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"Dodging a bullet"

rydods

rydods

Member for quite some time.
Every now and again my anxiety kicks in and I recall things I've done as a kid that make me wonder how I managed to not get seriously hurt or killed.

This morning, I was thinking of some close calls as a business owner/installer that cause me to sit up and take notice. Like all the times I've climbed into a access door on the side of a sign without tying off, snipping wires before I've tested the power, or checking my phone briefly while driving.

A few weeks ago, we were installing a solid black stripe along the bottom of a bus. I had some spots that I needed to heat and conform to edges and corners and my other installer was using the heat gun on the other side so I was using a torch, which is fairly convenient in a pinch. I smelled strong gas fumes in one spot I was working and noticed a decent sized leak right below where I was applying my vinyl but didn't really put 2 and 2 together while I was walking over to grab the torch. By the time I returned to the spot it had finally clicked. :oops:

Anyone else have close calls or maybe even full on accidents they wish they could take back?
 
Johnny Best

Johnny Best

Active Member
The people with really good stories are not with us anymore. Like rydods if he did not realize about the torch not playing well with leaking gasoline.
 
Gino

Gino

Premium Subscriber
When I was a kid, my mom used to say I was part cat on about its 7th or 8th life..... after all the sh!t I did. I got stories you would not frickin' believe. I think the people in the emergency ward knew me by my first name. Oh, here he comes again......................... How ya doing kiddo ??
 
Mike Paul

Mike Paul

Super Active Member
When I was 15 I was hanging out on a porch with a good friend of mine shooting stuff / AKA Grackles raiding the neighbors garden.

Daisy BB gun pumped up as much as it would take, one BB in the chamber, two BB's dropped down the barrel to make poor mans buck shot.

Drinking Schlitz tall boys...:cool:

Long story short the gun barrel went off point blank range in my neck when we were shooting.

Blood shooting out, ran to his mothers house who took me to a local Dr who was more or less a veterinarian.:doh:

Takes an x-ray and it shows all 3 BB's in my neck, starts poking around in there with tools and says, cant help you, go to the hospital which should have been the first move from the beginning...

Get to the hospital they take x-rays and only 1 BB in the neck. ?? Where are the other two? They take x-rays of my upper body and the other 2 BB's are in my heart ?? WTF? Got into my blood stream somehow and believe it was because of the Quack DR poking around in my neck.

So, nobody really knows what to do at the hospital it's 4th of July weekend 1982 or 83 all the good Dr's are on vacation but they got hold of a very good cardiologist who was on vacation in the Caribbean and he says nobody can do anything, cant go in after them.. just try to keep him immobilized for 48 hours and hopefully they fall into a little pocket of the heart and scar tissue will grow over them because it's a foreign object and doesn't belong there.

24 hours later one pumped out of the left or right ventricle and thank god it went to my abdomen instead of up to the brain causing a stroke.

So the Dr. says let it go, it will be trapped in a small blood vessel and close off by itself.

Scar tissue grew over the other one in the heart and the other one that got trapped and closed off in a blood vessel in my abdomen.

So long story not so short,

Still have one BB in my heart, one in my abdomen and the one they got out of my neck in a jar...
 
Notarealsignguy

Notarealsignguy

Arial - it's almost helvetica
Mike Paul said:
When I was 15 I was hanging out on a porch with a good friend of mine shooting stuff / AKA Grackles raiding the neighbors garden.

Daisy BB gun pumped up as much as it would take, one BB in the chamber, two BB's dropped down the barrel to make poor mans buck shot.

Drinking Schlitz tall boys...:cool:

Long story short the gun barrel went off point blank range in my neck when we were shooting.

Blood shooting out, ran to his mothers house who took me to a local Dr who was more or less a veterinarian.:doh:

Takes an x-ray and it shows all 3 BB's in my neck, starts poking around in there with tools and says, cant help you, go to the hospital which should have been the first move from the beginning...

Get to the hospital they take x-rays and only 1 BB in the neck. ?? Where are the other two? They take x-rays of my upper body and the other 2 BB's are in my heart ?? WTF? Got into my blood stream somehow and believe it was because of the Quack DR poking around in my neck.

So, nobody really knows what to do at the hospital it's 4th of July weekend 1982 or 83 all the good Dr's are on vacation but they got hold of a very good cardiologist who was on vacation in the Caribbean and he says nobody can do anything, cant go in after them.. just try to keep him immobilized for 48 hours and hopefully they fall into a little pocket of the heart and scar tissue will grow over them because it's a foreign object and doesn't belong there.

24 hours later one pumped out of the left or right ventricle and thank god it went to my abdomen instead of up to the brain causing a stroke.

So the Dr. says let it go, it will be trapped in a small blood vessel and close off by itself.

Scar tissue grew over the other one in the heart and the other one that got trapped and closed off in a blood vessel in my abdomen.

So long story not so short,

Still have one BB in my heart, one in my abdomen and the one they got out of my neck in a jar...
Click to expand...
Kinda hard to 1 up that one. Holy crap
 
Johnny Best

Johnny Best

Active Member
Mike Paul said:
Drinking Schlitz tall boys..
Click to expand...
Putting beer in your body at 15 years old will do you more harm than inserting #3 BBs in your neck.
So you are now 55years old, you still drinking beer and playing with guns? I have a picture in my mind that you wear hoodies and look like John Fetterman who just won the race for Senate in Pennsylvania.
 
Mike Paul

Mike Paul

Super Active Member
Johnny Best said:
Putting beer in your body at 15 years old will do you more harm than inserting #3 BBs in your neck.
So you are now 55years old, you still drinking beer and playing with guns? I have a picture in my mind that you wear hoodies and look like John Fetterman who just won the race for Senate in
Click to expand...
Johnny Best said:
Putting beer in your body at 15 years old will do you more harm than inserting #3 BBs in your neck.
So you are now 55years old, you still drinking beer and playing with guns? I have a picture in my mind that you wear hoodies and look like John Fetterman who just won the race for Senate in Pennsylvania.
Click to expand...
.

Yes,
Pretty judgmental Mary Poppins.

Yes,
I actually have a couple hoodies.

Love Sam Adams on draft and Jameson on the rocks on the holidays.
 
Texas_Signmaker

Texas_Signmaker

Very Active Signmaker
I've got no story worth any interest. I've have MANY near misses in the car that by he grace of God I catch just in time.
 
GAC05

GAC05

Quit buggin' me
I was on the ragged end of a 10-day install on Saipan some years ago and was pushing to get it finished up. The customer was paying per diem, car & a room, but the longer I stayed the less I made with a fixed cost on the installation. Had a local crew taking care of moving and setting up the scaffolding needed to work on the roadside monument signs. There was an obstruction up top in the way on the last one. I installed by getting between it and the panels and pushing back against it while laying the graphics. Didn't think twice about it until I got done and noticed the obstruction I thought was a low-voltage telephone/cable company line was really the power drop coming from the transformer into the building. Luckily for me, the local crew was very safety-minded and had installed a slit 3ft pool noodle over the cable to keep me insulated.
No harm, no foul (and no photos for the after-action safety report), but I felt pretty stupid on the flight home.
 
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