Telling The Story Project

Tell a story, save a life.

Alexis

heibergers Categories: Machinery
Comments Off on Alexis

"I remember looking up and seeing the riding lawn mower on top of me,"

Alexis Mason was 3 when she almost lost her leg to the blades of a lawn mower, whirling at nearly 3,000 revolutions per minute.

“I was on the back of a banana seat bike with my older sister,” Mason recalled. “She was going to our backyard to talk with my brother about chores. How I ended up under the mower differs based on who you ask. But I remember looking up and seeing the riding lawn mower on top of me, and my brother and sister on the other side.”

Mason turned 4 in the hospital as her parents and care team weighed the possibility of amputation, a persistent limp, painful complications with skin grafts and myriad other issues. She was discharged after a month, but events of that fateful day influenced Mason’s career path, and highlight the dangers of small children near lawn mowers.

“I do not blame either sibling for what happened,” Mason said. “Honestly, now, I’m truly grateful that they knew enough to go get the help I needed.

“It all worked out in the end, because this interaction with medicine is how I knew I wanted to become a doctor,” said Mason, now a physician practicing in her home state of Alabama.

At the same time, she was fortunate to escape severe, permanent injuries.

“I have some residual numbness on the side that was affected,” she said. “However, I ran track, cross country, basketball, and softball. Nothing stopped me from participating in everything that I wanted to do.”

Both of her parents were at work during the incident. They normally would not have allowed the children to mow without supervision, Mason said. (Her brother and sister were ages 13 and 12, respectively.) But for some reason that day, the mower was in use. The siblings called their parents, who raced home from their jobs in the neighboring town. “Where we lived, it was quicker for my parents to get off work and take me to the hospital than calling any emergency system.”

Today, Mason practices family medicine in Rogersville, a town of 1,200 in far-northern Alabama, about an hour’s drive from Huntsville. 

Mason’s injury planted the seed for her desire to become a physician. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, less than 0.01% of medical students are rural African Americans. But as a high school student volunteering at Lawrence County Hospital, she learned of the University of Alabama Rural Health Leaders Pipeline, a program designed to address the rural health care shortage in the state. Two-thirds of Alabama’s counties are classified rural and chronically underserved with primary care. 

“The Pipeline program was life changing,” she said. “I have developed lifelong friendships, and the friendships made in the program helped me survive medical school.”

Mason doesn’t see many farmers among her patients; most of her trauma cases involve fish hooks, or lacerations from debris and sharp objects incurred while working on home projects or on hobby farms. 

But she offers this piece of lawn mower safety advice, speaking from experience: “Keep children away from the mowing area, and teach them that lawn mowers are not toys.” 

Resources

The Childhood Agricultural Safety Network’s mower campaign website contains fact sheets and posters for both youth and adults. Both sets of materials include illustrations of key safety topics covering supervision, personal protective equipment, appropriate shoes, child bystanders and debris in the grass. Resources are also available in Spanish.

Among mower safety strategies on the CASN website:

  • The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children be at least 12 years old to operate push-style lawn mower and 16 to operate a riding mower.
  • Never let a second person ride or jump on a mower while it’s running.
  • Always wear sturdy, closed-toed shoes. Do not mow in sandals or with bare feet.
  • Before mowing, scan the lawn to remove toys, hoses, tools and large rocks as they could become projectiles.
  • Keep children out of the mowing area.
  • Stay alert to others entering the mowing area.

Faith and Medicine

Dr. Mason said faith helps her connect with many of her patients. “One of my prayers is that I say the right thing to speak to someone’s spirit that points them to God,” she said. “In multiple situations, I have been able to pray with patients if requested. It also allows me to connect with certain patients in ways I would not have otherwise. I have also been invited to predominantly Black churches and expressed that medicine/science does not necessarily contradict faith and God. For example, I usually tell patients about my lawn mower story, and how we had to have faith in God for several miracles. However, we did not turn down medications or medical science when necessary. So, I normally say, ‘until God does it (the healing or the miracle), let’s proceed with this path.’ That combination of faith and medicine helps me serve each patient better by being able to relate to challenges of all kinds.”

Pages:
Tags:

Eric

ploeckelmanm Categories: Cattle Machinery
Comments Off on Eric

Eric Knock stands by farm sign

While treating cattle in a squeeze chute, it only took a moment to become a crisis for South Dakota veterinarian Eric Knock. He leaned in as the chute was released to allow the animal to exit, and his head was caught between two mechanisms on the chute.

It was September 2022 when Knock, a South Dakota veterinarian with 15 years of experience, was working with a crew to ultrasound and pregnancy-check heifers in a producer’s pasture. As he finished treating a bull, he stood up next to the chute. At the exact moment, the chute squeeze gate was released to free the bull, causing Knock’s skull to become pinched between the chute frame and squeeze mechanism.

“Most people aren’t tall enough to get hung up like I did,” 6-foot-8-inch tall Knock said. “I’ve since heard of a young North Dakota man who stood on a bucket to get a better angle to treat the cattle and came in contact with the chute as the head gate was released. I’m taller than many people, so that was an element of this incident.”

The two vet techs working with Knock, Gavin Machtemes and Darcy Boersma, and a cattle producer who was helping acted quickly.

