Lost Youth - WorkSafe BC Video

Every time I go to the mall to the beach, wherever I get, I get the frigging stare downs all the time. Hey, look at that kid. He's got one leg, you know, and it's just, I just wanted to do something, but you know, something crutches. I had one leg at a time, you know? What am I gonna do? Well, mister Perry, I'm sorry, but you're never going to walk again. This is not gonna be fun. I'm like, if this is the way I'm gonna live the rest of my life, that's when you start debating whether it's worth it or not. First of all, you know, if you're not an attractive guy, girls don't wanna get with you anyways. So how attractive it is that I'm in a fucking wheelchair and I can't get it up on my own anyways. I just don't want anyone to know. And I tried hiding it for probably about a week and obviously everyone knew what happened, but I just didn't want anyone to know. I still remember I could still hear the scream that I this the scream I had when I was how I screamed. Oh, it devastated him. It was the first time my daughter saw her daddy cry. But yeah, he was really, really hurt when, you know, his little girl was hurt because of lack of training. They get away with murder. That's it Donna. My son's just lucky he escaped with his life because that type of accident that he was in, they don't live to talk about. You know, we've been looking after them all their lives and then we go up to a job and we think that employers, because they're adults and they're businessmen or they're professionals, they'll look after them. Because it was a 24 hour shift work job. And I didn't like that because he was so willing. He was getting more and more tired. I may be the youngest here and they don't usually hire 16 year olds. There's danger when you're tired, you misjudge, but I can handle it. I'm tough. Hurry, hurry, hurry. That they were really pushing, let's get our production quota. So I didn't like that. I mean, he just went off to work and he was really proud of his job and we were all proud of him. His energies are a little bit fragile right now and he's, oh, there's probably several days a week that I'm driving down the road to this day and all of a sudden it hits me that he's in a wheelchair. And he's an adult now, you know? He sees should be living on his own and moving on with his life, and now he's sort of stuck here for a little while. And I knew right then that I broke my back. And it was like my whole rest of my life flashed before my eyes. You know, there was a couple of times when you just like, why didn't it just kill me? You know. And I lost three fingers. I don't know any other girls who've lost their fingers at all. The only other thing I could really related to is a woman miscarrying. It's something no one will ever understand until you experience it for yourself. I love to be able to dance now and I can't dance. So it's like those things that I took for granted and I didn't do before my accident. And I can't do them now. I hate it. I can't go to a bar because I see these people dancing and they go fuck, you know? Like, I missed out on that. Everything happened. Everything has to happen after something. A big accident happens, you know? That's when that's when everyone gets their heads together and, oh, okay, well, I guess, you know, we need to change things around there. It's never it's never before. It's not before, you know, an 18 year old loses its leg, you know? I was starting my working career. If you can call it that I was working at a pizzeria, I was thinking, you know, yeah, I'll go get a job, I'll work for a while. I'll see if that's what I want to do, but ultimately I do want to get back into school. I didn't really care what kind of job I got as long as I got something where I was making decent money. I dropped off my resume that day, and literally that afternoon they called me back and said, hey, you want to start today? The guy with the most training gets the best job. My parents are saying, you know, it's time for you to go and get a job start getting out in the working world. For the rest of us out there that don't have a lot of training and are right out of high school, you get the job that you think you can do. And I knew I could do the job. I wanted I wanted everybody that worked there to be surprised in how good and efficient that I worked. It was slack ass. Like it was, I think that's what probably appealed to me the most for lack of a better term. I was everybody's bitch. If somebody told me they wanted something done, there's no way I was going to say no. I first started off waitressing there. You know, maybe I was maybe I was trying to work too hard. Then about a year later, I started cooking. Not realizing what I was getting myself into. I wanted to impress everybody I wanted to show them that I could do it just as well as they could. So I was like, ah, yeah, no worries. I can work this job. Woke up in the morning. We went to work. I was having a rough time trying to wake up that morning. And the day was like any other, you know, I was cutting me prepping my dough and that. But we're gonna start you off here. You're gonna, you know, move the material around the yard, clean up, be on those kind of jobs. All the training I got was basically just passed down. My boss calls me up and asked me to come down. To work for a few hours because somebody else had canceled. And I wasn't actually scheduled to work that day. Well, so now the accent was a rainy and cold night. It was quite intimidating. Lots of machines that I had to get in and clean up and dust off and. Eventually 3 o'clock rolled around time to do my dough and that eventually went on to the machine. There's a roller on the bottom with a chain to move the roller. You know, they seemed unsafe, but I felt like that was an inherent part of the risk of any job. I felt like the things that I did that were dangerous were just part of the job. So I get back on the lift and I start trying to move this medite around again and pull it out onto the lot and I stop. The load shift, the slightest bit, it wasn't like it wasn't like it just started to shift and sheets were flying everywhere. It shifted just a little tiny bit, finished cleaning up and I was ready to get off the machine, but this machine was about 6 feet more higher in the air and I had to jump off. There wasn't a safe way of me getting in and out of the machine. And I looked down the lane way and I realized that I'm in a an area of high traffic. So I okay, well, I should move a forklift. I was putting dough into the top of the machine and what you do is you just put it through again. About halfway