School time always means some noticeable changes to the Ridesharing biz. Traffic in the morning ramps up and things seems to find some normalcy….patterns. Consistency is easier to predict as a driver. There was literally nothing extraordinary to blog about in the past week. I literally said that to my self yesterday around noon. Then I met Donald.
Not even 30 years old, Donald has a prosthetic leg that begins 2/3 the way down between his right hip and knee. Truly, his last year has been a “Year from Hell”. His exact words.
Last June, he was at work. A typical day. Until his leg got caught in an auger. Yes, you read that right. It happened so quickly, he’s still not sure how it exactly happened.
It literally ripped his leg off just above the knee. He was 35 feet in the air and alone when it happened. The force was so strong from the auger that it twisted and ripped his jeans, and becuase of the snug fit of denim, it yanked his leg completely off and out from the jeans before he realized what had happened.
He saw his jean leg dangling and assumed it broke the leg. He reached down to pull it up and there was nothing there…just blood. Lots of blood pulsing out of his shredded thigh.
What he didnt know in that moment, but later learned at the hospital, was that the force from the auger somehow ripped out his right testicle.
His first thought was that he had to stop the bleeding. Amazingly, he had the wherewithal to get his belt off and put a tourniquet at the top of his leg. It slowed the bleeding, but not enough. He shifted the belt around to put his buckle along his artery, twisted it and tightened it to where the large buckle was putting pressure on that artery and slowed the bleeding down. Hearing him re-tell it, it occurs to me that probably 75% of people would be in such a panic mode they couldnt think to make a tourniquet, let alone put enough pressure on the artery.
He said it took nine minutes for anybody to realize what had happened and another 12 minutes to get up to him. He was very specific on the time. I can only imagine watching time tick away knowing there is a possibility of bleeding out alone. It then took 20 minutes to get him down, and it was another 12 minutes before the paramedics got there. Then it was a 15-minute ride into the emergency room. That’s over an hour. Incredible.
If that was the end of the story, that’s still one hell of a story, but sadly there were so many complications over the next several months. They took his leg about four inches above his knee. On a follow-up visit, they took a skin graft from his left quad to put on his stump. Several days later he started bleeding from his stump, and I won’t go into great detail about the excessive amount of blood or the pain, but he went to the emergency room where they helped stop the bleeding and gave him something for the pain, but then sent him home with no further investigation into what caused it.
Over the course of the next three weeks, there were three more emergency room visits and two hospital visits. Every time there would be lots of blood loss and more excruciating pain than the original accident itself. Always, they sent him home the same day.
Finally on the sixth visit, an ambulance came instead of his family taking him to the ER. In the time it took the ambulance to get to him, he filled a little bathroom trash can 3/4 full of blood and demanded they took it with him so that the emergency room people could see how much blood he had lost. It was the third different hospital he had visited, and finally there was some investigation and not just treatment. They found two fistfuls of coagulated blood in his thigh, because his artery had not been cauterized properly and also discovered there was internal bleeding and that was the cause of the last few weeks and previous ER visits.
Things finally cleared up with the leg. He got fitted for his prosthetic and this should be the end of the story by saying 14 months later he’s adjusting to life with a new job and his life is on the uptick.
Sadly, the year from hell included a minor accident over Christmas. While with his girlfriend viewing the Rhema Christmas lights, she was pushing him in a wheelchair and going downhill in the dark. The front wheel found a large crack in the pavement. The wheelchair stopped, but he did not. He broke his hip at the ball joint and spent 8 weeks recovering from that. And then four months later was riding in the passenger seat of a car when the car got T-boned. Amazingly all he received was bumps, bruises and some scratches and a minor concussion.
Hearing his story reminded me of those “fake” accident reports that got emailed around in the 90s. They were so ridiculous they were hilarious. Thjs was real life.
He’s actually gone over 60 days now with nothing happening. Let’s pray to God this guy has about 25 years of uneventful days. I think he deserves it.
Uber & Lyft: Everyone Has A Story 