“I never lost consciousness,” Knock said. “But I don’t remember much of what happened.”

Blood streamed from his right ear and nose by the time he was freed. Even though he conversed with others on-site while an ambulance was summoned, he doesn’t recall details of the incident or being airlifted to Avera McKennan Hospital in Sioux Falls, where he was hospitalized for 12 days.

“I didn’t need surgery, but I had several skull fractures,” Knock said. “Doctors used words like ‘extensive’ and ‘many.’ None of the fractures were displaced. If that had happened, the outcome could have been much more serious.”

Knock did suffer an epidural hematoma, which is bleeding between the brain and skull. Fortunately, the bleeding resolved on its own.

The pressure of the chute caused cranial nerve damage that affected his right eye, causing him to wear a patch over the eye for a time.

“I had double vision in that eye for a while,” he said. “Without the patch, I had difficulty focusing and functioning. It’s pretty well healed now.”

Knock lost hearing in his right ear due to the loss of 80% of his eardrum and damage to his middle ear. Three months after the incident, the Avera surgical team put prosthetic titanium bones in his inner ear and built an eardrum out of a piece of membrane taken from another part of his ear.  He has now nearly recovered full hearing in that ear.

Knock missed several months of work. He began working again with small animals, then by that October with cattle. While most of his physical injuries have healed, Knock’s approach to his work and awareness of safety practices is changed forever.

Erick Knock talks about his injury and recovery, as well as how to prevent this kind of avoidable injury.

Lessons learned

“Everyone at our clinics has always worked with safety in mind,” Knock said. “However, we are all now more vigilant and mindful of the safety risks in our work environment.”

Since his injury, Knock takes a few crucial seconds to assess his environment before he starts working. He makes a concentrated effort to keep safety in mind during every process.

“I’m more aware of where everyone is while we’re working,” he said. “I pay close attention to pinch points on equipment, so I recognize the hazards to myself and fellow workers. We all know there are dangers when we work around large animals and equipment. This incident has intensified our understanding of what can happen.”

Since his injury, Knock has encouraged clients to know their equipment well, identifying pinch points and points of potential injury. He also recommends planning an escape route before working with large animals in any setting.

He’s more aware that interns who work in his and other veterinarian clinics aren’t likely to be experienced with equipment such as a squeeze chute. Strike points, related to a squeeze chute headgate, are another point of potential injury, such as a concussion.

“The crew on the farm where we’re working may not be fully aware of the hazards of a chute either,” he said. “It’s a good idea to review those details before we start working so everyone is aware of potential issues.”  Talking to those working around the chute has become part of the routine to show potential pinch or strike points.  With chutes from several different manufacturers, there are other areas to watch on the different chutes.

“There are ways to talk to people about safety practices just in the normal course of business,” Knock said. “I know that people around me who learn about the accident are more aware of their surroundings and the need to work safely.”

Knock said it’s well worth taking a few moments to consider the risks surrounding him each day.

“We’ve also learned that, when we’re working together, we need to take a second or two to look around us and make sure we know where everyone is before we catch or release an animal, open a gate, or let an animal out. It’s not a major revelation, but remembering these things can help you avoid an experience like mine.

“Everyone has hazards in their daily life, like driving down the road,” he added. “We need to be mindful of those risks and do what we can to avoid getting hurt. And slow down. Rushing through a job increases the potential for injury and accident.”

The main points are to stop and consider large animal handling and squeeze chute safety.

More information

Pages:
Tags:

Caleb

pilzm Categories: Machinery rollover
Comments Off on Caleb

Allan (left) and Caleb Orebaugh.

Caleb Orebaugh steered his slow-moving John Deere 4320 straight down the familiar hillside when, suddenly, he felt the weight of the mower start pushing his tractor forward.

“It was during a drought and the ground was dry and hard,” Orebaugh said. “I started sliding and I pushed the brakes, but I didn’t have any traction and kept sliding sideways.”

Orebaugh was losing control.

“When the mower’s tongue caught the rear tire I just hung on.”

Time seemed to slow down as he gripped the steering wheel. The tractor rolled onto its side, stopping when the rollover protection structure (ROPS) hit the ground. 

The ROPS!

Orebaugh, 34, had installed it just a few months before the July 2020 incident, becoming the first reported participant in the Wisconsin Rollover Protection Structure (ROPS) Rebate Program to survive a tractor overturn with a ROPS installed through the program.

“I bruised my elbow when it hit the inside of the (sun) canopy, and that was about it,” Orebaugh said.

National data suggest that 1 of every 10 tractor operators overturns a tractor in his or her lifetime. Tractors are the leading cause of death on U.S. farms; the most frequent cause of tractor-related deaths are overturns, nearly 100 per year. Approximately half of U.S. tractors do not have rollover protection.

A ROPS is designed to create a protective zone around the operator. A ROPS, when used with a seatbelt, is 99 percent effective in preventing serious injury or death in the event of an overturn. Even when used without a buckled seatbelt, as was the case with Orebaugh, a ROPS is 70 percent effective.  

