I have fallen and I barely got up...

On Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:24:24 -0400, "nunya" <...@nunya.net

Shirley, drinks, pain pills, antibiotics and anti-inflammitories for
whoever needs them...

Last Monday I got a call from my ham radio mentor. A mutual friend had a
12' Earth-Moon-Earth dish antenna that he no longer needed and had some tree
guys on the schedule to cut trees the next day. Said that if I could get
there before the tree guys tore it up, I could have it.

So I jumped in my bucket truck and tore up the road all excited about the
new score. To buy a similar antenna with all the bling for EME work would
cost a couple of grand. This already had a four direction rotator, correct
LMB, mast, cables and controller. I was excited.

I arrived at the job site, backed the bucket truck in and set the
outriggers. I crawled up on the back of the truck and swung one leg into
the bucket and then grabbed the opposite edge of the bucket to pull myself
the rest of the way in. Next thing I knew, I was waking up laying on the
cement in a pool of blood with the fellow Ham standing over me.

I reached to feel the back of my head and thought I felt brain matter.
He was fixing to call 911 and I told him to wait. he got me a couple of ice
packs and I sat in a lawn chair bleeding like a stuck hog. He was still
insisting on calling the ambulance but I talked him out of it and finally
got up, put the bucket truck back in travelling mode and drove myself the 30
minutes back to town. On the way I called onr of my rock climbing partners
that is a doctor. I asked if I should come see him or go to the hospital.
He said to come to his place.

I took the bucket truck back to work, shut down the computers, turned off
the lights and armed the alarm. Once I had all this done I called the ol
lady and of course she freaked but met me at his office. When I got there
and he saw me he freaked. He knew I was hard headed but had not anticipated
that I was as messed up as it turns out.

The back of my head was busted open with a gash shped like a sideways
cross. The horizontal cut was abut 6 inches and the vertical gash was about
4" along with several other smaller busted open areas. Realizing that they
could actually see my skull kinda freaked everyone out, especially the ol
lady. So he did a full series of Xrays from the hips up. Immediately they
found a dislocated shoulder and a broken clavical. The spine and skull
looked o.k. but he sent me for a CAT scan just for grins that turned out
o.k.

Then came the blood work to check internal organ functions and all that
was clean. My shoulder was really killing me so an MRI determined that I
have completely trashed the rotator cuff and it is going to have to be
operated on to fix it. Real bummer since I was just recovering from the
issues with my back and had just gotten back to riding my bike, my
motorcycle and rock climbing.

When it came time to close up the head, he told his nurse to shave the
back of my head so that we could sew it up. I balked and asked him if it
could be glued instead. he said the dermabond was too runny and would run
down into the wound before setting. I then suggested my favorite wound
fixxer upper, Krazy-Glue Gell. It tends to stay where you put it better
until it dries. So we sent my wife to Dollar General for some consumer
grade glue.

When she got back, he let her carefully trim the hair around the wound
and then she helped him glue the wound shut. Before they started, I asked
for some lydocane and he just laughed. he said this would not be near as
much fun if I couldn't feel it. What a jerk, but hey, he is a friend of
mine and birds of a feather flock. It took them over an hour to glue my
head shut. He guessed the wound would have taken around 40 stitches to
close but was really impressed with the Krazy-Glue Gell. Now, with my hair
in its normal pony tail, folks can't even see the wound.

I made several critical mistakes that caused this. First is not
inspecting my equipment fully before comitting to the system. There is a
lever that releases the bucket in order to service the controls. Apparently
the safety pin had vibrated out driving up the road and when I was pulling
myself into the bucket I must have accidentally pulled on the release lever.
Now it has a pad lock instead of a pin. Second was that I didn't take the
time to put my helmet or harness on and attach a safety lanyard. Although I
would have normally waitied until in the bucket to clip in. The fall was
only about 15 feet but that cement was hard and the way the bucket dumped me
I hit head first.

From 30 years of mountain climbing and working off the ground, apparently
I have lost the proper respect for heights. At least I re- learned this
lesson 15 feet off the ground instead of high enough to have killed me. So
the doc is saying 6 to 8 months to repair and recover. He said two weeks
off from work and then limited duty. So today is one week and we have the
trucks loaded and I am going to spend the morning running a chain saw while
my helpers load and haul off the debris.

I feel miserable but alive. The busted head is no deal, the CAT scan
said I didn't have enough brain matter left to do any real damage.
Apparently all the booze and drugs during the 70's and 80's had an up side
later in life. The real bummer is the right shoulder. The broken clavicle
and trashed rotator cuff hurt like a mother. Apparently the shoulder joint
is very swollen and filled with blood which aggrevates the injury even more.
My lower back, L5/S1 issue has also flared back up. Dangit!

The moral of this story is that when you lose respect for dangerous stuff
it will bite you on your posterior. Just two days earlier, I had been
pontificating on the importance of always wearing a DOT approved helmet and
armoured jacket when riding a motorcycle. Then I went and fell out of my
bucket truck without taking any obvious safety precautions. What a moron.
So in between laughing and crying about the deal on my part, all ya'll have
a laugh cause it is really kinda funny and take a lesson from me. When you
are going to be working off the ground, consider putting your brain in a
bucket.
michael

the "busted up both physically and badly bruised pride" part time scooter
folk