Delayed reaction from electrical shock?

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Jraef said:
Medical diagnosis is often a highly organized and researched system of educated guesses, occasionally backed up by tangible scientific conclusions such as pathogens, blood chemicals etc., but more often a process of elimination of other causes until you are left with one that fits.
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They sometimes call this process "differential diagnosis". Doctors are expected to express some kind of diagnosis, so they rule out as many as possible using objective criteria until they are left with a hand full of possibilities. They select the most likely one based on all they know about the patient and what happened to him.

If he had reported being hit in the head, the doctor might have diagnosed a concussion.

I can only reiterate that you pay your workmans comp insurer to handle this kind of thing. Let them do their job. You should just butt out of the medical side. You do need to determine just how your safety program failed though and implement corrective action to prevent someone else from being shocked.
 
jason said:
An employee says he got shocked, just like we all get shocked at times. Nothing out of the ordinary. There were no holes blown in him, no burns, etc. Well he moves on to another job, completes that job, then goes out to my house to pick up a part. He gets to my house approximately 2 hours after this shock. He says he pulled up at my house and was feeling light headed, started walking over to where the parts are and the next thing he remembers is waking up in an ambulance.

Anyone ever heard of anything like this? Even if it is a delayed reaction to a shock, how would the doctors know this definitely? (Especially from my understanding all of the tests they have done have come back normal.)
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petersonra said:
I can only reiterate that you pay your workmans comp insurer to handle this kind of thing. Let them do their job. You should just butt out of the medical side. You do need to determine just how your safety program failed though and implement corrective action to prevent someone else from being shocked.
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I doubt if the doctors can tell if the employee got shocked or not but it wouldn't really matter.

A employee ends up at the hospital and says he was shocked and it becomes part of the medical report.

The workman's comp carrier will see this report and maybe OSHA.

The company owner says this sort of thing happens all the time, nothing out of the ordinary. Now would be a good time to stop saying such things.

PS: Don't people know that all the statements made on the internet can be found, a simple search.
 
ty for the definition of PVC.

growler said:
"The employee says he got shocked".

Is there a proceedure for him to report any type of injury while on the job? Was he working circuits live? Was he wearing the correct protective gear?

Getting shocked is not normal and should not be part of the job. Did the employee receive the proper safety training?
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Bingo.


__dan said:
If it happened to you, how would you feel if your coworkers told the insurer he was napping, drinking, diabetic. There is a word for that which escapes me at the moment, probably remorselessness.
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If it isnt true, that word would be "slander".

***********************************

"just like we all get shocked at times. Nothing out of the ordinary."

:facepalm:
 
JFletcher said:
If it isnt true, that word would be "slander".
Click to expand...

Nope, cannot slander someone's anonymous handle. Why would "someone" post anonymously, then claim the value of their real identity has been harmed. I make no attempt to link the two. He has been "trolled" which may be legal (try proving trolling is not legal or cite the code reference).

https://www.reddit.com/r/KenM/

I may have misread the post. If so, consider it deleted.
 
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jason said:
An employee says he got shocked, just like we all get shocked at times. Nothing out of the ordinary. There were no holes blown in him, no burns, etc. Well he moves on to another job, completes that job, then goes out to my house to pick up a part. He gets to my house approximately 2 hours after this shock. He says he pulled up at my house and was feeling light headed, started walking over to where the parts are and the next thing he remembers is waking up in an ambulance.

At the hospital all of the tests they did came back normal.

This morning I talked to his girlfriend and according to her the doctors are saying it was a delayed reaction to the shock. Well how can the doctors know it's a delayed reaction to a shock when all of the tests came back normal? (If the doctors even said that.)

Anyone ever heard of anything like this? Even if it is a delayed reaction to a shock, how would the doctors know this definitely? (Especially from my understanding all of the tests they have done have come back normal.)

Process of elimination? So all of the tests are normal and he tells him he got shocked a couple of hours ago so automatically the shock is what caused him losing consciousness 2 hours later? Why couldn't it have been a candy bar he ate on the way to my house? Or why couldn't it have been some sort of reaction he may have come in contact with between the job and my house? Or why couldn't it be he simply laid in the yard until he was found?

I know something happened to him. Seizure, diabetic problems maybe, etc... I just have never heard of being shocked (and he told the customer at the house it didn't get him when he bumped 2 wires together) and 2 hours later losing consciousness.

