Hey all,
I hesitated to post something so personal on a public forum for a long time, since it opens me up to (admittedly, much deserved) ridicule for doing something so stupid. However, I finally feel like this community is one that needs to hear my story.
Hello, my name is Ryan, and I survived a near-fatal homebrewing accident.
Two years ago today, on the afternoon of April 10th, 2022, I was in my garage cleaning a glass carboy by filling it up with warm water and PBW - something I've done a gajillion times before. This time, however, was different - I noticed after filling the carboy up all the way that it started leaking from the bottom. Glass can definitely get micro thermal-fractures from rapid temperature swings. As a scientist, I should have understood & appreciated that in the moment, but alas...
In a panic, not wanting my PBW water to spill out entirely onto the floor, and not having an antigravity pump or anything like that at the time, I made the incredibly stupid decision to try and pick the carboy up, place it atop my chest fridge, and siphon the liquid out into another container. HUGE mistake. As I lifted it, the carboy completely shattered in my arms, and in the process a glass shard sliced open my neck. The glass severed my right carotid artery, jugular vein, vagus nerve and several other nerves in my neck. Thankfully, my wife was in the next room, heard me scream, rushed in and saw that my neck was gushing blood. My amazing wife sprang into action, calmed me down, sat me down, called 911 and applied pressure to the wound, and even wrapped her sweater around it. Apparently I passed out while waiting for the ambulance, but I don’t remember that part. I was in shock, the adrenaline was pumping, I felt no pain. I remember the EMTs rolling up and carrying me away. I told my wife I loved her, and despite the gravity of the situation was in pretty good spirits for the ride to the hospital. I knew it was bad, but didn’t appreciate how my life was in danger.
I lost a LOT of blood – 2 liters in the garage, and another 2L by the time I got to the OR. Everyone from my wife, the EMTs, the doctors and nurses did everything they could to keep me alive. I am incredibly lucky I made it – the carotid laceration alone should have killed me. After what must have seemed like an eternity, my surgeon told everyone that I would not die that night, but later he said it was the worst neck injury he'd ever seen and I should have succumbed to my injuries. Mind you, my wife went through hell up to that point – she not only had to keep me alive while shouting our address over and over to the 911 dispatcher and thinking that the call was dropped several times, she had to drive herself to the ER in the car that I bled all over thinking that I could be dead soon, calling her mom & grandparents while on the way (who immediately drove down to the hospital from where they live - about an hour away!), had to speak to the cops when she got there so they could determine it wasn’t a domestic dispute or whether I was suicidal. She then was put in a small waiting room she thought must be reserved for grieving families about to receive bad news, spoke to social workers, and didn’t get to see me, find out I was going to be ok and hold my hand until 2am.
After all that surgery and more – including several blood transfusions, I woke up and started to realize it was going to be a long recovery. I was told I had a stroke due to the sheer amount of blood loss, I was on a feeding tube, and had severe nerve damage that needed surgical repair. I spent the next 2 ½ weeks in the ICU, had several surgeries, and then spent the next week & change in an acute rehab facility. I had surgery to repair my vagus, facial and hypoglossal nerves. Due to the vagus nerve damage, I lost the ability to swallow and had to continue to tube-feed for months. I developed aspiration pneumonia, which was awful – I’d never before coughed so much and so hard that it hurt my back - 8/10 level pain in some instances. Facial nerve damage resulted in facial paralysis – Bell’s palsy on the right side of my face, and temporarily losing my ability to blink or properly close my right eye. My right vocal chord paralysis made my voice so weak I could only communicate by writing and hand gestures at first. Not being able to swallow – dysphagia, was the most horrific part of this whole ordeal. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy – not only was I unable to drink, eat & enjoy food (& beer!) for 8 months, I couldn’t even swallow my own saliva – and had to constantly spit or suction it out. It was an absolute nightmare. The silver lining was – since I was tube-feeding on formula for all that time, I was able to precisely dial in my calorie intake and ended up losing a bunch of weight!
Thanks to additional surgery and speech/swallow therapy, by New Years day 2023 I finally had recovered enough of my swallow to eat and drink through my mouth and phase out formula feeding through my stomach tube! Food never tasted so good – seriously you guys, I had dreams about tacos, pizza and bbq for months before I was finally able to eat again! As a testament to this, I have gained all the weight back! (D'oh, now I'm obese again, oh well!) As for my voice, while it's still hoarse and not nearly what it was before the accident since I still have one paralyzed vocal chord, it continues to get better. My right-side facial paralysis has become less pronounced, so while my smile is still crooked I no longer look like a zombie! Of all the complications of my accident, somehow the stroke was the least of my concerns, and left minimal lasting impact - to this day the main symptom I have as a result is a slight loss of dexterity in my left hand. I'm right-handed so it's honestly nothing I can't live with. Life is good - I’m getting exercise, doing yardwork, smoking meat on my pellet grill, and yes – even brewing beer again (but not using glass! Just plastic & stainless going forward). Moreover, I have to still believe that I will continue to improve and get marginal gains here and there. The main recovery window (18 months) has came and went, but I'm still relatively young (39) so who knows what my body is capable of. People I don't speak to regularly tell me my voice sounds better and better every time they see me, so I choose to take it as a positive sign. After all, I survived this trauma that in all fairness should have killed me.
I wish I had something more profound to say after having gone through a near death experience. All I can say is how important it is to appreciate the little things in life, not take anything for granted, and tell your loved ones that you love them often. I have a good life – and a rockstar wife who has been with me every step of the way from that terrible night to the many months of anguish and struggle, the constant care I needed – mental & physical, all the happy milestones, challenging setbacks and triumphant victories along the way. She has endured and sacrificed so much for me, and I feel terrible for putting her through it all. Needless to say, I am the luckiest guy in the world to have her by my side after everything and I’m so lucky to still be here – because there’s a lot more living to do!
As for you all, homebrewing community, I know you might just brush this whole thing off as a consequence of doing something stupid, lack of common sense, that this hobby is perfectly safe as long as proper precautions are taken. Those are all fair points, again I don't disagree with the fact that a momentary lapse in judgement put me in this predicament. I'm not asking for compassion here, hell I'm not even going to go so far as to say "get rid of your glass carboys, people!" That's entirely up to you. I would hope that my story if nothing else serves as a reminder for how accidents can happen in the blink of an eye, that we often work with dangerous combinations of temperature, pressure, and material, and should treat our homebrewing equipment as well as our bodies with the respect they deserve! After all, you can always buy a new plastic fermenter if you have a contaminated batch and don't want to risk another one, but if you end up on the wrong side of a carboy glass shard like myself, there's no guarantee that anyone will be able to put Humpty Dumb-pty back together again. Well, on that note, thanks for reading, take care, and RDWHAH!
Topic: Two years ago today a glass carboy nearly killed me (Read 1829 times)