Seeking shade

Orebaugh’s father, Allan, heard about the Wisconsin ROPS Rebate Program on the radio. The rebate program, started in 2013 by the National Farm Medicine Center, Marshfield Clinic Research Institute, was offering rebates of up to $865 toward the cost of purchasing and installing a ROPS. (The National Farm Medicine Center has since made the program more cost-effective by limiting out-of-pocket retrofit expenses to $500, no matter the cost of the retrofit.) All Wisconsin farmers are eligible. The program is funded through philanthropic support from the Auction of Champions and other generous donors.

“When Caleb called me and told me he’d rolled the tractor, I remember feeling very relieved that six months earlier we put that rollover bar on there,” Allan said. “We had farmed that land for two or three years without one.”

The Orebaughs grow about 100 acres of hay and other crops, and raise a few beef cattle. Both work off the farm. This part of Southwest Wisconsin features steep, rolling hillsides, rocky outcrops and deeply carved river valleys, features that escaped the flattening effects of glaciation during the last ice age.

But it wasn’t the hazardous topography that motivated Allan and Caleb. The ROPS retrofit grew out of a simple desire for sun protection.

“We had talked about getting an umbrella,” Caleb said. “But then we thought, ‘no, it would just get snagged on the trees and wrecked,’ so we thought we might as well look for a ROPS with a canopy.”

“And sure enough,” said Allan, thinking about what might have been.

“The funny thing is,” Caleb said, “that’s not even the steepest part of the farm. I’d always thought if I had a rollover it would be somewhere else on the property, not where it happened.”

The ROPS came from Iron Bull Manufacturing in Indiana, a couple hours west of where the Orebaughs used to farm near Muncie, Ind. Caleb was 14 when Allan moved the family from the flat land of the Hoosier State to the Holmen area.

Caleb, a former mechanic, put the ROPS on himself. He rented workspace at the local John Deere implement dealer to do the job, a dealer where had worked for a dozen years. He now works at the nearby John Deere construction equipment dealer.

Did the ROPS save his life?

“I can’t say for sure, but the roll bar definitely stopped it from rolling further.”

The incident

Unknown to Caleb, a spectator watched as he dusted himself off from the rollover.

“One of the neighbors called her mom and said, ‘I think they just rolled a tractor out here,’” said Allan, relaying a conversation the neighbor had shared with him. “‘Is he OK? Yeah I guess so, he is walking away from it.’”

A shaken Caleb made his way downhill to the farm house, where Allan lives, and called Allan at his place of employment.

“I can’t even remember what I was thinking,” Allan said of the call from Caleb. “You’re just trying to figure out what to do first.”

Once he realized his son was OK, the men’s thoughts turned to the functionality of their only tractor.

“We used the skid steer and a jack, and got a neighbor’s tractor and dragged the haybine out of the way and called a tow truck to roll the tractor back upright.” Caleb said.

One of the rear tires had gone flat so they dragged the tractor down to their workshop.

“I felt lucky that I wasn’t under the tractor, and also lucky that I didn’t completely destroy it,” Caleb said. “There wasn’t anything major wrong with it. Snapped the PTO shaft off the tractor, bent the outer PTO shaft on the haybine, had to straighten the exhaust, and put a new sun canopy on. We were able to do all the work ourselves, other than the rear tire.”

A ROPS normally limits the degree of rollover, thereby reducing damage to the tractor, say engineers. Another reason to retrofit.

Caleb waited to tell his wife, Kara, after she got home from work. She took the news in stride, Caleb said, but thinking about his family, he said that he now buckles his seat belt if he is on the “steeper stuff.” The couple has two young children.

Rollovers can happen on flat ground, too

Farms don’t have to be hilly for rollovers to occur, say researchers. It is possible to tip any tractor on flat ground if the turn is short enough and the speed is high enough. Additionally, operators must be alert for ditches, embankments, holes and ramps. Banks of ditches can give way if the tractor is driven too close to the edge.

Most overturns involve the tractor rolling on its side, however tractors also roll over backwards. This can occur when trying to pull out a tree stump, or a piece of equipment stuck in mud. Hitching too high can result in backward tips. For each tractor, consult the operator’s manual for acceptable hitch points.

ROPS are engineered to mount on specific tractor models and designed to operate with the tractor’s mounting brackets and frame. This provides a structure that is flexible, yet rigid enough to withstand the loads produced during a tractor overturn. Prototype ROPS must pass engineered, crush, static, and dynamic tests to assure adequate performance before they are produced for the public. These prototype ROPS must meet the standards set by the Society of Automotive Engineers and the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers.

If a tractor with a ROPS does overturn, the ROPS should be replaced because it is specifically designed to bend to absorb the energy generated by the tractor contacting the ground, engineers say. ROPS are designed and certified to withstand just a single overturn,

Orebaugh said he is considering replacing his ROPS with another ROPS from the rebate program.

Make the call

If you, your family or hired help operates a tractor without rollover protection, make the call today.

To check on retrofit options for your particular tractor, go to the National ROPS Rebate Program website, https://www.ropsr4u.org/ or call 1-877-767-7748. Not all states have rebate funds available. When available, funds are applied toward the purchase, shipping and professional installation of the ROPS.

“The process went smoother than I thought,” said Caleb Orebaugh.

Smoother than a ROPS-less overturn.

More Information

Pages:
Tags:

Susan

pilzm Categories: Cattle Livestock Uncategorized
Comments Off on Susan

It was a surprise in Surprise (Nebraska), but not the welcome kind:  Susan Littlefield’s afternoon chores culminated with a smashed hand.

