Greetings Steemit users!
I am a computer nerd, hardware enthusiast, small time streamer / youtuber.
Computers have always been my passion, but it has also always just been a hobby and it took a massive live changing event to force it to become my livelihood.
I have always worked crap jobs, the last one I worked was as a Commercial kitchen exhaust cleaner. You may be asking yourself "What is this?" basically, i would go in to restaurants when they were closed, splash some super harsh chemicals down the exhaust then wash it down with super heated water.
Decent enough gig, but hard on the body.
Back on October 28th 2013, while I was working the unexpected happened. I fell from the room of a 4 story bulding
How did this happen?
It was around 11:30pm on a moonless night, I had started work at 5:30 that morning.
We walked in to the resort (beautiful place, right on the west coast of Vancouver island) and started setting the places up, covering equipment and such. We went up to the roof, after getting up there I discovered that my flashlight was dead so I followed my partner who decided to take off ahead of me at about the half way point.
The guy has little man syndrome and needs to be the big man, first at everything and show that hes the big man in town so that explains why he left me in the dark.
So there I am fumbling around on the roof, navigating by ambient light from the parking lot. I manage to get close enough to see my partners light disappear behind the fan, so I used that as my point of reference and walked toward where he was. unable to see the ground, I stepped to walk behind the fan and just walked off the edge of the building.
You may ask, why was I not harnessed up?
Well, yea... I should have been, had I actually had a harness, there was actually nowhere in that area to hook up to except for the fan itself. Side note: my employer was very shady, we worked for straight time and refused to pay overtime which is why I was working such a long day. if we didn't do that he would just hire another crew who would, so it was financially motivated.
I landed on a plastic crate which happened to be full of lawn furniture cushions. It wasn't so much the soft innards which saved me so much as the crumbling of the crate itself which took most of my force of the fall. Normally these crates are used as storage for propane tanks, so basically because someone was lazy I am able to be here writing this today.
(on the day of this photo, the crates were used to store propane tanks, they have not replaced the 3rd crate)
So there I was, laying on the ground on my left side. I am unsure how long I blacked out for, I figure it was about 30 seconds to a minute.
I was aware of what happened, started calling for help. When people started to arrive, I began telling them what I needed for my first aid until a nurse showed up (she was nice enough to tell me I screamed like a little girl all the way down when I went past her window)
At this point, my partner finally came down and I told him to call my then girlfriend, who contacted the rest of my family.
from the point that I hit the ground, to when I finally got to the hospital was about 4 hours.
Keep in mind that I was on the west coast of Vancouver island, so I had to be airlifted to Victoria BC.
After reaching the hospital my dad was waiting there for me, I will never forget this. no one else could have made it in time and I am extremely grateful for this.
Within minutes of arriving I was drugged (it took a couple shots for them to finally knock me out) and and sent in to the operating room. I woke multiple times during surgery and I remember someone saying "Oh shit, hes awake again."
Several hours later I woke up, still intubated and was told everything that was broken.
Compound Complex fracture of my left leg, compression fraction in my lower spine, a couple broken ribs, collapsed lung, I had bit through my tongue and on top of that I wound up with a concussion as well.
There is more to the story, but for now I will end it here for now...
