John Thompson was 18 years old and working alone on his family’s farm in North Dakota on that January 11, 1992. An unguarded drive shaft caught him and tore off both of his arms near the shoulders in a matter of seconds.
He woke up on the snow, understood what had happened, and decided to do something that seemed impossible: stand up. He walked one hundred meters across the frozen ground, opened two doors with his mouth and knee, and dialed a phone using his nose and a pen held between his teeth until he reached his cousin Tammy.
Five hours later, he was at North Memorial Medical Center, near Minneapolis, where two surgical teams worked for seven hours to reconnect what the machine had separated.