Imagine working by yourself when suddenly, your arm is ripped from your body by a piece of machinery.  That nightmare became reality for one Austin man.

Seeing Bobby Kerstetter now playing with his grandsons, laughing, and grabbing life with both hands, it’s hard to believe that just 11 months ago, he was in a life-or-death struggle.

Kerstetter was alone, warming up some equipment, at Alamo Concrete near Manor on January 2, when the jacket he was wearing got caught. 

Kerstetter remembers the accident as if it happened yesterday.

“In the blink of an eye, a thud,” he remembered.  “I was turned around sideways, looking at the stars, and when I turned back around, (my arm) was gone.”

He felt no pain, but knew he wouldn’t survive if he didn’t get help immediately.  He untangled his coat jacket, and struggled to a phone.

“I let my arm go, climbed down the ladder, picked my arm back up, walked into the office, sat down in the chair and dialed 911,” said Kerstetter.

Thanks to Kerstetter’s quick call to 911, paramedics arrived within minutes and had him at a hospital about 20 minutes after they arrived.

“Those two guys (told me), ‘We're getting out of here now.’

They just grabbed me, (put me) on the gurney, they strapped me in and out the gate we went,” he said.

After two surgeries and less than a week at Brackenridge Hospital, Kerstetter went home, ready to get back tohis life and the grandsons who adore him.

“I've never been one to sit and cry for very long over something I can't fix,” he said.

That’s not to say losing an arm, especially your right arm when you’re right-handed, has been easy.

Kerstetter knows he escaped death that day.

“OSHA came to the house and told me, ‘You're a statistic by yourself, because you're here, because everybody else that's had this happen to them isn't’,” he said.

Kerstetter’s wife of almost 31 years, Debi, is amazed daily, as he becomes more adept in using his prosthetic arm.  She says the odds may have been stacked against him initially, but she says only a fool would bet against her husband.

“There's nothing he can't do or try. Today he picked up a poker chip and I just started crying,” she said, smiling.

Like her husband, Debi laughs a lot.  But the strain of the last year is not far from the surface.

“He's a hard worker and I love him very dearly,” she said, fighting back tears.

Bobby is now back at work at the same company, at a different plant with different duties than he had before.  Worker’s compensation has paid his tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills.

Most days, Kerstetter is in a great mood as he adjusts to life with a new arm.

“I pretty much can't use it without watching it. I mean, I'm still seeing it doing it,” he said.  “I guess it's just part of me. I don't feel the awkwardness any more.”

He now makes frequent visits to Orthotic and Prosthetic Technologies in North Austin, where he fine tunes the fit on not one, but two right arms.  One arm is the dynamic arm, a state-of-the-art myoelectric prosthetic that lets him move his elbow, his wrist and grasp by flexing his muscles.  It costs in the $100,000 range and was paid for by worker’s comp.  Beeps tell him which area he’s activated.

“If you'd flex your bicep or your tricep, those two muscles, what's there is being picked up on the little things in the arm, and that's it,” said Kerstetter. “When I change over, I'm flexing both at the same time.”

The system isn’t perfect.  Grasping is still hard and putting things down gently is tough.  But it’s getting better.

“Control is the hard part,” said Kerstetter. 

One day last week, Kerstetter tried a new attachment called a Griefer on the dynamic arm.  It lets him do things he couldn’t do with a more traditional hand-shaped attachment.  In just a few minutes, he figured out how to use the Griefer, with the same attitude that’s seen through the toughest years of his life.

Though the dynamic arm is cutting-edge technology, it can’t get wet, even with perspiration.  And that makes it impractical for every situation.  For work and household chores, Kerstetter uses a more traditional mechanical arm he controls with his shoulder.  The arm locks in place, but can’t hold a grip the way the dynamic arm does.  A mechanical arm costs roughly $10,000.

Kerstetter says there are still things he can’t do, tie a shoelace for instance, but there’s far more he can.

“I have to find somebody with a boat to skiing with, or tubing,” he said.

Not so far-fetched, perhaps, for a man who has already proven he can handle hard times with a smile.

He says not surviving was never an option.

“I knew it wasn't good, but I never thought of cashing it in,” said Kerstetter.  “It's not a roller coaster ride, no. It's not a fun time … it's not something I want to do over again, but … right now, it's life.

And for Bobby Kerstetter, that means embracing his future with a grip that gets stronger every day.