that her wedding ring finger was left hanging on the fence.
‘I looked down and it was just gone,’ she told the paper, adding that her main concern in the moment was that she would bleed to death.
As a family friend went to retrieve the detached digit, Brown’s husband of one year, Kyle, rushed her to Tennova Healthcare, from where she was airlifted to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.
Lost digit: After Brown’s severed digit was left hanging on the fence, a friend retrieved it but doctors were unable to reattach it
Nine out of ten: A surgeon ended up amputating whatever was left of the injured finger, leaving Brown with a stump
An X-ray image shows Brown’s hand after her September 6 accident, with the top of her ring finger missing
Because of the catastrophic damage to her hand, her finger could not be reattached and surgeons were forced to amputate whatever was left of it.
In a tongue-in-cheek Facebook post written the next day, Brown tried to put a positive spin on the accident.
‘I keep making jokes about 10% off manicures and things like that,’ she quipped.
Nearly four weeks later, Brown, a bank teller by trade, still goes to physical therapy. She now wears a Band-Aid on the stump where her wedding ring finger had been.
Her diamond ring has been fixed and resized so she could wear it on her right hand, but the 23-year-old newlywed says she is fearful it might get caught on something again.
Undeterred by the grisly mishap, the 23-year-old mom-of-one, whose husband serves in the US Army, has since gone back to Field 6 to watch her son play Tee Ball and sat on the same bleachers.
Brown is pictured on her wedding day in August 2016 with her husband, Kyle (left). Kyle Brown is an US Army serviceman, and the couple have one child together
Silver linings: Brown tried to put a positive spin on the accident, saying she was looking forward to getting 10 per cent discounts on manicures
‘I’m really big on “everything happens for a reason,”’ she told the paper.
Brown says she is not interested in pursuing any legal action against the organizers of the Little League game or the City of Clarksville, but she wants to raise awareness about hidden dangers possible lurking in seemingly harmless, everyday objects.
A Montgomery County spokesperson said all the fences at Field 6 have been inspected in the wake of Brown’s accident and were found to be up to code