The right thumb of four-year-old kid was chopped off a fortnight ago. It was the blind instinct of an uneducated maidservant that saved the child from being disabled for life.

Akash (named changed on request), who is visiting his maternal grandparents in Kolkata, had entered a lift on his own on May 31. His hand got caught in the elevator door, and when the lift started moving, his right thumb was sliced clean off.

After hearing his screams, his family members and neighbors rushed in, and took him to the hospital.

Everyone forgot about the cut off thumb.

The maid (who has asked not to be named) put the thumb in the freezer.

After getting the news, the boy's father, who flew down from Lucknow, said, “We do not know how to thank her.”

In a rare eight-hour surgical operation, a group of doctors led by plastic and microvascular reconstructive surgeon Manish Mukul Ghosh successfully replanted the thumb with wires and reintroduced blood supply by making use of a reversed vein graft to rejoin an artery and two veins of the thumb.

The operation was conducted at a city-based premier healthcare unit, Columbia Asia Hospital, May 31, 2009.

“If severed limbs are preserved within six hours after the amputation, they can be replanted successfully. In case of this small boy, the bones were not broken. The blood vessels and nerves had been ripped apart and tendons damaged but the success rate in such surgeries is 90%,” Dr. Ghosh said.

“The right thumb is the most important limb. Ten per cent of the nerves from the brain go here. If the maid had not preserved the thumb, the next option was to use his toe for the reconstruction, which involved more complication and bigger surgery. Losing it would have made him partially handicapped,” he added.

Akash has undergone four surgical operations thus far. It will take around a year for the thumb to function properly.