Thanks brother. Yeah, I'm good. Lucky really. Didn't have a good chance of surviving but I proved the doctors wrong. I was airlifted to burn unit and another guy got there right before me, he was John Doe and I was Xavier Doe. We were both close to 40% burnt, he was in a meth lab explosion and only made it 3 days. I was in ice tub for 5 days trying to get my core temp down. They wouldn't even attempt skin graphs until temp came down and appeared I would live. Scrub downs were to remove dead skin cells and fight off infection. They would come into my room in ICU and wheel me down to this room with 2 stainless tables in it. The side of the table would fold down and they would strip me and slide me onto the table. Cut off all the bandages and rinse me down with some cold ass water, I would ***** at them, and then take what felt like plastic scrub brushes and start going to town on the burns. It was horrible. The days I didn't pass out it was like I was numb or in a trance. Wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. After ICU I was in step down unit and I gotta say, it tore me up seeing these kids in there just knowing what they were going thru and hearing them screaming during their treatment. Spent a lot of time talking with the kids and their parents. I joined a support group called SOAR, survivors offering assistance in recovery, did that for about a year but just seeing new faces and hearing new stories I couldn't do it anymore. Needless to say, my wife was 6 months pregnant with our first when this happened and wasn't working. I was told I couldn't go back to swinging wrenches for a living. This happened January, I was out of hospital in beginning of March against my doctors orders and was back to working on tractor trailers and tug boats in April. Had full thickness skin graphs on my hands so I was working in compression garments, no hair on the front of my head and the cartilage sticking out the tops of my ears. Did that for another 16 months to put food on the table and then had to give it up. I was developing keloids (blister/calluse like lumps) on my hands so I gave it up and got into the steel workers union. No lasting effects other than scars and my pinky on my left hand is contracted from burning into the tendon. Therapy couldn't get it back. We tried.
All that said, this is why I do this kinda stuff. I miss wrenching for a living so I'm always tinkering with my rigs to give me some sort of satisfaction. It's also nice having 18 years of buying tools come home to the garage.
But enough about me. I'm so close on this Denali I can almost taste it. I'll update 2mrw with pics, gotta get to bed to do the pinewood derby in the morning.
