Dolly Parton’s mother saved her from losing her toes as a child after administering emergency surgery – with a darning needle.
The ‘I Will Always Love You’ star revealed on the Dr. Oz Show how she badly injured her foot by treading on broken glass and her mother quickly sewed them back on, improvising with what they had lying about their home.
The 71-year-old icon recalled: "I was probably about six or seven. I had jumped across the fence onto a broken mason jar and cut three of my toes, just my little toes on my right foot, almost off and they were just kind of hanging there.
"So they grabbed me up and all my dad and my brothers, they had to hold me down. Momma, she put cornmeal – now, you’re a doctor, you might know, I think the cornmeal was to absorb the blood.
"They put kerosene on it for antiseptic and momma took her sewing needles – she used to make our quilts and stuff, and she literally had to sew my toes back on. But they worked and they healed and I’m still walking on them."
The legendary country singer’s mother Avie Lee Owens died at the age of 79 in 2003.
In her hit ‘Coat Of Many Colours’, Dolly sings about how her mother stitches together rags to make her a beautiful coat.
And the ‘Jolene’ hitmaker shared the story of her impoverished upbringing in the Smoky Mountains in the 2015 TV movie of the same name, starring singer Jennifer Nettles as Avie.
Dolly said at the time: "It brought us back together as family and made us miss mama and daddy a lot.
"They’re gone now, but we get a chance to see our brothers and sisters again and when we were little, and think of mama and daddy and all that they meant to us."
Dolly Parton: My mother sewed my toes back on
