Hello, my name is Dustin Crocker, I wasn’t completely sure if I wanted to create this fundraiser at first, but I am just getting too far behind and my mom and I are close to losing everything.
To begin I’ll tell you what happened that started this downhill tumble I’ve been in for the past two-ish months. (And a little bit about the year before)
**SHORT VERSION AT THE END**
The day was Easter Sunday, April 20th of 2025 and I was enjoying the still-cool spring evening by talking with a long time family friend of ours, Sherry and toiling away on my longtime project of building and upgrading my workshop workbench. I love Sherry, but man oh man is she a talker. She can sit there and practically have a conversation with herself, just as long as she can keep talking to someone. I was trying to stay attentive to Sherry, even though I really didn’t need to for her to keep going (I’m a people pleaser,) while struggling to make some progress on my workbench. I would say my skills as a carpenter are not yet of a master but still well experienced considering I have been working in the trades for about 7 years now and have done a dozen or so full house remodels with just my boss, Ryan (the contractor,) as my only coworker. We mostly only did the carpentry work, windows, doors, and anything else that wasn’t too farfetched; subbing out other tradesmen for everything else. Anyways, I guess I’m saying I thought I knew what I was doing when I decided to cut a small narrow piece of old mahogany length-wise with my skill saw (circular saw.) I was wrong. The saw blade pinched and the saw kicked back once to warn me, I ignored it, then it kicked back again. The saw cut 75% of the way through my thumb from the top just below the knuckle in the middle. Luckily all of the most important bits are on the palm side of your digits, like your arteries and nerves, which is basically all I had left connecting my thumb to my hand. I’m just glad my Mom was also right there and was able to rush me to the hospital immediately.
I will probably never be as good of a craftsman as I used to be. It’s amazing how much you use your thumb, even when it’s on your non-dominant hand.
So far I have been back to the hospital for 2 more surgeries since the original. The second surgery was to pull out the support pins they put in during the first surgery to keep my thumb straight while it healed. This was at two weeks post OGS (Original Surgery,) which is, as I’m sure you are thinking to yourself right now, much sooner than that would normally be taken out. This was due to one of the holes in which one of the pins was inserted becoming infected. Damn, I thought I was on the fast track to being healthy again. I even started working a few days after the OGS. Of course working in a construction type environment is probably not recommended for people with fresh surgery wounds on their hand so that was probably a fault of my own. The third surgery was just a couple days after the pin pull due to the infection getting worse and swelling my thumb up to the size of a.. hmmm.. let’s just say it was pretty f’n big.. and red. Big red. Gross. We believe that it worsened so quickly because they didn’t do anything to clean out the infection after pulling the pins and I wasn’t able to pick up my antibiotics until the evening of the next day. This third and most recent surgery was about two weeks ago as of me writing this, which is June 16, 2025, in case it doesn’t tell you.
I haven’t worked since a couple days before the second surgery. This is after I had only been working for a couple months after being unemployed for almost a year. I had left my previous company (My brother, a friend of ours and I were trying to create a company of our own, which didn’t work out for various reasons) of about a year to try and find something better before eventually ended up back with Ryan when I struggled to find anything else that paid as well.
On top of all of THIS my truck, which is my only transportation, broke down due to the front end suspension going out and the wheel hub bearing turning to dust about three months ago and I have a few loans I got thinking I would be back at work already, that I’m starting to go under on.
Thankfully my amazing mom has been supporting me for the most part, with housing, food and money when I need it. Although I have learned that, when it rains, it pours (I know, horrible metaphor to use as someone who lives in Phoenix, AZ.) My mom ended up getting into an accident, totaling her truck, two weeks ago as well. She is tough, but I can tell she’s on the end of her rope and she won’t be able to hold on for much longer (Really this fundraiser should be for her honestly) and this is really putting a strain on our relationship. Now we have no transportation besides an old bicycle we were able to piece together. I’m still not able to work and probably won’t be for another few weeks. My mom has multiple fines from the accident since it was technically her fault she didn’t see the other car and rent will be coming up pretty quickly.
I don’t usually like to ask for help, especially from people who I have never met before, but I don’t know how much longer we can keep this up. I’ve already started selling a lot of my hobby tools and other valuables I had. I’m running dry on just about everything. I’m exhausted. I’m worried. I’m angry at myself for putting us in this situation. I’m asking for help…
Thank you for reading my story and if anyone can give anything at all it would be a god send. I hope that soon enough I will be working again and I can come back here and do the same for someone else.
**ABRIDGED VER.**
Hello name is Dustin Crocker and I almost cut my thumb off. I have had 3 surgeries. I haven’t been working for about a year and a half besides a couple months right before the accident. My truck is broken down and my mom, who’s been taking care of me in every way while my thumb heals, totalled her truck a couple weeks ago. So we have no transportation besides an old bicycle, almost no money, nothing left of value to sell and probably won’t make rent this month. We also are not sure how much longer it’s going to take for my thumb to be healed enough for me to work because I work a lot with my hands as a carpenter/tradesman. So anything anyone can donate would be incredibly helpful and my mom and I would be immensely grateful. Thank you for reading and I hope I can come back here and repay the favor when I’m back working steadily again.
Gratefully,
Dustin Crocker,
The man who almost became the one-thumbed bum.