Littlefield, a veteran farm broadcaster and Network Farm Director for the KVRN Rural Radio Network out of Lexington, is no stranger to doing safety stories, but this time, the story is personal.

Littlefield and her family raise registered Columbia sheep, chickens, and a handful of cattle on their 20-acre farm southeast of Surprise.  During Thanksgiving week 2017, the chores were left to Littlefield and her daughter while her husband and their boys were in Wisconsin deer hunting.

“It was a typical day,” she begins, sharing the experience of a rambunctious steer and her son’s final instructions before he departed on their trip:

“Whatever you do, Mom – don’t let the steers out.“

That fateful afternoon, Littlefield went to feed steers in a fenced pasture adjacent to the barn and the sheep lot.  The routine path was from a bin, through the ewes’ lot, through two 8-foot panels used as gates to separate the sheep from a lot holding three Jersey steers.

“For some reason, the dogs weren’t with me,” she remembers, referring to her Maremma, Australian Shepherd, and Blue Heeler, the three livestock dogs that always accompany her.

“This time they must have got distracted by a rabbit or a squirrel.

“So I went in, set the two buckets down, and reached back to get the gate.  As I went to grab it, here comes that one steer, running full force.  And he’d gotten out before, so he saw the open gate as an opportunity.  The last time he got out, it took us 45 minutes to get him back in.”

She recalls the cascading thoughts of a split second: “I‘m home by myself, I am not chasing this steer, I don’t have time for this!”

As she pulled the panel closed, the steer’s head crashed into her hand, slamming it and the panel against two T-posts set in the ground.

The blow knocked her to the ground.

He had her in a corner with an electric fence above her – definitely “not the place to be grabbing ahold of!”

What seemed like an eternity with the 1300-pound beef standing on her calf and thigh muscles lasted maybe a minute, she estimates.

She used her arms to protect herself, fearing that he’d start butting her head next.

But then, maybe thanks to the dogs that came running after hearing her scream, or maybe of its own accord, the would-be runagate turned and walked away.

“I got up, dusted myself off and might have said a few choice words, and I finished feeding,” she remembers, before going in to ice her hand to control the pain.

“It’s funny, the things that go through your mind in the moment,” she explains.  Littlefield, who’s also a rural firefighter and EMT, wondered if her daughter would come home to find her there on the ground, and if she’d have to call 911 to have her own colleagues come get her.

Afterwards, “I sat out under the windmill and thought, ‘How stupid…why? Why didn’t I just let him out?  Why did I think I had to close that gate?”  …because the other  gate was already closed. 

After the fact, you think about that, but you don’t think of it during that time.”

Littlefield tried to ignore her pain, figuring the injury was ‘just a sprain.’  But two weeks later, she had shooting pains up her arm and was unable to write.  At that point, she went to the doctor, who initially suspected a sprain – until he reviewed the X-rays that revealed thumb fractures.  He sent her to an orthopedic surgeon.

By Christmas, she had a cast from the tip of her thumb to just below the elbow.  She went through two cast changes, followed by a month in a splint and physical therapy.

But pain that was, at times, astronomical just didn’t dissipate, and her hand kept swelling.

In late March, she underwent surgery to remove the crushed basal joint and restore thumb mobility, using a tendon graft taken from her forearm to substitute for the damaged joint and torn ligament.

In typically stoic farmer fashion, she tried to downplay her injury down to herself and others.  She missed just a day of work – for surgery – and was able to keep her cast off camera until she had a morning TV gig at a different studio and didn’t realize the camera had a shot of her casted arm resting on the counter.

“Before I got off the air, my phone was buzzing… people messaging me, ‘what did you do, why are you in a cast?’”  It forced her to come clean about what happened.

But playing down her injury as ‘just a livestock injury’ or ‘a small injury’ didn’t work with livestock producers who set her straight about the other possible outcomes:

“’You could’ve lost your hand … or your life.’”

A year later, she continues work to improve mobility, but won’t regain the level of function prior to her injury.  She works to touch her thumb to her pinky, and she can’t write for extended periods.  Opening a jar with the right hand is impossible without the hard base of a thumb joint.

Littlefield understands how easy it is to become complacent again, now that she’s had a year continuing chores without further mishaps, and she emphasizes how important it is to make changes to ensure the occurrence and opportunities for injuries don’t recur.

She jokes that ‘the other guy’ ended up in a body bag in a deputy’s freezer, referring to the steer – in butcher’s paper – going to the local deputy shortly after her husband returned from hunting.  She and her husband didn’t accept the risk of her kids being hurt by the steer, knowing their injuries would likely be worse than hers.

She changed the feeding routine, now using a different gate at the other end of the lot, one that closes automatically.

“And I make sure the dogs, at least one of the dogs, is with me at all times,” she adds.

A good rule of thumb.

More Information

Littlefield’s Australian shepherd is one of the dogs that rarely leaves her side.

An edited version of David’s story was published in Iowa Farmer Today.

Story | Stephanie Leonard

Photos | Risto Rautiainen, S Leonard

Video | R Rautiainen

Pages:
Tags:

Jerry and Julie

pilzm Categories: Manure gas / hydrogen sulfide
Comments Off on Jerry and Julie

There’s a particular day in 1988 that Jerry and Julie Nelson will never forget, even though Jerry’s unable to recall most of it. This is because July 10th, he says, was the day that he was supposed to die.

