It's just a flesh wound!
Brady Booker, a Survivor season 51 player, pushed through hacking off the tip of his thumb in a recent episode of the long-running reality competition series.
The grisly injury went down on an episode that aired on Sept. 30, per PEOPLE. Booker, a 27-year-old pro rassler, sliced through his thumb with a machete while chopping wood.
"Damn it, that was stupid," Booker let go, holding his wounded digit. "Did I just knock myself out of the game?" he asked a nearby producer.
The wrestler ws then ushered into a medical tent.
"I was just splitting some wood to get to the dry center with the axe," he explained, as Dr.Barry attended to his thumb. "Had a little corner of my thumb, that little corner right there, and I just lopped it off. I truly feel like I can still compete, and hopefully, we can do something."
"I knew I was going to do something stupid like this," he later confessed. "My biggest fear is that Doc's gonna pull me from this game, and that took me into this deep hole of thinking I'm a failure."
The doctor opted not to reattach the Survivor player's severed thumb tip, dressing the wound and giving Booker antibiotics. The doc also cleared Booker to continue in the competition.
"When Doc told me I can still be in this game, it was like a new life," Booker later gushed. "Sure, it's still a little numb, but I can touch all the fingers. I can touch the far end. I can clap. I can grab. Sure, Brody, pain exists. But I'd rather feel pain than nothing at all."
'Survivor' Player Asks Doctor For His Thumb Tip: 'That I Can Do'
Meanwhile, the wrestler, ever a showman, had one last request for Dr. Barry. He wanted to keep the thumb tip as a souvenir to show off to longtime Survivor host Jeff Probst.
"That I can do," Dr. Barry shot back.
"Doc takes my thumb, puts it in that plastic bag, and then sticks it in his pocket," Booker recalled. "It was one of the weirdest exchanges of my life, but one of the best exchanges of my life because, at the end of it, I got to know I get to stay in this game."
Fans were likely delighted when Probst was presented with the unique souvenir...
"Another Survivor first," the 64-year-old declared.
"Brady had a great sense of humor as he pleaded with our medical team to wrap the piece of thumb and put it in a cooler to save for him after the show so he could take it home," Probst later wrote in the field notes, per PEOPLE. "Talk about a one-of-a-kind Survivor souvenir. Most players are happy with a treemail."
It seems Booker's grit in the face of his gnarly thumb injury paid off (for now). Survivor player Ana Sani was sent packing from Fiji in a 6-4 vote.
