..........
I guess at this point, I should explain, I've had a life of pain, culminating when I was 25 with a 12,000 volt experience. Not good. Supposedly I am lucky I survived it..........
Sorry to hear you have this medical record issue, I wonder how it will affect your coverage or treatment options? I don't have any helpful suggestions about this situation, but.....
If you don't mind, can you say more about the 12,000 volt experience? This could be a story not many people can tell.
1978, Memorial Day Weekend. I had a Hobie 16. My first wife and our daughter and I went on vacation to Shasta Lake in Northern California. It was the first year of rain after a prolonged drought and all the lakes were brimming full. We found a campsite at Bailey Cove. I set up the boat and we went sailing that morning out onto the main lake. Later that day I went out by myself as my wife and daughter took a nap. There were some high voltage transmission lines crossing the lake above the launch ramp area, but they were up well over 100' above the lake surface. I did not notice there was also a set of lines much closer down, 12,000 lines going to the marina in the next cove to the north. I was putting up the main sail, the boat heading into the wind and slowly drifting north toward the end of the cove and the mast contacted these lower wires. Next thing I know I am lying across the back of the boat with my hips on the rear frame of the trampoline and my chest across the rudder bar, doing the funky monkey. I knew it was electricity but I did not know why. I figured I was going to die. It was strange because the boat had, between the first contact and this brief bit of consciousness, turned around 180 degrees. About all I remember was thinking my wife was going to be really upset with me. Subsequent to this, I don't know how long I was unconscious, I remember being aware of everything. Yeah, sounds like a sort of typical near death experience. But no bright lights, no other people or beings. Just being, I don't know exactly how to put it, but like being everywhere at once and seeing everything from every angle. I do remember seeing a view of myself on the Hobie, lying across the back of it, on Lake Shasta but a very long ways down, like I was at 1000' or more. Then unconsciousness again, for an undetermined amount of time, then I'm awake, lying on my back and sinking in the water, perhaps 15' down, and looking up at the boat above me. I began to swim up to the surface. Or tried to. My right arm wouldn't work. But I had swum competitively for most of my life and I was still in pretty good shape so by using my left arm and kicking I reached the surface and managed to stay there. I waved my arm and yelled for what seems a long time before a boat from a camp site on the lake shore came out. Two guys, pulled me aboard. I sat down in the seat behind the front passenger seat facing aft. One of the guys sat sort of across from me. Apparently I had no obvious indication of having been electrified. I remember realizing I had a very bad pain in my crotch so I unzipped my pants and out plopped a badly burnt and very plump Ball Park hot dog. The guy across from me threw up. I remember saying "I guess I burnt that one". The guy driving looked back and almost lost control of the boat. Then I noticed my boat going headlong towards a cliff on the east side of the cove. I asked them to get it. They did. We went back to the launch ramp dock and while I was securing the Hobie, a woman came up to me and began ranting to me about being careful, I had just fallen in and she felt I might do so again. I turned to her and looking down at my chest, I unbuttoned my shirt and showed her my chest, which I hadn't seen until then, and said, "I didn't fall in, I was electrocuted!" My chest was probably even more gruesome than my crotch, thought perhaps not as visceral. She screamed and ran off. I went to the car and unhitched the trailer and put it in the next space and then drove back to our campsite. Work up the wife and told her I had to go to the hospital, pronto. She started messing about cleaning up the camp, I screamed at her that we had to go NOW!! She got the message and we left. On the way into Redding, I lost it and went sort of nuts. That encouraged her to go faster. When we got to the Hospital, she left me off and I went around to the ER entrance while she parked the car. The staff there took me in right away and the whole staff was replaced without knowing who I was or what had happened. They started doing all sorts of tests. Meanwhile, my wife shows up and asks about me, but the new staff didn't know anything and so there was a big rush to look around outside in case I had collapsed somewhere. Eventually it got straightened out and after about 20 minutes, maybe more, once they were satisfied I was probably not going to die right then and there, they gave me a shot of morphine. I asked to see my wife and daughter and they said "Sure" but make it quick because in a few minutes I probably would not be able to talk. They showed my wife and daughter in and I explained what had happened, 20 minutes later the doctor checked back in and was amazed I was still conscious, and in pain, so he gave me another shot. That did the trick. I guess they took to me the ICU. There were two other patients there, one an older guy they were removing his spine because of cancer and a younger kid that had wrecked a tractor pulling a disc that had then run over him. We were a merry bunch.
