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When Bob Palmer, math teacher, lost one of his digits -- in this case, his right thumb -- in a lawnmower accident two weeks ago, he ended up, thumb wrapped in towel, at Morristown Memorial Hospital.

There he ran into none other than Ross Fox, a former student of his at Columbia High School in Maplewood, who, nearly 20 years later, would operate on him.

The math teacher's first question: "So, did you like me?"

"Yes," Fox replied.

Whew.

If Fox wasn't Palmer's star student back in 1984 and 1985, he wasn't far off.

"I'm pretty sure I gave him an A," Palmer recalled. "It might have been an A-minus."

Palmer, 56, who has taught at Columbia High since 1973, severed the thumb after what he calls "a severe accident on a piece of machinery." That's one way to put it. The machinery in question was a 15-horsepower Scag walk-behind mower, a nifty piece of grass-cutting genius favored by landscapers.

It is way more machinery than the average homeowner needs, but Palmer does have an acre of lawn to mow at his Mendham home.

"Forty-eight inches," Palmer said of the 12-year-old mower's spacious cutting deck. "Twenty inches, I'd be out there cutting grass all my life."

As he was cutting the grass one cold, crisp Sunday morning, he stopped to make an adjustment in the mower's drive belt. As he reached in, his gloved hand got stuck in an belt-and-pulley mechanism. It sucked his hand in.

"A smart person would have turned off the motor," he said. "I was running late, didn't have time, had things to do . . .

He quickly pulled his hand out, his thumb hanging by torn skin and a few nerves and veins.

"The tendons, the bone -- everything was off," Fox explained.

"I took my thumb, put it back on, went inside the house, ran cold water on it and wrapped it," Palmer said.

His wife, Linda, edged near to get a closer look, but Palmer shielded the destroyed digit from her.

"He said, 'Get some ice, call 911,' " Linda Palmer recalled. "I said, 'Can I see?' He said, 'Not this one.' "

"I almost passed out twice," Palmer said. "I wasn't in good shape. There was pain, but it was more acceptance of the fact that didn't have my thumb anymore."

Their son, also named Bob, came over to shut the lawn mower off. (The couple has four children.)

At the hospital, the math teacher ran into Fox, who just happened to be on duty. Fox, 34, of Denville, works at North Jersey Hand Surgery, across from the street from the hospital.

The two recognized each other almost immediately.

"His hair is a little grayer, but he still looks the same," Fox said. "He said, 'I need my thumb; I'm right-handed.' "

According to Fox, Palmer was a "strict" teacher. How strict? One day, 10 minutes into a math exam, the fire bell went off. When Fox and his classmates returned, they discovered Palmer had crossed out the top portion of the test in red ink; none of the answers, right or wrong, would count. He wanted to rule the possibility of the students exchanging information while they were waiting in the schoolyard.

"He was a strict teacher, but never mean," Fox said.

The operation to reattach Palmer's thumb -- done under a microscope -- lasted seven hours. Don't ask the patient what happened; he was under anesthesia, or as Palmer puts it, "somewhere on an island with a margarita in my hand."

Fox and Abram Kirschenbaum, also at North Jersey Hand Surgery, sewed the tendons back together using sutures "thinner than a hair," according to Fox.

"The tendon is a rope that (in this case was) cut," he explained. "You sew the ends of the rope back together."

"They rebuilt the knuckle, they rebuilt the tendons," Palmer said. "No pun intended, but we're keeping our fingers crossed."

On Thursday, Palmer, 4-inch-long stainless steel pins sticking out of his thumb, was checked by Fox.

"It's pink and it's alive," the tall, wavy-haired surgeon said of his patient's thumb. "It's looking good. He's right on schedule. He's clearing the hurdle of vascular flow (blood flowing in and out)."

"There's definitely feeling in the thumb," Palmer said.

What will Fox be on the lookout for in the coming weeks?

"(That there's) no infection, and making sure the blood supply stays good," he replied. "The next thing is looking for bone healing. Once there's bone healing, then we can start looking at motion."

Time will tell how much further surgery Palmer will require. A fair amount of it will depend on the teacher -- how much use and movement of his thumb and hand he wants, and needs.

"His healing process is a series of hurdles he has to overcome," Fox explained. "The first hurdle is to keep the blood flowing. He's doing well. But he has a long road ahead of him. Typically, nerve healing takes six months to a year. And if the bone doesn't heal, he may need grafting."

Driving a car, naturally, is out of the question for the time being; Palmer hopes to return to class in the coming months.

"He can't drive for a while," Linda Palmer said. "He's got to do his therapy. But he's dying to come back."

The math teacher's worst fear in all this? Not necessarily losing a digit, but what losing a digit would mean.

"I was worried I would no longer be able to teach advanced math since I could only count to nine," he cracked.

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