He Knows: Use Gloves If You Pull Knapweed

Jerry Niehoff underestimated knapweed, and now he’s missing two fingers.

“If it happened to me, it could happen to someone else,” he says.

Doctors could find no other cause for the tumors that dogged Jerry for two years after he yanked knapweed from the ground barehanded. Jerry learned his lesson, and he wants the world to benefit from his mistake. Don’t pull spotted knapweed without gloves.

“It’s nasty stuff,” he says.

Jerry’s 49, a soil scientist for the U.S. Forest Service in Coeur d’Alene, not one to call attention to himself. So he was surprised when his mishap with knapweed hit the Internet two months ago and his phone began ringing.

“I’ve had calls from people in every Western state,” he says. “And from people who have hand-pulled knapweed and are afraid. And from people with leukemia and other forms of cancer who think knapweed could be the cause.”

Jerry had answered a co-worker’s questions about his experience by computer. He’s not sure how his writing ended up on the Internet, but he doesn’t mind. People need to know.

He figured he could pull the knapweed on the acreage he wanted to buy near Athol five years ago. Three or four Saturdays at 10 sweaty hours each. Jerry could get into this kind of work.

Knapweed is a prickly nightmare with purple flowers. It drives away other plants and sickens - sometimes kills - animals.

Jerry’s first day out, he weeded without gloves and the ropelike stalks cut into his right-hand fingers at the middle knuckles. By the end of the day, the weed’s gooey sap had mingled with Jerry’s blood.

“The cuts were real painful right from the start,” he says. “I thought I’d injured a tendon.”

He didn’t pull any more. The cuts healed, but his hands stayed sore. Every time Jerry clenched his hand or bent his fingers, he winced.

About a year later, a bump began growing on his pinkie. He ignored it for six months. When it reached the size of a pea, Jerry headed for help.

His doctor thought the bump was a cyst. He advised Jerry to see a hand specialist if the cyst bothered him. Jerry’s a stoic and waited six months even though the bump grew so tender that tears sprang to his eyes when he touched it.

The hand specialist removed the cyst and grafted skin around the wound. Tests identified the bump as a noncancerous tumor. Jerry was relieved.

A few months later, the tumor popped up again, on both sides of the graft. The doctor cut to Jerry’s nerves and tendons this time, but couldn’t get all the tumor cells. Jerry resigned himself to losing the finger to save his hand.

“It was real frustrating,” he says. “The doctors were confused by what was happening.”

The surgeon amputated the pinkie down to the wrist but saved the finger’s nerves. The wound had hardly healed before a tumor sprouted on Jerry’s ring finger. His doctor pointed him to the North Idaho Cancer Center.

Dr. Jeurgen Bertram, an oncologist, was fascinated with Jerry’s mysterious tumors. First, he sent Jerry’s tissue to a pathology expert at the University of Michigan. She declared the tumor benign.

Then he sent Jerry to a soft tissue expert at the University of Washington’s cancer center.

The UW doctor “was very straightforward and told me not to think for a minute that this wasn’t cancer,” says Jerry, who’s left-handed. “Removing the second finger wasn’t even an issue. I was afraid the tumors would spread.”

Doctors amputated Jerry’s ring finger to the bottom knuckle. They found no evidence of cancer.

In his written assessment of Jerry’s case, Bertram refers to knapweed as a possible source of the tumors.

Researchers have studied knapweed’s effects on plants and animals but haven’t paid much attention to people. Pamphlets warn that some people may be sensitive to the chemicals in the noxious plant and advise weeders to wear gloves.

Jerry’s had no tumors or pain in his right hand for two years. A bump on his middle finger scared him not too long after his surgeries. It was a callous.

“I was so nervous it would come back that I rubbed my finger until the skin built up,” he says.

Knapweed spreads so fast that efforts to get rid of it never stop, which Jerry figures explains the widespread interest in his story. He has only two words for everyone: “Wear gloves.”

, DataTimes