The Advocate will run periodic features titled Then and Now. The stories are about people who were in the news in the past.Then and Now revisits their stories and explores what they are up to now. We invite readers to share their story ideas by emailing us at editorial@reddeeradvocate or calling city editor Carolyn Martindale at 403-314-4326.
A freak accident on Jan. 1, 2010, has forever changed Brendan Dacey.
The 23-year-old Red Deer man nearly lost his life early that New Year’s Day when he accidentally pushed his left hand through the window pane of a hallway door at his apartment building. His arm was cut down to the bone, his brachial artery severed.
Fortunately, so many people made the right moves that morning, including best friend Bruce Theriault, who used a belt as a tourniquet while an unidentified woman from the apartment building helped. The wounds ran halfway up his bicep, through the elbow joint and down through some of the muscle in his forearm. Fire-medics from Red Deer Emergency Services arrived and immediately pumped a litre of fluid into Dacey, who wound up losing more than 50 per cent of his blood.
Nearly two years later, Dacey sits in a spacious new home he shares with a friend. His brown hair is longer than in the photo of him on a hospital stretcher, with his wounded arm outstretched.
“It’s a big eye opener how quick life can be there and gone,” said Dacey. “It makes me realize how to never take life for granted. As soon as something takes you to the edge and you come back from it, you have a whole different perspective.”
From the time he left the hospital a few weeks after emergency surgery, Dacey was determined to take on the physical challenges that include permanent muscle and nerve damage.
He was in a cast up to his shoulder for three months.
Doctors told him he wouldn’t return to his very physical job as a derrick hand in the oilfield, but that declaration didn’t stop him. For several months, he underwent physiotherapy, plus he did strengthening exercises in the gym. He returned to work six and a half months later.
“They took a vein out of there and that’s the skin graft right there,” said Dacey. “They cut a third of my bicep, so that will never grow back. And I lost some muscle through my forearm.”
He rolls up his left sleeve to show the scarring on the front side of his forearm. There’s bulging as well.
He’s not really sure why it’s like that but he figures “that’s just the way the muscle is growing.”
Many people have thrown their support behind him, including job supervisor Lorne Burnouf, who made sure he had a job to come back to.
“If it wasn’t for my tight-knit friends and my family, it would have been pretty hard,” said Dacey.
Dacey feels self-conscious about his arm, so he tends to wear long-sleeve shirts or sweaters unless it’s really warm outside. He now notices other people’s scars a lot more.
He’s careful around glass and, in fact, he was scared initially to drive in a car soon after the incident.
Doctors told him it would be about 18 months before the full extent of recovery would be known.
He continues to have numbness.
His thumb is locked in one position because two nerves were cut in the accident. He still has a lot of mobility problems in his hand.
It’s sometimes hard for him to open up his fingers. But he remains hopeful that it will get back to where it was.
“We keep working on it every day,” said Dacey. “Me and Bruce go to the gym regularly.”
Theriault remembers the day was “very scary” when his friend got hurt and for a moment, he thought his friend “was a goner.”
“He was trying to say his last goodbyes,” said Theriault, 23.
“It was mentally tough on me, seeing my best friend almost die. He’s been like a brother to me.”
They try to laugh about it now. But they have moments when they get emotional about it, particularly when they realize how good of friends they are.
They both have Nova Scotia’s area code, 902, tattooed behind their left ears.
Dacey has since become qualified to operate a drilling service rig.
He says he gets his drive from his father, Sean, a firefighter in Halifax. Sean, along with wife Sharon, believe their son has bounced back because he is such a fighter. They recall that day and still can’t believe in many ways that he survived.
“I am a big believer in fate and he just wasn’t meant to die that night,” said Sean.
Sean fired off a letter to Red Deer Mayor Morris Flewwelling soon after the accident, praising the city’s advanced life support services, which means at least one fire-medic per ambulance must be a paramedic.
They have more specialized training than an emergency medical technician.
“If Brendan’s accident would have happened in Halifax, there’s no question in my mind he’d be dead,” said Sean.
The city of Halifax has since raised the level of firefighter first-aid training to medical first responder (MFR), but it’s nowhere near the level of training found in Red Deer, he added.
“For all the paramedics involved, I owe them a debt of gratitude that I will never be able to repay,” said Sean. “Some people say that heroes should only be for our military people. . . but for all the paramedics and physicians and nurses, they are certainly heroes for Sharon and me.”
They are also extremely proud of what their son has achieved.
“Brendan is a survivor,” Sean said.
ltester@www.reddeeradvocate.com
The Advocate will run periodic features titled Then and Now. The stories are about people who were in the news in the past.Then and Now revisits their stories and explores what they are up to now. We invite readers to share their story ideas by emailing us at editorial@reddeeradvocate or calling city editor Carolyn Martindale at 403-314-4326.