Hyperbaric Chamber on Friday night. It seems one of our "smarter" work crew people decided to let his diesel truck warm up at work on Thursday morning because it was so cold while he was loading up for a job. The only probelm was, he left the extra large overhead door open ( in 5 degree weather no less) and apparantly all the fumes were sucked in to the warehouse, offices and everywhere. When I went in Thursday morning and saw all the doors cracked open, I had figured that was what happened again, about the 3rd time in 1 to 2 months. Well, fast forward to Friday morning, I get to the office just a little later and I notice that there is only 2 or 3 cars in the lot, when there should be about 10 ! I walk into the office and the first thing one of the girls ask me is if I am sick, HELL YEA im sick, since Thursday afternoon !!! It turns out that one person went to the hospital on Thursday night and they confirmed CO poisoning. The only thing is he did not tell anybody else about this until Friday morning some time. Well, we all gather at St. Lukes Hopsital on Friday afternoon, 9 of us, at 3pm in the afternoon and we are all getting ready to go into the chamber en masse, and then the doctor says there is a situation with the insurance. He said the insurance will not cover this unless it is referred by another doctor !! Well 5 of the nine decide maybe they dont' have poisoning, but 4 of us, including myself, decide we are doing it anyway. They way I look at it, the company WILL pay my bill !! The Owners wife was there, and she decided NOT to do it, but she told our head accountant, who did go into the chamber to not worry about any bills. After doing a little bit of research and having 3 or 4 relatives that are RN's, they said it was the best decision I made in my life, that this is not something to mess around with. I also found out that the VP went out and bought a bunch of CO alarms on Friday...sort of like putting the cart before the horse, Eh ? Sooooo, I will just wait till the bill comes and hand it over to the CFO to pay my bill !! BTW, within 30 minutes of being in the chamber, I felt 95% better.
Darwin award goes to your coworker. Glad everyone is ok, CO poisoning is not something to mess around with. One of my classmates in highschool died from it the first night in his families new house. Scary stuff.
Tfox is right, that has WC written all over it. if you have any issues with getting them to pay any med bills, tell them you will turn it into work comp - im willing to bet that'll change their minds.
