A BLAENAVON boy could lose the ability to write after his fingers were sliced off while climbing a metal fence.

His mum Anna Savery said she had to scramble around to find her 10-year-old son Dylan’s missing fingers after they were chopped off in an accident last Thursday afternoon.

Dylan Harding, who goes to Blaenavon Heritage School, underwent a 10-hour overnight operation and now faces months of physio. He might never regain feeling in his index finger.

Dylan completely severed his little finger, cut his ring finger from the second knuckle down and cut his middle finger to the first knuckle. His index finger was also severed.

Following the accident, at a fence near The Firs in Blaenavon, his friends took him to a nearby doctor’s surgery.

Mrs Savery said: “We had a phone call from the doctors saying Dylan had been in an accident and I had to get to the doctors.

“The doctor turned round and said, ‘I just need to let you know there are missing fingers’.

“Then we had to find Dylan’s fingers. It was absolutely horrendous and horrific.”

Some fingers have now been reattached and pins have been put in.

Dylan was put on morphine and spent the weekend in a high dependency unit at Morriston Hospital.

Mrs Savery said she now wants to raise awareness of the danger of climbing fences and has set up a Fence Awareness Group.

She said: “I want to warn people of climbing fences.

“I said to Dylan, ‘did you not see they are really sharp and you definitely should not have been climbing over there?'

“He said, ‘all my friends were doing it’.

“It was horrible, I was devastated. I was saying, ‘oh my goodness, how is he going to write’ and Dylan wanted to know how he would play games.”

She added: “I can’t really be angry. It’s a terrible, terrible accident. It could have been a lot worse.

“I want to make sure that nobody has to go through what we had to.”

Ms Savery said Dylan and his friends had climbed the fence, owned by Welsh Water, as a shortcut.

A Welsh Water spokesman said: “We are aware of an incident that took place at one of our operational site in Blaenavon last week. We understand that a young person was seriously injured after climbing a perimeter fence that surrounds this site.  

“Such operational sites can be dangerous and these fences are meant to prevent people from entering our sites illegally. Whilst we wish them a speedy recovery, we are now working with local agencies to better understand what has happened here so that we can help avoid such accidents in the future.”