A British man who sliced his arm off in a freak chainsaw accident calmly knocked on his next door neighbor's door and said: "Please help, I've just cut my arm off," it has emerged.
John Stirling is believed to have been cutting a tree when his chainsaw slipped and cut his arm off below the elbow in Telscombe Cliffs, near Brighton, East Sussex.
His neighbor, Steve Francis, told how Stirling turned up on his doorstep after the accident. Francis said he placed the arm in a bag containing frozen pastries to help keep the limb cold.
Francis, 49, told the Brighton Argus: "He wasn't screaming, he was as relaxed as can be."
I didn't realize anything was wrong until I looked down and saw his arm missing.
"I ran inside to call the ambulance and he sat outside on a stool. I came out and tied his arm up with a belt and towels. The ambulance people talked me through it.
"But through it all he sat there talking away like it was normal. When the ambulance came they put him on a stretcher and asked where the arm was.
"The paramedics were working on him so I went up the road and put it in a plastic Tesco shopping bag. I then put it in another bag with frozen pastries in to keep it cold.
"Then I gave the bag to one of the paramedics and they took it to hospital in the ambulance. He's a brave man, I'll give him that. I couldn't believe he didn't faint."
Stirling was taken to the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton before being transferred to the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead, West Sussex.
He underwent 14 hours of specialist emergency surgery to reattach the arm.
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