Just trying to understand it.

Any insight is appreciated.
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first insight: making statements like this one is a poor choice for an employer.

"An employee says he got shocked, just like we all get shocked at times. Nothing out of the ordinary."

statements like this tend to have a bad effect on your liability if someone suffers a serious injury.
seriously, what kind of chrome plated bullshit is this?

second insight:

"So all of the tests are normal and he tells him he got shocked a couple of hours ago so
automatically the shock is what caused him losing consciousness 2 hours later?"

yes, but not automatically, as in a default response. a heart attack several hours later
has been known to happen. so laying down on the front lawn is better than having a
heart attack fifteen minutes later, driving on the freeway.

third insight:

"Why couldn't it have been a candy bar he ate on the way to my house?"

i'm sixty years old, i've been eating candy bars all my life, and i've never found
the need to pass out on the front lawn from a snickers. Tequila, yes. Snickers, no.

Or why couldn't it have been some sort of reaction he may have come in contact
with between the job and my house?

with what? an allergic reaction to an employer who only seems to be interested
in getting out of the fact that his employee was injured while at work?

"Or why couldn't it be he simply laid in the yard until he was found?"

makes sense to me. i always feel the need for a dirt nap after picking up material.

as to my personal experience with being shocked, a few years ago, i pulled 14 amps
hand to hand across the chest, in a T bar ceiling. tripped the breaker is why i'm
here typing this today.

i went in for and EKG and blood work, and was off work for about three days.
from what i was told, a bad shock can release potassium in the blood stream,
and sometimes a heart attack can occur within 12 hours of being shocked,
without other symptoms.

i will share with you that it beats the crap out of you, in addition to leaving
every filling in your mouth tasting like copper. and i didn't have any blown
holes or burns, either.

i had a real good connection to the t bar. no excessive heat to damage
the tissues where it entered or exited. just a deep purple discolaration
on my hand, that faded after a few hours.
 
Fulthrotl said:
first insight: making statements like this one is a poor choice for an employer.

"An employee says he got shocked, just like we all get shocked at times. Nothing out of the ordinary."

statements like this tend to have a bad effect on your liability if someone suffers a serious injury.
seriously, what kind of chrome plated bullshit is this?

second insight:

"So all of the tests are normal and he tells him he got shocked a couple of hours ago so
automatically the shock is what caused him losing consciousness 2 hours later?"

yes, but not automatically, as in a default response. a heart attack several hours later
has been known to happen. so laying down on the front lawn is better than having a
heart attack fifteen minutes later, driving on the freeway.

third insight:

"Why couldn't it have been a candy bar he ate on the way to my house?"

i'm sixty years old, i've been eating candy bars all my life, and i've never found
the need to pass out on the front lawn from a snickers. Tequila, yes. Snickers, no.

Or why couldn't it have been some sort of reaction he may have come in contact
with between the job and my house?

with what? an allergic reaction to an employer who only seems to be interested
in getting out of the fact that his employee was injured while at work?

"Or why couldn't it be he simply laid in the yard until he was found?"

makes sense to me. i always feel the need for a dirt nap after picking up material.

as to my personal experience with being shocked, a few years ago, i pulled 14 amps
hand to hand across the chest, in a T bar ceiling. tripped the breaker is why i'm
here typing this today.

i went in for and EKG and blood work, and was off work for about three days.
from what i was told, a bad shock can release potassium in the blood stream,
and sometimes a heart attack can occur within 12 hours of being shocked,
without other symptoms.

i will share with you that it beats the crap out of you, in addition to leaving
every filling in your mouth tasting like copper. and i didn't have any blown
holes or burns, either.

i had a real good connection to the t bar. no excessive heat to damage
the tissues where it entered or exited. just a deep purple discolaration
on my hand, that faded after a few hours.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry you had to go through that, glad you made it through, but have to ask how did you determine exposure of 14 amps?
 
30 years ago when I first started working on electrical stuff, getting shocked all the time was pretty much routine. In my apprenticeship, we were taught that the reflex reaction we may make could be more dangerous than the shock, like jumping back from being shocked and falling off a ladder and dying.

Getting shocked never really bothered me, it's happened to me hundreds of times.

Then I started learning about the delayed reaction and how it can sometimes be fatal. I have totally changed the way I do things now. Several decades ago I would have been called a wuss for wanting to shut down a 120 volt circuit I was working on just so I wouldn't get shocked.