I guess I was healing really fast, couldn't have any sheets or anything on me, as the new tissue would grow right into the fabric. So there I lay, naked to the world. Not that I cared much. I guess they'd never had a live electrification victim before so they asked if they could show me off to the various staff. I didn't realize they meant possible medical person withing a 50 mile radius. I was quite an attraction. I had one large hole, about an inch across on the back of my right arm, three 3" long and 1' wide holes in my right chest, along with two other 1" diameter holes (apparently the stainless steel fitting where the tiller extension attaches to the rudder cross bar), the exit wounds, then a series of perforations across my stomach (probably the stainless steel rivets holding the track for the main sheet) and then my penis with about 1/3 of the circumference and almost the entire length burned. It was weird, my shirt had only the slightest burn in a sort of sketchy pattern on the right chest, hardly noticeable, my pants had no indication at all. Anyway, I lay there for three days as they paraded a lot of people past. Most were visibly shaken. I thought the kid sliced up by the disc was worse looking but I guess it was the penis thing. They kept me pretty well drugged up. My wife's brother and father came up from Santa Cruz where we all lived and picked up the Hobie and took it and my daughter back. After three days, the docs figured I wasn't going to die and I might as well go home as they really didn't have the personnel nor facilities to do much for me. Stuffed me in the car and off we went, me lying there naked. I was waiting for a cop to stop us for exposing myself. Didn't happen. Got home, next day went to see the Plastic Surgeon who had already been prepped for me by the docs in Redding. Next day, they did debridement. That was to remove as much as possible all the dead tissue in my chest so it didn't become gangrene. Apparently the electricity can kill some bits and skip right over others.10 hour operation, me conscious the whole time, literally strapped to the table every way they could. I had to be as the best way to tell if the tissue was good or bad was it bled and I screamed, that meant it was good and they shouldn't cut it out. If it didn't bleed and I didn't scream, then they cut it out. When they cut on some good tissue, it bled and I screamed and they'd hit it with a xylocaine spray and I'd sort of relax. And wait for 15 minutes for the xylocaine to wear off and back at it. They'd dig and snip and cut and I'd bleed and scream and they'd spray the xylocaine and on and on. Eventually they got tired and had to quit. I didn't have a choice. Came back a couple of days later, did it again, but only for 6 hours. Then I was scheduled for skin grafts. Another long operation, it was dark when I went under and dark when I came back out of anesthesia. They took about a 3" x 5" patch of skin off my thigh. Tried to patch up my arm, chest and penis, the stomach wounds they just sewed up. To close the wounds on my chest, the three big long slots, they had to do a secondary wound closure, meaning they couldn't get it entirely closed so they closed it as much as they could with a network of bolsters across most of my upper torso. The only skin graft that actually sort of took was the one on my penis. Ruffles have ridges and so do I. Even so, it took six months for the arm, chest and penis to completely skin over. I had to take six showers a day. Phisohex. I was the cleanest cat in town. It was a month before they removed the network of stitches and bolsters and so on from my chest. That was a relief. One thing about an electrical burn, it's generally sterile so I never got any infections. Did have a couple of instances of bits of tissue that had died and then slowly migrated to the surface up to a year later, that was gnarly.
Eventually everything healed over and it all works. I sued PG&E and that was a disaster that took 7 years. I ended up with $15K for my troubles. Nearly had to take my attorneys to court to collect that. Hence my great love and admiration of attorneys.
I strongly suggest not messing about with high voltage. Or even low voltage. I guess I was lucky. But if that were true, I'd not have had the experience at all. Or perhaps the nurse in Redding, John, a fabulous guy, natural healer type, but quite religious, said upon my leaving, "I know why you didn't die, Heaven was certainly not going to take you and Hell didn't want you."
Overall, it definitely affected me, both mentally and emotionally, perhaps a bit physically. When asked what it was like, I've generally described the actual electrification as being a rag doll in the hands of an enraged god.
Topic: Medical Records (Read 838 times)
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