Like Father, like daughter

She’s always been a farm girl determined to help her parents with chores and other tasks, but Dana Standke has been noticeably absent from farm work lately as she heals from what had been a life-threatening injury.
The Ellendale girl is recovering at home after losing her right arm in a farm accident last fall. Helping out on the farm has been nothing unusual ever since Dana was a toddler, her parents say. 
“She’s a farm girl who loves to help out,” said Shelly Standke, Dana’s mother. “She has always been that way.”
On an early Sunday morning last November, Dana got tangled up in an auger, as she was unloading corn on the family farm located in rural Steele County. 
“I was walking by the auger when my coat got caught in there,” Dana recalls. “My sleeve on my coat got caught and pulled me into the auger.”
With her jacket and arm spiraled around the auger, Dana quickly let out a blood-curdling scream and her 25-year-old brother, Andrew, was near by to shut off the equipment. 
Dan Enzenauer, Andrew and Dana’s father, is thankful his son was right there to shut off the auger right away. “If he hadn’t been there, it would have ate her up and killed her,” Enzenauer said.  
Asked how painful it was, Dana replied: “It wasn’t painful because I couldn’t feel anything.”
Dana’s mother heard the screams and came running to the aide of her daughter. “Mom came down and was freaking out,” Dana said. 
Said Shelly: “I can’t even describe it. You don’t ever want to see your child in that situation.”
In the midst of the chaos, Shelly grabbed a towel and wrapped Dana’s arm so it wouldn’t get dirty and she put a blanket around her. There were only a few drops of blood because the jacket turned into a tourniquet on her arm and prevented any large loss of blood, Shelly said. She added she saw exposed bone and muscle. 
Dana’s father called 911 and then focused on keeping his wife away from the scene. Enzenauer wasn’t nearly as shaken as his wife because he experienced a similar incident 36 years ago when his arm got caught in a shaft while hauling manure. The only difference is he got to keep his arm while his daughter did not. 
One thing stuck in Dana’s mind as she waited to be rescued. She was worried that her dad was going to be mad at her for what happened. 
Shelly was quick to point out it was a Sunday morning, a time when the family is normally in church. “She told me she couldn’t go to Sunday School because dad needed her help that day,” Shelly said.
Emergency personnel from Ellendale and Owatonna worked frantically to rescue Dana. Rescuers cut off a 16-inch chunk of the auger shaft with Dana’s arm still attached and flew her by Mayo One to St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester. 
“They didn’t want to take it (shaft) off or she would have bled to death,” Enzenauer said. 
Within hours of the accident, doctors amputated Dana’s arm three inches below the elbow. The doctors took muscle from her left shoulder and skin grafts from her left thigh to graft them onto her elbow. Dana has endured four surgeries with the longest one lasting 10 hours and much of it taking place under a microscope. She was in the hospital for more than two weeks in addition to another week after she initially got out.
Shelly said the hospital staff told them “she was the bravest little thing they had ever seen for the shape she was in.” 
Surgeons have told the family that Dana’s arm has healed beautifully. Dana works to stretch out what’s left of her arm. She has 90-degree bend in her arm, but she needs to get it to 120-degrees. This is accomplished by physically pushing on the stump at least three times a day for 10 minutes each.
Luckily, Dana is left-handed so she has been able to continue to do her school work and other things without too many problems. Staff at NRHEG School in Ellendale has worked with the fifth grader to teach her how to catch, grab and throw a ball with her left hand. 
“The school has been absolutely wonderful with her,” Shelly said. 
Dana will be able to lean on her dad for support as he has endured nearly four decades of going through life with an arm that was seriously injured in the same type of accident as she experienced. Though he was able to keep his arm, it was reconstructed with a bone from his hip and skin grafts from a leg.
“I use it like normal, but it doesn’t look that way,” Enzenauer said, adding about the only thing he can’t do is pick up paper with his hand.  
He continues to farm with his deformed arm like nothing ever happened. His accident, which happened when he was 19, never deterred him from wanting to keep farming. “If anything, it gave him more determination,” his wife said.
With a part of her arm gone, Dana will be fit with a prosthetic arm soon. She will be given a shoulder harness, which will allow her hand to open and close. Once she has her new arm, Dana has been told she will be able to do everything except the monkey bars and a necklace class. She will be working with the Shriners Hospital to learn how to adapt to life with prosthesis. 
Her parents like to keep a sense of humor about it all around Dana. “Somebody thinks since the accident, she doesn’t have to come out and help,” Shelly said looking at her daughter. “Her calves are being neglected by her,” Shelly joked. 
A benefit is planned to help the family with medical bills. There will be a pancake breakfast at NRHEG Elementary School in Ellendale on March 22 from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. The benefit will also include a bake sale, silent auction and live auction. A free will offering will be taken. Fareway Foods of Owatonna has helping out by donating to the benefit.
While her parents have been cutting her some slack with chores, Dana can’t wait to get back to helping out the family again like she has always done. But she has placed one crucial restriction on any future farm work that she will be involved with. 
“I’ll help out, but I’m not going by any augers or things that turn really, really fast,” Dana said.