A Bay of Plenty truck driver says he felt like a human balloon when compressed air was forced into his body after he fell on a brass fitting that pierced his buttock.
Despite the freak accident, Opotiki's Steven McCormack, 48, was cheerful in Whakatane Hospital's intensive care unit yesterday, saying he
felt "lucky to be alive".
On Saturday he was standing on the plate between the cab of his truck and semi-trailer when his foot slipped and, as he fell, he broke the hose off a brass nipple connected to the compressed air reservoir powering the truck's brakes.
He fell hard on to the nipple, which pierced the flesh of his left buttock. As the air, compressed to 100 pounds per square inch, began rushing into his body he started screaming.
"I felt the air rush into my body and I felt like it was going to explode from my foot," Mr McCormack said.
"I was blowing up like a football ... it felt like I had the bends, like in diving. I had no choice but just to lay there, blowing up like a balloon." Doctors later told him the air separated fat from muscle, and they were surprised it did not break his skin.
Mr McCormack's workmates heard his screams and found him with the elbow-shaped nipple hooked into his rear, company co-owner Robbie Petersen said. He said he could hear the air hissing out and released the pressurised container's safety valve to stop the air flow.
The nipple remained embedded as three men lifted Mr McCormack's upper torso on to the truck's plate. One workmate put him on his side in the recovery position, a move he thought probably saved his life.
It helped him breathe, although one lung was filling with fluid.
Aided by a doctor, ambulance officers removed the nipple and Mr McCormack was rushed to Whakatane Hospital. Doctors inserted a tube into his lungs and cleared the wound in his buttock using what felt to him like a drill. "That was the most painful part."
