True Stories #172 - The Farm Accident

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Episode Transcript

(00:01):
I'm Seth Andrews, and what you'reabout to hear is a true story.
Be advised, this one is prettyintense. It is horrifying, buts compelling,
and of course it is true.It was an otherwise unremarkable morning in

(00:28):
January of nineteen ninety two. Therewas a young North Dakota farm kid.
His name is John Thompson. AndJohn was unloading feed for the pigs,
and he was using something called agrain augur. Now, a grain augur
is a long tube that raises andtransports grain from the ground to the top

(00:51):
of large bin. That's got along shank, and it looks like a
giant screw and that screw turns drivenby a gear, cranking and moving the
grain up to the top of thesilo. And if that grain auger sounds
dangerous, you are well ahead ofme. Eighteen year old John was working

(01:14):
the grain up the auger, buthe got too close to something called the
power takeoff shaft, or the PTS. The PTS is supposed to have a
safety shield on it, but thisdevice did not. John's untucked shirts got
caught in the shaft and started towrap up in it. He was pulled

(01:38):
into the auger, spinning helplessly againstthe metal until he finally blacked out.
John somehow ended up back on theground. He was brought back to consciousness
when his dog started licking his face. John opened his eyes. He looked
around, but he could not pushhimself up to a sitting position, and

(02:02):
the reason was both of his armshad been torn off by the machine.
John was dizzy and disoriented. Hewasn't feeling much pain. He did have
one exposed nerve that he could feel. The wounds at the shoulders were crimped

(02:23):
from the auger, but the bleedingwas still intense. Nine one one was
called. The ambulance arrived. Johnwas rushed to the emergency room, where
the doctors saw him and gasp indisbelief. They later told him, you
should not be alive because when yougot here, there was almost no blood

(02:46):
in you. There he was onthe table. Emergency crews cutting away John's
clothing and they went to work asparamedics walked in carrying a trash bag and
yes, John's arms were inside thebag. The limbs were quickly packed in

(03:07):
ice. They were transported with Johnto North Memorial Hospital in Ribbonsdale, Minnesota,
under the care of a surgeon nameddoctor Alan van Beek, and Doctor
van Beek and his team accomplished theimpossible. They successfully reattached both of John's

(03:30):
arms. It was touch and go. The boy was placed in a coma
for four weeks to recover a bloodinfection nearly killed him. More surgeries would
follow than intensive rehabilitation, but hedid make it through this ordeal. He
even wrote a two thousand and twobook about the experience called Home in One

(03:55):
Piece. Now this isn't a movie. This story does not have a Hollywood
ending. John still has problems withfine motor skills. He does remain permanently
disabled, and his journey has beenfilled with the ups and downs of somebody
who has been through deadly trauma.But John Thompson was and is remarkable,

(04:21):
and not just because he survived,but because of how he survived. You
see, back in nineteen ninety two, the person who called nine one one
and saved his life was John himself. In the moments just after he had

(04:44):
been caught up in that machine,as he regained consciousness, he did manage
to get into a standing position byleaning up against a tractor tire, He
walked one hundred yards to his emptyhouse. He turned the door knob with
his mouth to get inside, andhe dialed the phone to call nine one

(05:04):
one using a pencil in his teeth. And then he sat in a bathtub
waiting for the paramedics to arrive.And nobody can ever say that John wasn't
a conscientious kid, because the reasonhe had ambled into the bathroom and crawled

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inside the tub to wait for helpwas John didn't want to get blood on
his mother's new carpet. And thestory of John Thompson is a true story.

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