On that day, 30-year old Nelson entered the manure pit at his family’s dairy farm near Volga, South Dakota to unclog a slug of hay that plugged the manure pump.

He recounts his story at the 30-year anniversary of his unlikely survival.

A scorching Sunday morning. Rushing through chores on our dairy farm. Glancing into the pit and discovering that the manure pump had plugged. Crap!

But I know how to fix this. Just climb down and unplug the pump with a spud bar. I’ve done it dozens of times.

Bending over with the spud bar in my hand, the manure inches from my face. Suddenly feeling really weird. It’s the gas! Get out, NOW!

Beginning the climb up and out. I can see the sky, hear the tractor idling. Then everything abruptly fading to black. I cannot recall much of the next three weeks.

Dad finding me unconscious, floating face-up in the manure. He and Mom placing the 911 call no parent wants to make.

First Responders hauling me out of the pit. No respiration, can’t find a pulse. Ambulance whisking me to a local hospital.

My wife, who was in town for groceries, a car suddenly pulling up alongside hers. Its driver, a First Responder, shouting, “Get to the hospital! He’s still breathing!”

At the ER, the attending physician telling my family that I’ve inhaled hydrogen sulfide. Zero chance for survival.

Julie absorbing that at age 29 she’s about to become a widow with two young sons. Keeping her wits about her and asking the doctor if I’m still alive. Yes. Barely.

Then call the chopper. Get him to Sioux Falls. Doctor replying, you don’t understand. There’s no hope. My wife saying, I don’t care. Call. The. Chopper.

Nelson’s diagnosis at Sioux Falls included a collapsed right lung, diffuse pulmonary infiltrates, manure aspiration, and anoxic encephalopathy. His odds of survival, family was told, were perhaps 50/50 – if he made it through the first week.

ARDS – acute respiratory distress syndrome – becoming part of my family’s lexicon. My wife, who never leaves my side, giving me a sponge bath and being assailed by the stench of rotten eggs. Hydrogen sulfide is sweating its way out.

On the seventh day, me indicating to Julie that I can’t breathe despite being intubated and on a respirator. Doctors being summoned. Diagnosis: my swelling lungs are suffocating themselves. Nothing more can be done. Call the family. This is it.

My wife again refusing to give up, asking the doctor to consult with Mayo Clinic. He does and is advised to inspect my lungs with a bronchoscope. Discovering that blood clots are blocking major airways. The plugs are removed and I can breathe again.

From my point of view: the first three weeks following the accident are a blur of fantastic hallucinations and painful realities. I don’t know which is which.

Gradually being weaned off the narcotics as my pulmonary function improves. Clear thinking returning slowly.

I’m in a hospital bed. I am catheterized and am breathing through a tube protruding from the base of my throat. A forest of IV poles sitting at my bedside and my right ribcage aching. Inspection reveals stitches where chest tubes had been.

I don’t belong here! I have farming to do, cows to milk. Trying to exit the bed and the respirator emitting earsplitting whoops. A nurse sprinting into the room, reattaching the respirator to my tracheotomy tube. The nurse admonishing, “You be good! You want me to tie you down again?”

Then, slow but steady improvement. It’s a big deal being hoisted from the bed and placed in a recliner. Sitting upright for the first time in a month leaves me feeling woozy.

The urinary catheter and pulmonary artery catheter being removed. Relearning how to walk in Physical Therapy. My wife ordering in a Godfather’s Classic Combo pizza. I can only manage one slice, but it’s the best meal I’ve ever had.

Coming home to a huge Welcome Home banner, family, cake and hugs. Just like a birthday party. Which, in a way, it was.

Nelson credits his long-shot survival to many:

His parents had the presence of mind to open a second hatch to the pit and use a window fan to blow in fresh air until emergency responders arrived; had they entered, they, too would likely have been victims. Rescuers wearing air-supplying respirators retrieved him. A diverse team of Sioux Falls specialists managed his care and recovery over a five-week hospital stay.

And Julie, who, he says, refused to give up on him.

During Jerry’s 25 days in ICU, she brought their sons to see him, not knowing which might be the last time. Six-year-old Paul busied himself by trying to explain the functions of all the machinery hooked up to his dad. Chris, age 4, stood at the bedside and patted his hand.

Julie taped photos of the boys to the ceiling above his bed – so they’d be the first thing Jerry saw when he came to – and dozens of get well cards to the wall, many from people they didn’t know.

She remembers how strangers who share ICU waiting rooms become like a second family:

“You share your stories, pray for one another, and cry together when the news isn’t good.”

After he returned home that fall, neighbors and friends convened – in the old tradition of close rural communities – to help the Nelsons with harvest.

He remembers encountering the pit upon being able to resume work and the major operational change they made to ensure safety.

I recall pushing manure into the pit for the first time afterward and getting the feeling you get when you peer over the edge while standing atop of a tall skyscraper. But work needed to be done, so I set it aside and carried on.

[After the accident] when the pump plugged, we’d go through the rigmarole of pulling it out with our loader tractor to unplug it. We began to grind our hay and our bedding, which pretty much eliminated the plugging issue.

