LIVERMORE FALLS – An East Livermore woman is recovering at a Boston hospital after she cut off two fingers and shattered her wrist in a lawnmower accident.

Tammi Harlow, 39, was taken by ambulance to a Lewiston hospital and then flown to Portland and then to Boston last Saturday after the lawnmower she was riding on went over a 10-foot drop in the family’s yard on Campground Road.

She has had three operations and her fingers have been reattached, her son Josh Harlow, 19, said. She has a year of therapy ahead of her, he added.

It was the first time his mother had driven the new lawnmower, he said.

Harlow, who lives on his own in Livermore Falls, said he usually does this particular section of the lawn for his mother because of the drop-off.

She was scared of the edge, he said, but she wanted to clean up the yard and worked up the courage to do it and she went out and tried it.

She got too close to the edge and it rolled over with her on it about four or five times before she finally fell off the lawnmower, he said..

She put her hands up to try and protect herself as the lawnmower rolled up and landed on top of her with the blades still going, he said.

She cut off her pinky finger and her ring finger on her right hand, he said, and she shattered her hand from her fingers to her wrist.

“If she wouldn’t have put her arms up, it probably would have cut off her head,” he said.

Her little finger was hanging by a piece of skin and her ring finger was held on by her mother’s ring that he and his mother’s roommate, Penny Thorton, bought her a few years ago.

Doctors are doing using leaches to suck the poison out of his mother’s fingers, he said.

Josh said his mother hates bugs, but she’s doing OK with the treatment as long as she’s not looking at the leaches.

She is expected to be at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Mass., for two to three weeks.

Harlow’s aunt, Sheree, his mother’s sister, came up from Virginia to take care of his sisters, Monica, 13, and Felicia, 16.

Harlow has driven his sisters to Boston twice to see their mother.

“She’s doing awesome,” he said.

Harlow’s cousin, Keith Tibbetts, who lived with the family while growing up, called his mother from Iraq to talk to her.

She’s been doing much better since that phone call, he said.

She has been worried about Tibbetts, who is a member of the Maine Army National Guard stationed in Iraq.

Harlow said he hasn’t been sleeping well since his mother’s accident.

“I’m doing good. I’m pretty upset. I think about it a lot but knowing my mother is going to be all right makes it easier, he said.

His sister Felicia, who was home when the accident occurred, is doing the best, he said.

His younger sister Monica is taking it real hard, he said.

Donation cans have been set up at Pike’s Corner Oasis and Four-Winds Redemption Center where Tammi worked.

A benefit supper is in the planning stages, Harlow said.

Any donations to help the family would be “greatly appreciated,” he said. His mother’s going to have a lot of bills when she gets out of the hospital.

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