Fortunately for all of us, things have changed. I consider myself very lucky to have not had any delayed reactions, especially considering the amount of times I was shocked.
 
__dan said:
Nope, cannot slander someone's anonymous handle. Why would "someone" post anonymously, then claim the value of their real identity has been harmed. I make no attempt to link the two. He has been "trolled" which may be legal (try proving trolling is not legal or cite the code reference).

https://www.reddit.com/r/KenM/

I may have misread the post. If so, consider it deleted.
Click to expand...

I think you may have misread my post, or its intent. I was saying that the word I thought you were looking for was slander, not that you or the OP had committed it. e.g., if I say 'so and so got shocked on the job because he was drinking' or 'so and so got shocked badly; wouldnt surprise me if he was high when it happened', state it as fact to other people, if it isnt true, it could be considered slander.

What's the relevance of the reddit link?
 
kwired said:
I'm sorry you had to go through that, glad you made it through, but have to ask how did you determine exposure of 14 amps?
Click to expand...

120 volt, 20 amp circuit, with 6 amps flowing on it.

nothing metal went to ground. it went in between the fingers on my
left hand, and out thru the heel of my right hand. i was wearing a
sweatshirt, with t shirt under it, so i was pretty well insulated. it was
a while back, and thinking about it, i'm pretty sure the static load on
the circuit was six amps before i shunt tripped it.

there's a thread on here back when it happened, but the search engine
doesn't go back far enough to find it.

it knocked me out sitting on top of a ladder, waist high thru the grid,
and the grid kept me falling from the ladder. there was a secretary in
the outer office, who said she heard me screaming. she wasn't concerned
enough to bother walking in to check however.

i woke up on the ladder, the room was dark, and my first thought was,
"i tripped the breaker". a couple days later, i revisited the spot, got my
wire strippers back, and looked for arc's to ground. there weren't any.

50 milliamps is the threshold of fibrillation, to my understanding. so 16 amps
would be about 320 times that. no lasting damage, other than a surly
disposition, and sometimes my social skills mysteriously disappear, but
i'm not all that sure they really were all that present in the first place.
 
Fulthrotl said:
first insight: making statements like this one is a poor choice for an employer.

"An employee says he got shocked, just like we all get shocked at times. Nothing out of the ordinary."

statements like this tend to have a bad effect on your liability if someone suffers a serious injury.
seriously, what kind of chrome plated bullshit is this?

second insight:

"So all of the tests are normal and he tells him he got shocked a couple of hours ago so
automatically the shock is what caused him losing consciousness 2 hours later?"

yes, but not automatically, as in a default response. a heart attack several hours later
has been known to happen. so laying down on the front lawn is better than having a
heart attack fifteen minutes later, driving on the freeway.

third insight:

"Why couldn't it have been a candy bar he ate on the way to my house?"

i'm sixty years old, i've been eating candy bars all my life, and i've never found
the need to pass out on the front lawn from a snickers. Tequila, yes. Snickers, no.

Or why couldn't it have been some sort of reaction he may have come in contact
with between the job and my house?

with what? an allergic reaction to an employer who only seems to be interested
in getting out of the fact that his employee was injured while at work?

"Or why couldn't it be he simply laid in the yard until he was found?"

makes sense to me. i always feel the need for a dirt nap after picking up material.

as to my personal experience with being shocked, a few years ago, i pulled 14 amps
hand to hand across the chest, in a T bar ceiling. tripped the breaker is why i'm
here typing this today.

i went in for and EKG and blood work, and was off work for about three days.
from what i was told, a bad shock can release potassium in the blood stream,
and sometimes a heart attack can occur within 12 hours of being shocked,
without other symptoms.

i will share with you that it beats the crap out of you, in addition to leaving
every filling in your mouth tasting like copper. and i didn't have any blown
holes or burns, either.

i had a real good connection to the t bar. no excessive heat to damage
the tissues where it entered or exited. just a deep purple discolaration
on my hand, that faded after a few hours.
Click to expand...

Out of high school new in the trade demoing. Got the ok to cut and rip out some wiring in a factory ceiling about thirty plus feet up. Standing on top of a cage that a fork lift would lift up to the ceiling holding conduit and wire with left hand Cut the wire 277v with right. Arc or ball of ?? Current running in counter clock wise circle between my arms and chest. Stuck. Couldn't figure out while it was happening how someone could be behind me with one big kick of a combat boot between my shoulder blades Pliers shorted to conduit. Fell back into cage.

