After losing legs in shredder, Minnesota man sets a path forward

April 2 began as just another day at work for Jeff McLean. Hours later, it unraveled in disaster.

Overseeing a 20-foot-tall metal shredder at Shred Right in Bloomington, shoveling in pounds of confidential papers, books and board games in a restricted area of the plant, Jeff, 54, needed to free a “paper bridge,” a jam that forms at the lower end of an operating shredder.

Pressing down with his hands on the paper pile above, the jam suddenly gave way, and “I fell into the machine.” He grabbed onto the sides of the shredder as it pulled him in “and he “just started yelling and screaming.” 

A newly-hired co-worker heard the screams and alerted a colleague with access to the restricted area who shut down the shredder.

Jeff said he didn’t realize the damage done until employees pulled him up and he saw the look on the face of one of his colleagues. “I’m not going to work again, am I?” Jeff recalled asking. “He said, ‘Nope.’”

Two days later, surgeons at Hennepin Healthcare amputated both his legs about 9 inches below the knee.

Three months later, there’s a lot of work ahead for Jeff, his wife Jamie and their two sons. 

The family has stepped into a new realm since the accident. Considerations that hadn’t crossed their minds are now priorities. The daily challenges facing amputees are very real now. 

It’s a journey they want people to better understand.

“I don’t have no support below my knee. I mean, I have my stumps and everything, but I don’t have ankles. I don’t have feet. I don’t have toes,” Jeff said during a series of interviews with MPR News. “You don’t understand how much your toes … play a part in keeping your balance.”

‘This world you never wanted to be in’

This new chapter in life has rendered the family’s two-floor home in Hugo practically inaccessible to Jeff. It has required conversations with family or friends before get-togethers to discuss renting out accessible port-a-potties. 

At home, his only option to use a commode is to go into the garage. The bathroom off the kitchen cannot accommodate him. He last saw his second-floor bedroom on April 2, the morning of the accident.

The only shower option for Jeff is his mother’s home, a 15-minute drive to Forest Lake. They call beforehand to let her know they are coming over.  

“We kind of thought that this was going to be our — I’m not gonna say a forever home — but the home that we were gonna stay in until we got old and we just couldn’t stay here anymore,” Jamie said. 

“When we start talking about the house, my stomach sinks,” she said. They bought their two-story home in 2020 for $200,000. Today, single-level homes in their neighborhood cost at least $450,000, she said.

For the time being, Jeff lives in his living room where a hospital bed accommodates him. Under his bed are a number of plastic bins containing different-sized compression socks, wound supplies, rubber gloves, wound care spray, baby wipes and other items.

A row of medications are on his night table. And at the end of the bed are his custom-made silicone protectors. These cover his legs from his thigh to his stumps. Jeff uses the protectors when he leaves the house. 

A jug he uses to relieve himself is never far from his bed.

“He’s literally got to use that here at the bed. Constantly needs to be emptied,” said Jamie, 51. “So there’s just little things that we constantly have to keep up on.”

Chief among them: driving him to various appointments, taking copious notes during said appointments, cooking meals and meeting with the workman’s comp representative.

Aaron Holm knows all too well about entering the unfamiliar world. He’s the executive director of Wiggle Your Toes, a nonprofit that aims to provide support and offer resources to anyone who’s lost a limb. Holm lost his legs when he was hit by a car driving 55 miles per hour on Interstate 394 in Minneapolis. He had been helping a friend change a tire on the side of the highway.

“It’s certainly mentally and physically trying. You’re thrown into a world through trauma like my case, like his case, [it] certainly wasn’t expected,” Holm said.

The majority of amputees in the world are diabetics with vascular issues, Holm said. Some people can prepare months or years in advance for the loss of a limb or limbs.

“But when a traumatic situation like his and like mine [happens], it’s all of a sudden, it’s, you know, the old saying, a blink of an eye, and all of a sudden you’re in this world you never wanted to be in. But there’s no turning back, right?” Holm said. “You need to accept it, like any setback that you might face in life. You have to deal with it and you have to deal with it right now.”

Dr. David Balser, a physician and an assistant professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Minnesota, said it’s not just a physical challenge following such an accident.

“The greater battle occurs in the mind,” Balser said. “To be able to mentally adapt, to be flexible and to really take stock of what’s truly important … what you want to give up after the amputation, when thinking about how you live for the rest of your life.”

Balser said he strongly encourages new amputees to seek out peer support groups such as the Amputee Coalition, a national organization and in Minnesota, Wiggle Your Toes.

Minnesota OSHA continues to look into Jeff’s workplace accident. The agency investigated 52 serious injuries during a five-year period starting in October 2018.

There were 17 serious workplace injuries from Oct. 1, 2023 to the end of May of this year, according to the state Department of Labor and Industry. There were two instances between January 2015 and September 2023 where a worker lost both legs.

Listing out goals for the future, Jeff has one that seems surprising.

“My ultimate goal is to go back to work,” he said. “I was thinking about it last night, going back to my original job to drive a forklift. And load in the shredder and everything like that. We’ll see,” he said.

“I’m optimistic I’m gonna get up on my legs and I’m gonna walk, I’m definitely gonna walk again,” he said. “Nothing’s gonna get me down from that.”

Jamie said she tries to be a realist and wants to support his optimism.

“I don’t have any doubt that he’s gonna walk again, because he’s such a go-getter,” she said. “I know that there’s gonna be a lot of hiccups down the road.”

‘Phantom pain’ and a path forward

Jeff is now learning the complex process of obtaining prosthetic legs.

