Hospital maintenance man cuts fidget spinner off boy's finger

Aug. 3 (UPI) -- An Arizona mother said her 11-year-old son spent about 16 hours with a fidget spinner stuck on his finger before being freed by a hospital maintenance worker.

Cassie Rhodes of Tempe said her son, Sam, 11, quickly ran into trouble with his newest toy, a special type of fidget spinner.

The spinner, known as a Genji Shuriken, is inspired by the video game Overwatch and is designed to be worn on the user's finger.

"I barely pushed on my finger and it just popped right on," Sam told KPNX-TV.

"I thought that maybe it would be on there for the rest of my life," Sam said.

The boy's mother said the usual methods of removing stuck objects from digits proved unhelpful.

"We tried soap, we tried oil, we tried looking on the Internet for tricks," she said.

Rhodes said she took Sam to the emergency room, where a doctor attempted to use a ring cutter to remove the toy.

She said the alloy metal used to make the fidget spinner proved too strong for the doctor's tool.

"It didn't even scratch it," she said. "I mean, it didn't even make a mark. They [hospital staff] said, 'We don't have the equipment right now at this point to help you, but we'll find someone who does.'" Rhodes said.

Rhodes said they ended up at another hospital, Cardon Children's Medical Center, where doctors and nurses had some experience with similar cases.

"I had a patient previously, like a month prior, who had a very similar fidget spinner stuck on his finger," ER nurse Lizzy Ballenger said.

Ballenger said she fetched the hospital's maintenance man instead of a doctor.

"It's the third time I've been asked to cut off rings from people's fingers," said Greg Earhart, the hospital's maintenance man for the past 31 years.

Earhart said the spinner broke through four fiberglass saw blades before he was successful.