Oh man...I thought you were going to tell me a horror story about some guy getting a splinter in his hand and not taking care of it just to have half his had rot off. :-))
I tell ya...power tools will not discriminate as to what they will cut off...wood, fingers, hands. Whatever, they don't care! I was using a hand held electric planer once...was holding it upside down so my worker could run a board across it. The shavings were flying in my face so I thought I would roll my hand over to block the dust and shavings. When I did that...zap...the pad of my thumb hit the blade. When I got up enough nerve to look at it, I had a V shaped cut that almost went to the thumb nail...from one side to the other. It took a while but it grew back and I can't even tell it ever happened.
The difference between mine and the guy you knew was his got cut off...that never ends well and unlike him, if mine had not healed up it would not have been a life changing event like his was. That is a shame what happened to him!
My old professor friend wrote me an e-mail a few years back...hey, Wayne...got me a new joiner...slipped and ground my bird finger off to the first joint! My butt still puckers when I think of how that must have felt. I'm sure he misses the tip of his bird finger but it wasn't a life changer.