At the age of 12 William Sayers lost his arm in an accident involving the PTO shaft on a tractor.

The accident occurred on Easter Monday in 1990, when he was helping to spread slurry on this family farm.

Listen to "“I’d not only lost the arm, I’d lost the sight in my eye as well”" on Spreaker.

"I was doing this every day. If it wasn’t spreading slurry, it was spreading fertiliser."

At the end of a long day his father told him to finish up, but Sayers explained why he went back out to finish spreading slurry: “I was very aware that just one more load would finish the field, and it’s always the case that you want to get done and dusted to be able to start fresh in the morning.”

When he went back out Sayers felt like the slurry tanker wasn’t working properly and began fiddling with the regulator dials, which is when his coat got wrapped in the PTO shaft and the accident occurred.

And I look over to the right hand side and I can see an arm lying, and my brain's telling me I have two arms but my body physically, I had only one arm

“As quickly as you would blink your eye, which is a second, the machine took me in the PTO shaft and flung me over the top of the draw bar … I thought I was going to die.

“And I look over to the right hand side and I can see an arm lying, and my brain's telling me I have two arms but my body physically, I had only one arm."

“The next thing I put my hand up to my face because I can’t see out of the right eye, and I realise not only had I lost the arm, I’d lost the sight of my eye as well.”

Although, sight to his eye returned, doctors were unable to reattach his arm to his body.

Now a successful businessman, with an extremely positive outlook on life and selling farm machinery, Sayers advises farmers not to allow themselves be pressured into rushing jobs.

“What I can say to you is that I can’t buy that arm on the shelf today, and if I had just stood back and said, look we’ll leave it to tomorrow, the situation would’ve been completely different.”

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