John's Page

Welcome to John's Web Page. We have put this together to keep all of our friends and family updated on John's progress.

Journal

Monday, September 15, 2003 6:27 PM CDT

The Choices We Make Are the Chances We Take
By John Freivalds

On July 5th 2003 my outlook on life changed forever. On that day due to ignorance and carelessness on my part , I suffered- and then survived-second degree burns over 65% of my body. The Pegasus helicopter pilot who flew me from Stonewall Jackson Hospital in Lexington to the world class burn unit at UVA in Charlottesville later told the emergency room doctor that I was the only burn victim he has seen with over 50% burns that has lived past 48 hours.

The amazing thing is that coming this close to death I left people in physically worse shape at the UVA burn unit and the Healthsouth Rehabilitation Hospital where I also spent a month. While the front pages of newspapers and lead ins in the evening news focus on spectacular crashes on I-81 or suicide bombings someplace on earth, the fact remains that 75% of all injuries happen at home. Sure some of my roommates at the hospital suffered severed spinal cords from exotic skydiving or motorcycle accidents but for the most part people were there with severe injuries form falling off of ladders or using flammable solvents too near a pilot light or some “shortcut” or another. Not only did their outlooks on life change but also so did their lifestyles as their ability to walk, talk and see had changed.

While in rehab I met a man who is a safety engineer injured from an auto accident who gave me a wonderful insight on my happened to other “ doers. “Basically we are a “doing” people we frequently think only about the task to be done yet forget or don’t concentrate on how we are going to do it, i.e. changing a light bulb. We probably don’t think we should really take time to go and get the good stepladder that was left way-out back. And because of this lack of awareness that it really doesn’t matter how many safety signs you put up, people are too busy “doing” to notice them. Have you fully read the airbag or rollover warning on your sun visor and do you really listen when the flight attendant gives emergency procedures?

Unlike taking a bus today in Jerusalem, these days we seldom associate risk of injury with anything we do around the house including changing storm windows and cleaning gutters on a rickety ladder. Yet we put on seat belts when we drive on the highway and life preservers when we go fishing and most of the time put the safety on our guns when hunting. We think of those risks. To help keep the burn unit and rehab hospitals unoccupied we should use more common sense and consciously think what is the “upside and downside” of doing something this or that way. In my case a series of circumstances reinforced a bad initial decision. I thus created the “perfect accident.”

The bad initial decision on my part was to use gasoline for anything other than powering my car or lawnmowers. In selling some timber off of our land this year we left huge brushpiles 150 feet long and ten feet high. I wanted to get rid of some of them right way so that there would be no impediments to planting pine seedlings that I had planned for the spring.

My sole focus was on burning that brush pile as quickly as possible. I had lit one end of the pile with newspapers but given our wet weather that was going slowly. Not really think of any adverse consequences I grabbed a 5-gallon gas can that had 1 gallon of gas in it. That I later learned meant it was 4/5th full of vapors which are more dangerous and deadly than the gasoline. As my plastic surgeon later queried “ When are you guys going to learn that its the vapors not the gasoline that is the real danger. See those no smoking signs with caps at the gas pump?”

So then I carried this can full of vapors down the hill way past where an open flame is struggling to burn the wet brush. So I started to pour the gasoline out, the wind was behind me and caught the vapors which raced up to the open flame and the came back to the gas can like a high powered fuse exploding the can and causing my burns and almost ending my life. The slope of the hill at about 305 degrees made a huge difference. While lying in my hospital bed I watched a show about forest fires. In one experiment on a flat platform, it took 12 minutes for the brush pile to be totally engaged. When they raised the brush pile platform to 45 degrees it took 12 seconds!

All the other accidents that I came across at the burn unit and the rehab hospital had some similar confluence of events followed by one flawed non-thinking decision. It takes just a second less to cause death or serious injury that can result a lifetime of hurt. So the next time you get on a step ladder to change the lightbulb, or the big ladder you just bought at Lowe’s to cleanout your gutters, consider the upside and downside or risk joining the subculture of broken and burned bodies that I am now part of. And it breaks my heart when a roomate with a severed spine looks over at my doing my painful yet rewarding leg exercises to increase flexibility and says wistfully “ I wish could do that again.”

This is all a matter of personal responsibility. In spite of the TV commercials and newspaper ads to sue for injuries, do I sue the gas can manufacture for not informing me about vapors? Or should the young woman in heels who stood on a chair with rollers to change a lightbulb sue the shoe manufacturer, the chair manufacturer, or the maintenance department for not coming around sooner? But you know if we made the world safe for idiots we would only be left with idiots.

I am trying my darndest to get everyone I know to consider how they going to do something before they actually do it. As my safety engineer friend Bill said” The choices we make are the chances we take.”

--------------------------------------------------

This is the last entry. Thank you so much for helping us through this time. Your love and support will never be forgotten.
Love,
The Freivalds Family

Look at past journal entries

Hospital Information:

Patient Room: 316A

John Freivalds, c/oUVA HealthSouth
515 Ray C. Hunt Drive
Charlottesville, VA 22903
(434) 244-2184 (in John's room)

---

 

Your gift will help millions of people stay connected with friends and loved ones during challenging times.

---

 

This page has been viewed 5178 times.

Note: The foregoing information was authored by the patient, parent or guardian, or other parties who are solely responsible for the content. Such announcements or their content are not necessarily endorsed by CaringBridge, Inc. or any sponsoring agent.  This information does not confirm that anyone is or was actually a patient at any facility.