Life after serious injury

Elwin in hospital in Halifax after his injury.

by Elwin Watts (with thanks to Charles McKay for his friendship and support) 

September 21, 1994: A day that was supposed to be like all the others!

Waking early to another beautiful September day on Prince Edward Island, I quickly readied for a long workday. Nothing out of the ordinary today…or so I blissfully thought. I was proud to be part of the crew building Prince Edward Island’s shiny new Confederation Bridge to New Brunswick (the Fixed Link as it is known locally). This project was huge by PEI standards and presented many of us a good paying job and an exciting opportunity to contribute to the construction of the longest span bridge over open water in the world. Twenty-nine years old, I sprang up the stairs with ease, pain free, to the concrete plant control room, and proceeded to get it ready for another hectic, but energizing day.

Life was good! I was healthy, happy, gainfully and proudly employed. I was married to a loving wife (who was pregnant with our second child) and I was the father of a beautiful daughter. I enjoyed my coworkers. It was a special time, and all knew it.

I was an experienced driver so, same as hundreds of times previously, I jumped into a truck, loaded up, and headed down to one of the piers being poured. It was an extremely fast-paced and noisy environment. The hours were long, and you worked rain or shine, six or seven days a week.

Dump trucks, rock trucks, concrete trucks, bulldozers and loaders were everywhere on the site, and all as big and heavy as the magnitude of the construction site required. The drones, whines and beeps soon became ordinary and after being exposed to them all day, every day, you almost didn’t hear them anymore. At the beginning of my employment, I received a general site orientation, but it didn’t cover any specifics. Looking back, I now realize it should have been much more in-depth.

While I waited for my turn to back into the pump truck, I hopped out of my truck to check the temperature of the load, which entailed climbing the ladder to the top of the drum. Back on the ground, I added details to the load log. Before getting back into the cab, I had a quick conversation with my co-worker. We were both standing to the side of my truck. Absolutely nothing unusual or out of the ordinary until…something was pushing me to the ground, face first! Turned out the “something” was a fully-loaded concrete truck weighing over 65,000 pounds! I must have been in the blind spot of the driver, although I don’t remember that exactly. Then, and still today, I wonder how he didn’t see me as I was fairly close to my own truck, and was wearing a safety helmet and vest. The truck ran completely over me on my right side, from my ankle to my waist. The co-worker I had been chatting with, Dana, was able to keep the top half of my body away from the wheels as the truck rolled over me – he saved my life that day! Dana became the middle name for our son when he arrived six months later.

Somehow, I was able to roll over onto my back but that’s all I could do as I lost all feeling in my legs. Another friend quickly appeared and kneeled beside me. He was crying and said “it isn’t good buddy, but we’re getting you help!” Perhaps it was shock, or perhaps just some sense of trying to gain control of something, anything, but at this precarious point I concluded that the best thing I could do was have a cigarette! Quite a sight, I’m sure, as I proceeded to have several cigarettes while waiting for medical help to arrive. Lying there, so many thoughts crowded my head, but foremost was wondering if I would ever see my daughter again. With my wife pregnant, would my kids grow up without a dad? After what seemed like an eternity, the ambulance arrived and off to the hospital in Summerside I went, still awake for the entire 30 minute drive.

In the Emergency Room, the scene was chaotic. I overheard a doctor say “we’ll have to cut it off!” I was sure he was talking about my foot so, frantically gesturing to a nurse, I urged her not to let this happen. She assured me, he was not talking about my foot, but rather my boot! Since I wasn’t that attached to my boot, this was a great relief.

Somehow, I was still conscious when my wife, Heather, appeared. She stood at the bedside, four months pregnant, as beautiful as ever in a red dress. I was beginning to think I might never see our daughter, Alyssa, again, or our unborn baby. My injuries were even more severe than was originally thought. I would have to be moved ASAP to PEI’s largest referral hospital, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlottetown. I was still lucid but was starting to lose consciousness.

My foot and ankle were totally crushed, I had a tear in my bowel and my pelvis was crushed. When I arrived at the QEH, emergency surgery was performed to close the bowel tear, resulting in my having a colostomy, and to stabilize my foot and pelvis. During the next week, my family was prepared for what could happen as I had internal bleeding and also developed pneumonia. However, my stubbornness was never more apparent, and I was eventually stable enough to travel to Halifax for further assessment and several more surgeries on my ankle, foot and pelvis.

Elwin with family in 2021

After a very lengthy stay in hospital, I was able to return home, and this is where I think the hardest part of my journey began – reality was setting in and I had many long hours with only my thoughts, which got darker and darker. One of the worst things was that I thought I had let my family down. I was no longer the provider – I had to ask people for help for EVERYTHING and that was so difficult! Initially, because I was so happy to be alive, I didn’t mind, but eventually, because I had no idea what the future had in store, I didn’t want to see anyone or talk to anyone, and I always felt like I was “that guy who was stupid enough to get run over by a concrete truck”. Social outings were dreaded for a long time as ultimately, someone who didn’t know me or my circumstances would ask “what do you do?” – because I wasn’t working, I felt like a complete failure.

Other things I couldn’t do, like skate with my kids, physically play with them, golf, or simply go for a walk with my wife, wreaked havoc in my mind. For a long time I was so angry! Angry with myself for not getting out of the way of the truck. Angry with the driver of that truck – why didn’t he see me? Angry with the rest of the world for being able to do things that I no longer could, and for seemingly not understanding how difficult life was for me. I got to the point where I had to make a choice: either get help for my mental health, or it might be the end of my life. These feelings are very hard to express and understand, unless you’ve experienced a difficult trauma, and they don’t easily go away.

I did get help, and after some time, I began to think I could return to work, although it was difficult to know what that work would be. I eventually obtained a diploma in Health and Safety Management, undoubtedly driven by the trauma and recovery from my workplace accident and the desire to contribute to lowering the probability of workplace accidents. I have been in the safety field for the past 20 years, and I strive to convey the importance of safe work practices ALWAYS and tell my colleagues that the best thing a person can do at work is arrive home safely at the end of day.

Over the decades, I endured multiple surgeries, numerous sessions of rehabilitation and physiotherapy. Many times I questioned why I didn’t die. Why did this have to happen? I still ask myself these questions sometimes and I suppose I always will. I return, however, to the belief that there is life after injury from a serious workplace accident.

My motivation for sharing my story is to illustrate the complexity of serious workplace accidents and, in some cases, the reality that a worker will not fully recover or make up for time lost. What can happen, however, is emotional and physical recovery to a point that your life can regain a semblance of your former self with meaning and focus resurrected.

With an open mind, faith in health care providers, loving support from family and friends, an incredible life is still within reach…but you must be willing to reach (and do the hard work rehabilitating both emotionally and physically) – I’m glad I did!