It’s the question we all want the answer to: How many fingers does William J. Rice have?
Earlier the AP, citing a hospital spokesperson, reported that after a pro-health care reform protester bit off the anti-reform Rice’s pinky at a health reform rally in California last night, it was reattached at the nearby Los Robles Hospital — and paid for by Medicare.
Then Rice went on Fox earlier this hour and told Neil Cavuto that his severed pinky wasn’t reattached at all. He said he was told that because of “the bacteria involved in a human bite, the chances of it surviving a reattachment were almost zero.”
We just got the same hospital spokesperson the AP talked to — Kris Caraway-Bowman — on the phone. So what’s the verdict?
Rice’s pinky was not reattached. He went home without it last night.
So why the confusion? “This was totally my error,” Caraway-Bowman said.
The spokesperson said that on her way into work today, the nurses on the morning shift told her Rice’s story, and that his finger had been reattached. She said she fielded the AP’s call before she had a chance to verify the story on her own. And when Caraway-Bowman finally pulled Rice’s chart and talked to his doctor — ruh roh.
“He opted not to have his finger put back on,” Caraway-Bowman said.
Reading to me from the notes Rice’s doctor had taken, Caraway-Bowman said the two sat down and had a long discussion about whether to simply clean and sew up the wound, or to try and reconnect the severed digit. The doctor explained how a human bite is “a very dirty bite” compared to the relatively clean bites from animals because, as Caraway-Bowman explained, “human saliva is filled with bacteria that is very harmful to a human.”
They discussed pros and cons, and the fact that Rice is retired and that the injury was to a relatively unimportant finger on his non-dominant hand. Still, the doctor tried to talk Rice into reattachment. “He disagreed with that plan,” Carraway-Bowman said. “He left the tip of his finger with us and he went home.”
Carraway-Bowman suggests that Rice’s story got distorted in a sort of telephone game between last night’s nurse shift and this morning’s, which gave the spokesperson the wrong story.
And what of the notorious finger? It was “wrapped in cold gauze and placed on ice by ER staff” during Rice’s consultation. And afterward? “It was appropriately disposed of,” Carraway-Bowman said.