Shortly after, I could look down into the pit with total dispassion – and a sense of wonder that I had survived.

Twenty-nine years later, the Nelsons were waiting at the bar of a restaurant to meet a friend when they bumped into a memory. Julie glanced across the restaurant. “Oh my gosh! There’s somebody we know!”

It had been 29 years since I’d seen Dr. Hoffman. Which, I suppose, is a good thing. At the Sioux Falls hospital, most in that team of doctors assembled to manage my care had “ist” attached to their titles, such as ‘pulmonologist.’ It’s easier to simply say that I had a lung guy, a gut guy, a brain guy, and numerous other specialists. Dr. Hoffman was my infectious disease guy.

Shortly after I’d arrived at the hospital, Dr. Hoffman had wanted to know what sort of microbes were present in our manure pit. He cultured a manure sample and found that the answer was “about everything imaginable.” He had visited me daily in the ICU. He was kind, concerned, and always asked, “How are you feeling, Mr. Nelson?”

“You should go say hi to him,” urged my wife.

I walked over to the good doctor and introduced myself. I asked if he remembered me and he replied, “Of course! Hydrogen sulfide exposure in a manure pit. What year was that? 1988?”

Once again, he smiled kindly and asked, “How are you feeling, Mr. Nelson?”

I apologized for letting nearly three decades elapse without giving him an update, and I thanked him again for everything he had done.

As I was taking my leave, Dr. Hoffman asked, “Would you mind if I pulled your chart and reviewed it? I have an infectious disease conference coming up and I think your story would be a fascinating one to be presented.

“Yours was a very difficult and interesting case,” he said. “It was certainly memorable. I’m glad that you turned out so well.”

Hindsight and wisdom often come as partners after a close call, with an urgency that doesn’t diminish over time. Nelson brings all three to the message he shares with others:

If I can get someone out there to just think twice before they rush to do “this thing” – whatever it may be – those few seconds of hesitation and thought might save you from something like I suffered.

Thirty years on, I’m grateful for every day above ground.

More information

The Nelsons, 30 years later
Video courtesy of SDPB’s On Call with the Prairie Doc®
Video courtesy of SDPB’s Dakota Life

An abbreviated version of this story was published in Iowa Farmer Today.

Story | Stephanie Leonard with Jerry Nelson

Photos & videos | courtesy of Jerry Nelson & South Dakota Public Broadcasting’s On Call with the Prairie Doc® & Dakota Life

Nelson has written about this and other farm experiences in Dear County Agent Guy, available at bookstores and workman.com.

Pages:
Tags:

Leon

pilzm Categories: Fire Foaming manure
Comments Off on Leon

Leon Sheets of Ionia, Iowa vividly recalls the September 15, 2014 flash fire in his swine finishing building.

He had emptied the four rooms in his 1200-head finishing barn and had washed down two of them earlier in the day. Before leaving the building, he decided to give the floor of his “work room” – an 8’x40’ maintenance room in the center of the building that housed supplies, equipment, and utilities, including an LP heater – a quick rinse off.

Leon was aware that manure in one of the four pits beneath this building had a foaming issue (the other three pits did not). The pit with foaming manure was in the finishing room next to his work room, and spanned partially under the slatted floor of the work room.

“About 90 seconds” after starting to rinse off the floor with his cold water electric washer, Sheets said, he heard “a WHOOM and a BOOM.”

He was engulfed by a fire ball that burned 20 percent of his body, including his arms, hands, and face, and melted his glasses.

He was able to get out of the building – the closed door to the work room was blown off in the explosion – and shut off the building’s breakers, gas line, and generator before calling 911.

The fire destroyed the building. Sheets spent nearly three weeks in the hospital, part of which time involved surgery and skin grafts to repair second- and third-degree burns.

The cause of the flash fire was methane gas that was released into the air when water spray broke the foam bubbles 1½ feet below the slatted floor. The LP heater in the room hadn’t cycled on, but its open pilot light provided the ignition source when methane concentration rapidly reached the lower explosive limit concentration in the closed room.

Although he was aware of prior flash fires and explosions caused by sudden release of methane during pit agitation, in retrospect, he is quick to explain that pressure washing in a poorly ventilated room with foaming manure and an ignition source was unsafe.

Leon Sheets considers himself an extremely lucky man. Rather than dampening his enthusiasm about being a pig farmer, the experience galvanized a passion for promoting safety in the industry.

Sheets – who was selected as the National Pork Board’s America’s Pig Farmer of the Year for 2017 – urges all producers and employees to be acutely aware of the potential for pressure washing to release methane gas trapped in a layer of manure foam.

He now practices and stresses taking these precautions prior to pressure washing:

  • making sure all doors, windows, and curtains are open with fans running for maximum ventilation to dissipate gases;
  • assuring that all heaters, pilot lights, and automated feeding systems are turned off, to eliminate all potential ignition sources;
  • maintaining a lower level of manure depth in a pit where foaming phenomenon is observed.

He advises producers to check manure regularly – and by that, he means every day – for evidence of foaming or an increase in foam depth.

When the explosion occurred in his building, foam was about a foot deep and liquid slurry was a few feet below the slats – not at floor level or overflowing.

