NOTE: Caution—not for minors or for the squeamish…

As a rule, we tend to move from one day to the next governed by routines we choose or are chosen for us, until the day comes that upends it all in a split second.

The ER nurse pinned my arm in hers as she rubbed my hands with GO-JO™. I was amused for a moment, when I thought how much sense it made to use a popular industrial solvent to gently remove layers of molten asphalt from my hands. In this way, the layers of open flesh would not be further harmed.

An hour earlier, I crouched underneath a massive tank used to hold molten asphalt (475°). Using a metal punch, I poked a hole through the crusted porthole underneath. I was told the tank was full of lukewarm water. What came flowing out under pressure was hot asphalt.

I was new to industrial supervision, and new to this particular task. I had just been promoted from my position as a Quality Assurance technician. My wife was so proud of me. After years struggling to find my feet in the working world, we could both see a promising career path. We were sure good times were ahead, and the past struggles were all behind.

The asphalt covered my hands and flowed down my arms. I jumped out from underneath the tank, and slipped and fell into a puddle of the stuff.

Having worked around hot asphalt for a few months now, I knew that one property of  asphalt is that it is very slow to cool, and that it would cook and cook what ever it touched until it was. The only way to reduce the burn was to cool the asphalt down with water immediately after exposure. Close by was and emergency shower. I ran to it. I pulled the chain. Nothing came out. It was dry.

The burns seared me with each pulse of my veins. I staggered up to the QA office 500 feet away, slipping into shock along the way. I did not cry out for help. I just walked.

Once in the QA lab, my fellow employees recognized the serious state I was in, and draped my hands and arms with wet paper towels, then called 911.

When the ER nurse was finished with the GO-JO, they sent me to the burn unit where I would stay for the next twenty-eight days.

My wife took charge of my treatment—beginning with a third degree (pun intended) interrogation of my plastic surgeon.

“Where did you get your degree?”  Answered..”How long have you practiced?” Answered…”How successful have you been in burns like this?” Answered…. “Do you have references?” Answered …“Can I trust you with my husband’s care?” Answered. Answered. Answered.

For the next several days I spent hours in a warm gentle whirlpool bath, numbed with morphine, as nurse aids performed burn debridement; burned tissue is removed to allow healthy tissue to heal, to prevent more damage or infection, and to prepare the burned area for surgical skin grafting.

The aids used several methods of debridement; cutting the loose flaps of skin with scissors, scrubbing burn areas with plastic-bristle brushes until the area was exposed and bleeding, and using pressurized medicated water. They would work until I passed out or threw up, give me a break, and start again.

I could not tell I was loaded with morphine, and can’t imagine going through this without it.

Finally came the day of surgery. I understand it was a long one. A thin layer of skin from my scalp and from my outer thighs was removed to wrap my hands, upper arms, and lower legs. The doctor used a tool somehat like that of the ordinary potato peeler. The skin flaps were then stapled over the bare and open flesh.

When I woke from surgery, I had bandages covering all four appendages. I had a cloth wrapping my head– red from blood and medication. I looked as one injured in battle.

For days I was in and out from the medication. I remember visitors coming and going. I remember close friends visiting and breaking down in tears at the site of me. I remember co-workers I barely knew coming to sit for hours with me.

And I remember my wife, having to care for five children while her husband recuperated in the burn unit for a month—having to shunt her already stretched life, to be with me, to do those very basic things I could not do and did not want anyone else to….you may fill in the blanks.

I began to realize laying in the hospital bed that my feelings of self-sufficiency are an illusion. I am lost without others. And, if I am lost without others, it must stand that others are in need of me as well.

Once more, Ram Dass has it correct when he say’s “We are all just walking each other home.”

I was released from the hospital on Halloween day. I realized I needed clothing I could put on and take off without any help. I needed sweat suits. So, my wife and I went to the local “Target”. Picture this man, walking into Target on Halloween, his arms wrapped up like a mummy, and a blood colored bandage covering his scalp. I crossed a young child who stared at me, then looked up at his mom and said “Mommy, that man has a cool costume! ”

While I was in the hospital, my old LTD station wagon was stolen from work. It wasn’t much, but it was all I had to drive. The police later found it less than six blocks away. The power steering was gone in the car, so my guess is the first turn they had to make in it, the thief’s left it.

After Target, I went to the police station to claim my Ford LTD. When I walked into the station, the officer at the desk said “Holy Shit…what happened to you. Did you just get mugged?”. “No. I came to claim my car that was stolen”. I would have laughed, but my head covering might slip.

There was a long period of recovery ahead . I had many follow-up appointments with the plastic surgeon, who was every bit as good as he insisted to my wife he was. It never failed, that as I sat in his waiting room waiting to be called, that I would look around at the other patients waiting to see him, and be overwhelmed with gratitude. There, all around me, was suffering commingled with compassion  and hope. There were children burned beyond facial recognition, one of those a result of criminal abuse. There were adults with no use left of their limbs due to injuries.

Yet, they were moving ahead with their lives, thanks to the love and support and care of those who were in their lives. That waiting room was thick with hope and with love. For me, sitting in this room, a room that bore witness to so much suffering, I felt the incongruous feeling of joy–joy for my support network—a network I had never really appreciated before.

I spent another few weeks at home before returning to work. When I did return, I discovered I had been voted by the organization to be the new Chairperson for the plants safety committee.  I have been engaged in the field of Employee Safety ever since.

It doesn’t do me much good to try and figure out why things happen– things we would never wish on ourselves or anyone else. It does me little good to question divine providence. It does me great good to look back, and see the handiwork of this divine providence who has a way of making what is dark, light, and what is ugly, beautiful.

Kind Regards,

Bob