and it'll come out the bottom. And then I sat I stood there and I assessed the situation like 5 times. I'm like, get back on the left and I'll drop these things. Hey, Jim. Yeah? Give me a hand. I had seen so many guys do this and apparently this is forbidden, you don't ever go near this, is putting the forklift in gear when you're not in it. I didn't see anything wrong with it and I'd done it a few times myself. So what I do is I stand beside the forklift and the gear shift levers on the steering column and I just tap the gear shift lever back into rivers. And I was ready to jump off and I had turned myself around in the midst of that, I guess I slipped and I got my leg caught in the chain. I just got a pair of brand new coveralls that was gonna, you know, go to work and have nice new clean uniform and I'm getting sucked into this machine. Very scared getting sucked in. I knew, you know, this whole time I was trying to pull myself out of this, you know, but just. There's no, there's no way. What's going on? You know, I'm looking at it and I'm going all right. I don't know if these are gonna come down or not. So I'm like, all right, when I move out of the way, I'll tell you to drop the load and he's like, all right. And it starts moving backwards and starts moving backwards. And the only thing I didn't notice was if I'd looked at the wheels, I would have seen that they were turned at first I ran around to the other side 'cause I was kind of confused. I was like, okay, how do I get back in this thing when it's moving? So it started, it starts moving backwards, and I panicked. I realized that the roller I had dough stuck onto it. So I went to go and clean it. And I didn't quite feel it. It felt just like a tickle on my hand. It was the weirdest feeling I had ever felt. I think the only thing I was really scared of was when I was getting sucked in as if I was going to be alive when it went through my head. I ran basically all the way around the forklift as it's moving. I'm panicking. I'm a lot of stuff going through my head. I also didn't notice was there was a small puddle of hydraulic fluid about that big on the ground. And I think your mind set on, no, this isn't happening. It's just too close to the roll feeder and my leg got caught in. Two pieces of metal that are about back close together, you know, I got sucked into about my thigh. And I said it as I turned around. Okay, drop it. And then finally, the sheets snot my back, and I could feel it, just go into my back to the point where I couldn't feel my legs. The chain pulled my hand and I didn't quite feel it. I just thought something had touched me. I wasn't too concerned. I'm in the path of the forklift. I just had enough time to roll onto my back. Before. It was in slow motion, how everything happened. And literally the rest of my life kind of flashed. I was like, so I screamed out of fear out of anxiety out of just, you know. I felt that nothing, you know that I was all right. When I saw a light and then that's it, the machine just stopped. I think maybe it was an angel from heaven, just when I looked at my hand, I could see that there was parts of my hand missing. I could see the bone in my fingers, and I could see all the muscle around all the fat. It was almost like it was in a movie. I felt like just, I felt like a baby again. I was just, I was laying there. I'm crying. I'm like, I'm not going to walk again. I'm not going to walk again. Do it. Oh. 30, 45 seconds before somebody came out, and it was my uncle. He came out and started whipping the stuff off like it was toast. I could have saw, I could have looked up and saw my leg, but I was so scared to what it would look like to me, you know? Got into the ambulance. I got pretty scared at this point. Yeah, we're going to call your mom as soon as you want. So I'm laying there in the table and there's a whole bunch of doctors and nurses above me. Can you hear me? What are they gonna do to me? And what have I done to myself? And I'm like, all right, whatever. Are you listening to me? Maybe it's just what they do while you're, you know, while you're dealing with paralysis. I need you to wake up now. That's fine. I'll deal with it. Wake up now. This time I don't know shit about paralysis. You're gonna use a plastic tube that looks like this. Pull the sheets up. This is fucking tube sticking out of my dick. You're going to have to get used to it. Yeah, and that's pleasant. You're going to stick it into your penis. Am I going to have to have this tube in me all the time? It's going to empty your bladder. It's a positive. Laxatives. You're going to take a lot of pills. I'm trying to learn how to get on the toilet. A bowel stimulator. Like it's a total invasion of my privacy. You won't be able to do it on your own. This is not comfortable at all. You're going to have to get used to it. And this is your new wheelchair. My dad was just strong, steady, very calm. Here was my son, so proud to be driving a forklift. Didn't occur to me to ask myself, does he know what he's doing? How fast does it move, for instance, is he competent in using this machine? They scoot around pretty quickly. How risky is it that he wasn't indeed paralyzed from the neck down? Or killed? I had to go and get one of the bones cut down. I couldn't sleep in a room by myself. The second surgery I had was to have the nail bed removed in my pinky finger. That was in therapy for quite a while. I had that surgery done twice. I woke up many nights screaming. Oh, that was very painful. They didn't teach my son. The safety. And I could have been scratched off this planet, right? That easily. He was sacrificing and jeopardizing his own safety. My life wasn't into anybody's hands. In a split second, your life can change forever. Oh, so I don't have to just worry about joy riding on Friday night. It was so preventable, it's ridiculous. We have to worry about when they go to work on Monday morning or after school. If they had given me the proper training. The workplace can be a really dangerous place. Make sure you know what kind of training you need. I want parents to know them. Know your rights, know what is required of you, and what is required of your employer. Well, nothing will ever bring her fingers back. If you don't know a machine and they expect you to use it, just say no. It's time to take a step back and look at the big picture. So I will not touch that machine until you train me properly, how to clean it, how to use it, all the different parts that are on it. Yes, she did get a small settlement, but that's nothing. Her fingers would have been so so much better. So much better.