I did a dumb-stupid 18 months ago. An upright freezer died about 2 months out of warranty - Frigidaire was of no help at all and repair cost made no sense. Told the wife I'd take it to the airplane hangar and use it as a winter warm box to keep things that would be damaged from freezing.
I have a high deck ex-military trailer that has a rear loading/safety stand - I wasn't using that. Picked up the freezer with the front loader and had my wife get up on the trailer to guide me as freezer blocked the view. Set the freezer down and backed up the tractor about two feet. I briefly thought about backing the tractor up several more feet to get it out of the way - I'm glad I didn't as I would probably have been killed by what happened next.
Jan said, "It's tippy", but I didn't hear her with the engine running. I turned off the tractor, jumped down, and at this point she says she repeated, "It's tippy!" - no matter, I was thinking about what I was going to do next and didn't hear a thing. Now the trailer was not hitched up, just sitting there. I jumped up on the back tailgate to help Jan lay the freezer down, and as soon as my weight hit the deck I realized that by golly it was really "tippy"! Tongue went up and I, along with the freezer, went backwards. Jan held on to the side rail and saved herself. Freezer hit the front loader bucket and stopped - could have easily flipped over and killed the tractor but it didn't - no dents, no damage.
Me? I was not quite so lucky, falling backwards onto the vertical end plate of the loader bucket, (to which I'd earlier cleverly welding on a grab hook). Bucket edge hit my about an inch from my butt's centerline and I bounced off onto the ground. Then in significant pain (that would probably have killed any normal man :c) I got up into a low crouch and made a tight left staggering circle saying (and I'm not particularly religious), "Holy Mother of God!!" (It hurt . . . a lot) - - I can hardly imagine how much worse was Gary's experience.)
I couldn't sit down for several months, ate dinner standing. After a week or two I started having leg pains and thought maybe blood clots, so decided to see a doc (hadn't before, as what are they gonna do, put you in a lower body cast?). Okay, have you ever looked in the yellow pages for a butt doc? They don't advertise I guess, probably as they are not much interested in looking at half the butts out there, and maybe not at a good portion of the other half either. I went to my regular doc . . . he said put this on, and left. Came back in and said get up on the table, roll on your side - - not easy, but I managed to comply. He took a deep breath, took a couple of steps backward and said, "%$#@ you're lucky you didn't tear youself . . . " now I *know* what he was going to say, but stopped.
I had to black racing stripes, one on each cheek! He said I'll prescribe some pain pills, which I declined. Do you know that when you have this sort of accident, everything seems like a real pain in the butt? And it takes a long long time to get better? I couldn't fly my plane or even sit in a car for more than 10 minutes for 10 months! Though I am a lot better now.
Accidents happen. So do really stupid accidents that really shouldn't, with any reasonably care, happen. Those really stupid ones are the toughest to get over mentally. They are a real pain in the butt.
Get well Gary,
Oh . . . if I'd have moved the tractor a bit further back, like I'd considered doing, I would have likely been killed, splitting my head open instead of just giving me a good kick in the butt.
bumper
