I almost lost my eye at toil this week, my coworker and I went to a ventilation task to upgrade 6 ft of air duct.
My coworker was cutting the sheet metal and I was welding the pieces together, all of us finished more than two feet of air duct before lunch. After tacos and burritos, the people I was with and I went back to the task to finish the rest of the work… I was laboring next to my coworker, then 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 myself and others right in the face. Thankfully, my instinct was to raise my hands in front of my face. The thick piece of metal hit myself and others right in the face and missed my eye socket by a millimeter. I had a immense gash down the side of my face and I was bleeding badly. I left the ventilation tasksite to go directly to the emergency room. I could barely see, although I managed to find my way to the hospital. I had to get more than two stitches near my left eye and the doctor said I was genuinely fortunate that the metal didn’t hit my eye directly. It would have left myself and others blind in that eye. My boss told myself and others to be more careful, although I do not know what the people I was with and I could have done differently to avoid the accident altogether. It genuinely was one of those freak accidents that you cannot plan to avoid because they shouldn’t happen at all.