Sheets urges other producers to consider safety for younger or less experienced workers on their farms – because they are the ones who typically get the pressure washing assignment. They need to know the risks, he stresses, and producers and managers must do everything they can to minimize those risks.

More Information

An edited version of Leon’s story was previously published in Iowa Farmer Today.

Story | Stephanie Leonard

Photos | courtesy of the Rochester Post Bulletin (banner photo), the National Pork Board (fire photos), S Leonard (Leon and Barb)

Video | courtesy of Daniel Andersen, Iowa State University

Pages:
Tags:

Jason and Roxanne

pilzm Categories: Manure gas / hydrogen sulfide
Comments Off on Jason and Roxanne

Roxanne’s doctor told her that her husband’s experience was used as a learning opportunity for their medical community, because it is so rare.

“You don’t hear about this happening,” she explains. “If you do, it’s because somebody died, not because somebody lived. And that is with me every single day.”

I met Jason Fevold, Roxanne’s husband, last year at the Iowa Pork Congress. He and a coworker, both from Webster City, stopped by the trade show where I was working at a booth displaying farm safety information and gas monitors.

Tractor date

Were they aware of dangerous gases from pits or other confined spaces? Interested in personal gas monitors?

Fevold, a tall, soft-spoken young man, and his friend answered yes.

That Fevold is alive to explain why is extraordinary. He nearly died from exposure to deadly hydrogen sulfide gas.

Jason and Roxanne were on a tractor date in late October 2010. Jason had been working long hours, pumping and spreading liquid manure from a swine nursery building’s deep pit onto a nearby field at the farm where he worked.

To carve out a few hours for the recently married couple to spend together, Roxy brought supper out to the field and rode several rounds in the tractor. It was a beautiful fall evening. They made Halloween plans.

At one of the trips back to refill the tank, Jason went in the confinement building’s office to use the restroom. “Be right back,” he said, before he started the pump to fill the tank.

Some minutes later, Roxanne saw manure slurry splashing out of the top of tank. Something was wrong.

“I took off at a dead sprint towards the building,” she recalls. When she looked in through the doorway into the office area, she saw only Jason’s feet.

She went in. Her lungs burned and the smell was awful. She found Jason lying on the floor, unconscious, with foam at his mouth.

Despite her phone’s low battery, she managed to call 911 and not panic. She credits her composure to training she received for her profession.

Fevold’s older coworker, who was also applying manure with his own rig, was just returning for another tank load. “You have to shut off the tank! We have to get Jason out!” she cried.

The two went in to retrieve Fevold, but they couldn’t pull him out through the doorway he had entered – it was next to the pit opening where the pump was immersed. Instead, they dragged him through the large building to an alternate exit. “It was a 60- or 70-year-old guy and me, dragging 200 pounds of dead weight,” she said.

They had Jason outside by the time fire and ambulance crews arrived from Webster City. Fevold’s coworker was woozy and may have been treated, she thinks. Fevold was vomiting.

Jason’s recollection of the incident is spotty. He remembers washing his hands inside and feeling something was really wrong, he needed to get out; his head was spinning, there was a god-awful loud noise in his ears. That magnified pump noise was the last thing he remembered.

At the emergency room in Webster City, Fevold was in and out of consciousness. His arterial blood gases were being monitored to determine if he could be safely transported to Mercy Hospital in Des Moines.

Late that evening, he was taken to Mercy’s Emergency Department and placed in its cardiac intensive care unit for continuous monitoring of his blood gases and condition. His hospital stay over the next several days involved neurological testing of cognitive function, electrocardiograms, echocardiograms and other diagnostic tests.

Once home, Roxanne said, he was wiped out. And, in typical farmer fashion, asked “when can I go back to work?”

“I was so mad at him,” she remembers, “because that was the last thing I wanted him to do.”

Fevold remained on a work restriction for two weeks and was eventually cleared to return to work by the specialists who cared for him. At the time, he complained he wasn’t being productive, that he should be back helping his boss, who was a man short.

She reminded him, “But we need you here, too.”

Saving grace

The gravity of his incident doesn’t escape Fevold.

“It would have been a lot different if she hadn’t been there,” he reflects. Ordinarily, he and his coworker took turns filling loads, cycling trips to the nursery. That would have meant at least a ten-minute lapse before he might have been found, had Roxy not been there.

“I always have that in the back of my mind. She was the saving grace that day.”

The incident and experience traumatized Roxy too, and seeking help from her doctor was when she discovered how the local medical community learned from Jason’s remarkable survival and recovery. Every memory of that day and the days that followed are crystal clear to her. Including the fact that she, too, had been at risk.

“It is with me every single day: that he could have died, he could not be here. It doesn’t affect him as much, because he doesn’t remember as much. I remember everything.”

Aside from losing his ability to taste for several months – which was later determined the result of trauma to his tongue and taste buds during his seizure while unconscious – Fevold fully recovered.

Looking back, he explains some factors that contributed to the ‘perfect storm.’ The previous day, they had lost a few pigs in one area of the building, even though ventilation was running and curtains were open; this was an indicator of insufficient ventilation. When he had entered the building that evening, manure levels in the pit were low enough that a pump nozzle was exposed above the manure surface, increasing the dispersion of pit gases into the air while the pump operated.