First, he must rely on the regular healing process, but also be consistent in his use of compression socks, he said. Wearing them nightly helps minimize the size of his stumps. They need to be round and small enough to fit into protective sockets. 

Once he’s able to get into those, then his future prosthetic legs will be able to connect with the sockets. 

He needs to keep exercising from his hospital bed, which sits now in his living room. He works on his hamstrings by wrapping a rubber band around his stumps, lying on his back pulling up his leg.

“That’s the most important part,” he said. “You got to keep your core and your hamstrings and you got to get limbered up, so that you can support yourself” on prosthetic legs.

Part of Jeff’s treatment plan attempts to minimize what’s known as “phantom pain.” 

Balser explained the phenomenon is when the nerves don’t come to terms with the amputation. “It still tries to feel a sensation below the level of injury, " he said.

When the pain occurs, Jeff said it lasts about 10 seconds. The sensation feels like his foot is being poked with a pin or someone is stomping on his big toe. They’ve mostly subsided since the accident.

The doctor called the sensations “very distracting and unpleasant and even painful.” 

Jeff’s treatment plan includes taking medication called Gabapentin that reduces the sensation. He also massages his limbs frequently, almost soothing them. He said it helps desensitize the nerves to believe there is more to the leg. And then he pushes on the bottom of the limb.

“This right here is telling my brain, this is all I have, I don’t have feet anymore,” he said.

Balser said the “nerves that are injured like this often panic and send painful signals or uncomfortable signals, because they know they haven’t properly adapted to the trauma.”

The nerves “need some stimulus in order to reassure them that everything’s going OK,” he said.

Surgery is an option for amputees who feel phantom pain, but Jeff said he’d prefer to avoid a fourth surgery. When the accident happened, he underwent three surgeries in four days.

For Jeff, it’s worth enduring the discomfort because all he associates his previous surgeries with is pain, pain, pain.

“The surgeries that I had — especially my second surgery — that was the most pain I’ve ever felt in my life … they had to go in and cut both the bones and clean up everything and wrap everything back up and pull the skin across,” he said. He had two nerve blocks in his spine after the second one. 

“I could not stand the pain that was so horrific and just terrible, terrible, terrible pain,” Jeff said.

Getting the new legs is a complex process that can take years to get right. At the hospital, Jamie said doctors told Jeff and her it would probably take a year to get his prosthetic legs. They might be right.

And even after Jeff goes through the process to get his prosthetic legs — waiting for the limb’s complete recovery and swelling reduction, getting fitted for sockets and practice prosthetic legs, getting fitted for permanent ones, therapy work and then finally getting the final legs — he will need to repeat some of these steps again. Amputees need to replace their prosthetic legs every three to five years for the rest of their lives.

Doctors expect his stumps to change over the course of the next 18 months as well. He will need to be mindful of his sodium intake because that can cause his stumps to swell. Humidity will also cause swelling.

A nurse at the hospital gave the couple a reality check, Jamie said. She told Jeff that there would be times, he would get sores on his stumps and he wouldn’t be able to walk that day. Instead, he would need to rely on his wheelchair.

“Prosthetics are great, but they’re especially hard for a double amputee, because you’re depending on the prosthetics on both legs, where you don’t have that literal one leg to stand on … for leverage,” Jamie said the nurse told her.

‘Wouldn’t mind checking it out’

Jeff’s health care and recovery costs are being paid for by Shred Right’s workman’s comp plan.

“Oh it’s wonderful,” he said of the plan. “I’ve had absolutely no problems at all.”

But there are still financial challenges for the family. Jeff is receiving his regular pay from workman’s comp, but Jamie has, for now, dropped out of the workforce.

She left her administrative job at an auto dealership because she wants to support Jeff to the fullest extent possible. She had been on family leave until early July when it ran out. Her bosses have assured her she has a job when she is able to come back.

In the meantime, Jamie is devoted sometimes to the point of exhaustion. Some weeks are busier than others, especially when new protocols are involved.

“We had three appointments all yesterday and … just the transfer to the chair and back out of the chair and into the car and then out of the car and back into the chair again is — it’s just kind of our new normal,” she said. 

Jamie added it takes a lot longer to get from one place to another now because she has to transfer him safely into the wheelchair and her car.  

Their son Kyle, 20, has a full-time job at Kwik-Trip. Their other son Brady, 17, is still in high school. They help their father and their mother when they are free to do so, whether it’s helping him move to the garage or sometimes giving their mother some time so she can go out with friends.

As he and his family plot a course for the future, Jeff said he’s learned there’s a community to help. 

He’s found a network of fellow amputees through his prosthetic leg manufacturer. An avid hunter before the accident, he’s learned that recreation and sport can be part of a double amputee’s life.

Jeff has met fellow amputees at Tillges Technologies, the company producing his prosthetic legs. On one visit in the last few months, Jeff met what he called a “BK”, or below-the-knee amputee.

“He’s [6 feet 7 inches tall] plays volleyball. He’s a double amputee … plays basketball, he runs, he drives with his prosthetics, everything,” Jeff said. “And you watch them walk, no problem at all. And you know, that’s very encouraging to me to see that.” 

He recently caught a commercial highlighting a double amputee hockey athlete training on the ice. The players moved around in small sleds and carried hockey sticks, he said. Jeff grew up playing hockey and said he can see himself on the ice like that.

“I don’t know, I’m 54, almost 55 years old. I don’t know if they’ll take an old fart like me, you know, but I wouldn’t mind checking it out,” he said, prompting his wife to laugh. 

After three months of pain and a future filled with unknowns, it’s a welcome and reassuring bit of levity. There are still moments when it’s OK to laugh. 

A GoFundMe page has been set up for Jeff McLean.

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