Frostbite anyone?

Will Carter

Will Carter

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 23, 2005
Location
Burlington
****There's a gross picture at the bottom of the post. Don't scroll too far if you don't want to see it.***


Well I'm couch bound for a few more days so I'll share my tale.


Escaping propane is very cold.


Took the Jeep to the drag strip to tune up the new motor (runs on propane now). Swapped out for a full and new-to-me tank. Made sure the valve was off before I went to screwing on the hose. Turns out the valve had a tight spot in it and wasn't fully closed. Got the hose half way on and she starts spewing. People around me were kinda starting to freak out so I stuck my hands back in and unscrewed the hose which stopped the leak. Prolly wasn't in there for more than 3 seconds but when I pulled my hands back out they were frozen. Like, slab of meat out of the freezer frozen.

Started packing up my stuff figuring I was going to need to seek medical attention pretty soon but my body decided it wanted to go sooner than later. Couple black outs later I was riding in waambulance to Baptist to see the burn doctors.

Spent a night in the hospital to make sure a digit or two wasn't going to fall off and back at home now and bored out of my dome.

Anyway...if you want to see a picture of my hand about 12 hours later you could scroll down some. It's pretty gross so if you don't like that stuff stop here.

Pardon my oxycodoned induced grammar.
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afarm7.static.flickr.com_6094_6281632340_fcbe188830.jpg


The right hand has a larger surface area of burn (or freeze) but isn't quite as severe.


Kristy has a video of them cutting the burnt skin of my hand if anyone wants to see that! :flipoff2:
 
Damn! I had the same thing happen the other day when I put pane on an my XJ. The only difference, I deemed it neccessary to let the tank spew while I ran to get the gloves out of the truck when I felt the instant burn on my hand.....Damn glad now I made that choice. I was feeling like I kinda didn't "man up" at the time. Hope your recovery goes well and quick!
 
i had a big accident filling a nitrous bottle one time, the keep the details short my pants were froze to my leg right next to the "junk yard" and i had blisters up my left arm and on my neck... i cant feel anything in that area of my leg now.. lincolnton ER didnt know how to treat me lol
 
89wrangler said:
Damn! I had the same thing happen the other day when I put pane on an my XJ. The only difference, I deemed it neccessary to let the tank spew while I ran to get the gloves out of the truck when I felt the instant burn on my hand.....Damn glad now I made that choice. I was feeling like I kinda didn't "man up" at the time. Hope your recovery goes well and quick!
Click to expand...

Yeah if I was at the shop I would have just let it spew and grabbed some pliers or welding gloves but people were gathering and didn't want to be the asshole with the offroad truck trying to blow everyone up. So I 'man-ed up' and stuck my hands back in real quick. Not quick enough I guess.

I did learn that morphine has no affect on me. I learned Vicodin didn't work last year when I broke my foot. After the first round of skin removal I requested something different. I felt like a wimp knowing what people were going through just across the building (burn unit) from me though. Can't even imagine...
 
Dang, thats crazy. I would have never guessed that a couple seconds of propane spew would cause something like that.
 
Wow you're a lucky SOB that its not worse, you really could have lost a finger or two.
 
Yeah I thought I was in trouble with the left hand. It seized up pretty tight in a very short period of time. Couldn't move it very much. There's only a very tiny spot on the very tip of the ring finger on the right hand that doesn't have any feeling but it's not black yet.

Looks good to go with the left hand assuming I can keep out infection. I apply large amounts of mayonnaise (silversulfadiazine) a couple times a day though.
 
Wow.... nice work.

Hope you feel better. That's gotta hurt like hell. You're still racing next week, right?
 
Lucky is right, although I am sure it don't feel like it. LPG boils at something like -42C, and actual temp is something like 400* below. IIRC.
I had a similar experience once, actually twice. Once having my old RV filled, it was spewing because it didn't seal when attaching the fill hose. The old guy couldn't get it back off, so I took the glove(Heavy Rubber) and by the time I got it off the glove was rock hard. Took a while to get it off my hand. The second time was on the trail, with a leather glove, same thing happened. I know how cold and how much that hurt, could not think of how that felt with nothing on. Best of luck to you Will
 
thats gonna look real gross when those blisters start peeling off!
 
Reid said:
thats gonna look real gross when those blisters start peeling off!
Click to expand...
They've started. They cut the big ones off there at the hospital and i've been slowly cutting off the rest as much as i can take. Yeah, every now and then I feel a stream of fluid roll down the back of my hand under the bandage. Yummy.
 
Worked on forklifts powered by propane for years. Stuff will mess you up. I used to take the big refill hose at the shop and shoot brown hoppy toads with it. They would frost over and be locked down for a while. Then they would thaw out and go back to semi normal! So there is hope! :lol: In all seriousness, keep it clean. Infections are what will screw you.
 
would it have worked to just turn off the valve on the tank?

had the same thing happen on my truck.
i just turned off the valve--let her spew then
tighten up the frozen fitting.



dawg
 
Valve was 'off'. Or so I thought. It was tightened down as far as I could turn it. After all this happened I grabbed it with both hands and gloves and got it to turn a few turns more to the 'real off' closed position. Looked like it had been stored in the weather in the halfway position causing it to corrode up and not turn all the way shut.
 
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