After this incident, the farm made changes to increase safety. They now pump only when the building is empty, so personnel never have to enter to check pig welfare. Doors are locked to prevent entry during pumping. Instead of running tanks, they use a drag line to apply manure to cropland. One person minds the pump and booster pump, both done from outside the building.

Last fall, they contracted out their pumping, due to the late harvest.

So Jason didn’t have to use the hydrogen sulfide monitor he picked up at the trade show. But it’s available if he would need it. Because Roxy and their daughter Lillian need him to use it, too.

Hydrogen sulfide is a deadly gas with no warning properties at dangerous concentrations. It can reach unsafe levels within seconds when manure is agitated. There is no way to reliably predict safe conditions without using gas monitors.

More Information

An edited version of Jason and Roxy’s story appeared in Iowa Farmer Today.

Story & photos | Stephanie Leonard

Pages:
Tags:

Kenny

pilzm Categories: ATV Farming with injuries
Comments Off on Kenny

Think about a spot in a field a quarter-mile away, downhill from your house.

Now imagine crawling back home from that spot, using just your arms.

The heat index is in the mid-90s.

Kenny Patterson of Cherokee, Iowa can tell you what it was like; he did it on June 13, 2016.

His ordeal lasted five hours – or 14 months and counting, depending how you look at it.

Patterson was spot-spraying thistles in a lower pasture when his four-wheeler overturned and rolled over him, breaking his right femur near the hip.

“It sounds like an unbelievable story,” he said, when he and his wife Kathy shared it with me.

Patterson was driving on a downhill grade, angling across a side hill with a rear-mounted, full sprayer tank. The ATV’s left front wheel dropped into a worn rut of a cattle path hidden by tall grass.

When he and the ATV tipped left, he knew the outcome would be bad. He heard his thigh bone snap when 700 pounds of equipment rolled over him.

The ATV kept rolling, ending upside down not far from him, with the engine still running.

“I was instantly (mad at myself)… Stupid, stupid,” he said, about driving on a sloped grade with uneven terrain. “I thought, ‘this four-wheeler is gonna catch on fire and burn up; I don’t want to get toasted too.’”

So with a right leg that “just flopped” below the hip, he used his shoulders and arms to drag himself 50 feet away and considered the options. It was early afternoon. He didn’t have a cell phone. His wife didn’t expect him home until supper time.

“I did some talking to myself,” he recalled. “’My son’s at work. My wife thinks I’m ‘somewhere’. Nobody’s gonna look for me. It’s hotter than the hubs of Hell, but I’m a stubborn SOB and I’ll either make it or die trying.”

For the next five hours, he inched his way up the hill using his arms and elbows. His arms and hands were bloodied, and his broken leg caught in cattle path ruts as it drug along. He lifted his leg out of the ruts with his hands to free it.

When his arms and hands were raw, he turned over and scooted backwards on his rear, but that was worse.

“I even tried hopping with my good leg, but I came down on my bad leg and the pain dropped me.” So he went back to belly-crawling.

Kathy had been in town and returned late in the afternoon to make supper. By 6:30, she was concerned and called their son Nicholas to ask if he’d seen his dad.

Nick came over to the farm in Patterson’s ’78 Jeep. Before heading to fencelines that Patterson had intended to spray, he noticed an open gate north of the farmstead that would ordinarily be shut. When he went to close the gate, he spotted the overturned ATV down across the pasture.

In the meantime, Patterson had made it to a cattle yard, but he couldn’t cross it because of deep ruts that kept catching his leg. He went back to the pasture route and crawled until he reached a waterer on a concrete pad. After hours crawling in the heat, “I got myself up somehow and drank water out of that mossy cattle tank.”

When he heard his Jeep, he knew someone was coming to find him. He started hollering.

“Nicholas called for the ambulance,” Kathy continued. “He came back and told me ‘I found him, and it’s not good. He’s in the cattle yard. He wants a Mountain Dew.’”

Patterson was transported to Sioux City and had surgery the next morning. A titanium rod was implanted the length of his femur to hold three pieces of bone in place.

Over the past year, he’s had physical therapy. He’s operated a tractor but only recently has been able to climb steps alternating right and left legs, instead of leading with his left.

Patterson is recuperating and optimistic. In spite of all he’s gone through, he and Kathy maintain a sense of humor. They recounted fatal ATV injuries in neighboring communities and know Kenny was lucky to survive. “The bone broke into three pieces but it didn’t sever an artery or break through the skin,” he said.

He cautions about hazards like cattle paths or washouts hidden by tall grass, driving across a steep side hill, and having a full sprayer mounted on the ATV that changes its center of gravity and adds momentum to a rollover.

“One of the last things I said that morning was ‘I don’t have that much experience on this thing.’ I’d never sprayed with it except on flat ground; I was too far down that slope.

“I don’t plan to get on one again,” he added. “I’ll use my Jeep or tractor.”

Kenny Patterson is a lifelong farmer at Cherokee, Iowa. He runs a 100-cow cow-calf operation and grain farm with his son, Nicholas, and recently retired from the fur-trading business he operated for decades. He’s known for the signature stocking cap he wears in all seasons.

More Information

An edited version of this story was originally published in Iowa Farmer Today. 

Story & photo | Stephanie Leonard

Pages:
Tags: