another kick back story

“You’re not ready to go back in the shop yet.” Yep, heard it from my doc., my wife, the kids (all grown), and my physical therapist. I had rotator cuff surgery on my right (dominant) shoulder in early May and I’m fortunate enough to have a lot of movement back without a lot of pain. Well I started off with a bandsaw box when my arm was still in a sling. No problems so far. I’m ready to move on to bigger and better.
My daughter was looking for a dresser so I figured, OK … I’ve got it.
Spent half a day drawing it up and laying out the cuts on a load of red oak in my shop. I’m really gonna’ be safe and rip everything to rough sizes on my band saw. Ta-Da !!! No chance of binding and kickback …. got it??
Wait a minute. I’m gonna cross cut the excess off the boards using my slide table on the table saw to make it safer and easier to handle the boards. (limited strength in my arm). I’m on a roll.
Ran them through the table saw, no sweat. Got to the last piece (ain’t it always the way???) and the offcut was only 5/4 X 8 X 6.
Rule number 5 ( I don’t remember what 1 thru 4 were but I’m sure they were more important than this) When using a crosscut sled on you table saw make sure you have a piece of equal thickness on the other side of the blade to support the offcut. As the piece dropped off it laid against the side of the blade and for some reason I decided to pick it up and get it away. (probably violating rules 6 thru 11).
I’m not really sure just what happened next. I may have lost my grip and dropped the piece or maybe I just strayed too close to the blade and caught a piece of it but what I DO remember is laying on the floor for 20 minutes looking at my cell phone next to me thinking “Maybe I’ll dial 911 as soon as I can move”. The offcut piece hit my right forearm and left an 1-1/2 in. gash as it travelled to it’s final destination, the right side of my chest. Luckily it caught me pretty flat so the bleeding was minimal but the bruising is spectacular. I’ve been nailed before but this felt like someone stood me up and smashed my chest with a baseball bat. No 911. No broken ribs (no x-ray either) or punctured lung but I’m a believer now.
NOPE. I’M NOT READY FOR THE SHOP YET. Now I have to listen to the choruses of “I told you so!!!”.
(Maybe next year …month ….week!! )