I almost lost my eye at work today.
My coworker and I went to a ventilation job to replace 6 ft of ductwork.
My coworker was cutting the sheet metal and I was welding the pieces together. We finished three feet of ductwork before lunch. After tacos and burritos, we went back to the job to finish the rest of the work. I was working next to my coworker. He was cutting the sheet metal while I used a small torch to weld the pieces together in the shape of a square. Somehow a piece of sheet metal came flying out of his hand and hit me right in the face. Thankfully, my instinct was to raise my hands in front of my face. The thick piece of metal hit me right in the face and missed my eye socket by a millimeter. I had a huge gash down the side of my face and I was bleeding badly. I left the ventilation jobsite to go directly to the emergency room. I could barely see, but I managed to find my way to the hospital. I had to get three stitches near my left eye and the doctor said I was really lucky that the metal didn’t hit my eye directly. It would have left me blind in that eye. My boss told me to be more careful, but I don’t know what we could have done differently to avoid the accident altogether. It really was one of those freak accidents that you can’t plan to avoid because they shouldn’t happen at all.