Mechanics on the job said my heart could stop later. I made some calls to some people to say goodbye just in case. ( pay phone. 1980) I didn't die. Sore for a few days. :- )

Thats when I learned to test circuits for myself to make sure they are off. The person that told me it was ok to cut and rip was my older brother.
 
JFletcher said:
I think you may have misread my post, or its intent. I was saying that the word I thought you were looking for was slander, not that you or the OP had committed it. e.g., if I say 'so and so got shocked on the job because he was drinking' or 'so and so got shocked badly; wouldnt surprise me if he was high when it happened', state it as fact to other people, if it isnt true, it could be considered slander.

What's the relevance of the reddit link?
Click to expand...

Yep, I misread it. Slander never occurred to me, another word came up first.

The reddit link came up in the day's reading, forget where. I read some of his trolling posts. Cannot remember laughing that hard. The man is some kind of genius. Not relevant, posted for amusement.
 
growler said:
The company owner says this sort of thing happens all the time, nothing out of the ordinary. Now would be a good time to stop saying such things.
Click to expand...

^^^ That is advice that should be followed. ^^^


PS: Don't people know that all the statements made on the internet can be found, a simple search.
Click to expand...

And even if we remove it from the forum it is still out there.
 
Fulthrotl said:
.....as to my personal experience with being shocked, a few years ago, i pulled 14 amps hand to hand across the chest, in a T bar ceiling. tripped the breaker is why i'm here typing this today.....
Click to expand...

a hand to hand Z is in the 800-1200 Ohm range per ISO and others
meaning a V in the 12-16 kV range

once flowing the R gets lower, 300 to 500
many factors though

what size cb trips instantaneously at 14 A ?
 
Fulthrotl said:
120 volt, 20 amp circuit, with 6 amps flowing on it.
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Ingenieur said:
what size cb trips instantaneously at 14 A ?
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I think Fulthrotl is saying that it was a 20 amp circuit with an existing load of 6 amp so it would take a least 14 A to trip the CB.
Who knows how much current it took to trip that breaker, if I were religious I would be thinking miracle.

I remember reading the original post and thinking how lucky he was to be alive. I have gotten shocked 2-3 times over the last 40 years but never anything like that. I have always been hit by higher voltage and knocked clear.

I think that professional sports have shown that every time you get hit can have a lasting effect, even if you just butt heads on the ball field.
 
growler said:
I think Fulthrotl is saying that it was a 20 amp circuit with an existing load of 6 amp so it would take a least 14 A to trip the CB.
Who knows how much current it took to trip that breaker, if I were religious I would be thinking miracle.

I remember reading the original post and thinking how lucky he was to be alive. I have gotten shocked 2-3 times over the last 40 years but never anything like that. I have always been hit by higher voltage and knocked clear.

I think that professional sports have shown that every time you get hit can have a lasting effect, even if you just butt heads on the ball field.
Click to expand...

Won't a 20 with 20 A take 10's of minutes?
he must have taken >>>20 to trip instantaeously
like 100+ !!!

10 x rating 1-2 sec
he is one lucky puppy
 
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Fulthrotl said:
it knocked me out sitting on top of a ladder, waist high thru the grid,
and the grid kept me falling from the ladder.

i woke up on the ladder, the room was dark, and my first thought was,
"i tripped the breaker".
Click to expand...

Ingenieur said:
Won't a 20 with 20 A take 10's of minutes?
he must have taken >>>20 to trip instantaeously
like 100+ !!!

10 x rating 1-2 sec
he is one lucky puppy
Click to expand...


If you try to do the math I don't think you can draw enough current through the human body at 120V to trip a breaker.

But something tripped that breaker after Fulthrotl passed out and yet he was not fried like bacon.

I would think that he must have let go after passing out and created a dead short to the junction box ( wire springs over and touches the box, ground) or something like that.
 
luckylerado said:
This thread is already coming up in google search results. MH is pretty prolific.

"delayed reaction from electrical shock" 2nd page
"georgia reaction to electrical shock" Page 1
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The Google knows. The Google tracks your every internet move and seeks to please you. Someone not a member on this site will likely get a different result.
 
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