No matter what someone's story is, we can take something from their life and to help us in ours. In this Story of Resilience, Jan Goodrich shares the tory of being involved in an electrical accident at work. At 25 he learned how to recovery both physically, mentally, and emotionally. Listen in to hear his story of the accident, the burn unit, the importance of social support and many more ups and downs that came along his journey.
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Jen: Welcome to the Parents Place podcast with Hillary and Jen.
Hilary: Welcome to our podcast today, we are excited to have you guys here once again. So we have the opportunity to share a story of resilience today and we have a special guest with us. We have talked about we've talked about MarLyn before as the as the individual behind the scenes, helping us do all of our editing and kind of the administrative side of things. And she has roped a particular person into being Karen, and so we're thrilled to have them. We have Jen Goodrich here with us. And I'm just going to turn the time over to him at this point, and he can share a little bit about who he is and then we'll go ahead and let him kind of just jump into his story, his story of resilience that he's going to illustrate for us today. So go ahead, Jan.
Jan: Thank you. So I grew up in Vernal, Utah. I've spent most of my life in Orem in Utah County since college, but married and have four children. And I worked in the health care field for 30 years. I was a health care, finance and operations, and I retired a few years ago and I work in education now. I work at BYU as a finance person, so still working. But yeah, that's a little background on me.
Hilary: And we'll let you pass on behalf of the BYU, but…
Jan: Yeah, no , I know it's the like that should actually remove that hat back there for our listening audience.
Hilary: It's hard because you know, that that Aggie Blood just runs deep and so.
Jan: Oh yeah, I get it.
Hilary: The fact we have to be competitors, but we appreciate you being here. And so, Jan, go ahead , and I know you have a particular story that you've been able to share with individuals in the past that have really helped them. So I'm going to let you share a little bit about your story and provide as much details as you want or as few of details. But give us an insight into your story of resilience.
Jan: Sure. So this happened to me. This accident that I'm going to talk about happened thirty-nine years ago. So, I'm sixty-four. I was twenty-five years old and I was making my way through college, so I was I would go out and work in road construction for eight months at a time or so, then go back to school because I was funding my education. But one particular day, so this is a traveling road construction crew. Our crew is in Colorado on the freeway. And so we were working on guardrail is what we did. So sometimes we were putting in guardrails. Sometimes we were raising the level of guardrail when they made adjustments to the road. So that's what we were doing that particular day. So this is July 5th of 1983. I remember it very well and we were I was working right under a large machine. It was a boom truck and then I had so the person driving it and the person who was spotting for me, watching for power lines because we were always right underneath power lines on freeways. Guardrail was very close to being underneath that power line. So what happened on that particular day is I tied Shane to a guardrail post and I took the other end and I was going to tie it on to the boom arm so that we could let up. He could lift up the post. Unbeknownst to the driver, he had actually left it up on the high voltage power lines above him. Haven't seen those. The spotter hadn't seen them. I found out later they had told me that morning that they had actually been drinking that weekend of a lot that weekend and holiday weekend. So anyway, so he lifted up on those power lines. And what it did is it charged the truck. It was 14000-volt power line. And so, when I reached out to attach the chain to the truck, I actually got the full 14000 volts that went through the truck, the boom arm, and that it went through me, through my right arm internally, into my body, through my heart, out my heels. So traveled the entire my entire body. So what's interesting with electricity like house current electricity, you know, actually draws people to it where they can't get released high voltage power lines, on the other hand, or like an explosion. So I was it blew me away from the scene and actually the witnesses said I traveled in the air 15 to 20 feet backwards and it was on an incline like this.
So I fell back and hit the ground on the side of the road, down, down off the road. And so that's what happened. So interestingly enough, I experienced this in slow motion like a lot of people say they do, just flying through the air. I didn't know what was happening, but it, you know, I told people because I didn't see it coming didn't know I was coming. The power of it felt like walking into an oncoming locomotive that just hit you like an unbelievable power surge. So when it hit the ground, fortunately, I was still conscious. But the doctor later told me that when I hit the ground, there really acted as cardio resuscitation. Because when electricity goes through muscles, including your heart, which your heart is one it can track, so say your heart would have contracted into a tight ball. And then when it pounded on the ground, it acted like as if somebody gave me cardio resuscitation. So that issue that actually I felt far enough and just perfectly enough to start my heart and to be able to, you know, to live. So, I was awake immediately. I couldn't breathe for what I think was probably two or three minutes. I don't know if it's because the air is knocked out of me or my lungs were seized up. So I was banging my body on the ground trying to get breath because I was completely stopped and couldn't breathe at all. So once I got once we got breathing, by that time they were calling for an ambulance, ambulance came pick me up, they treated me for, of course, they had bad second and third degree burns from the electricity. And then they also treated me as if I probably had a spinal cord injury for how far I had fallen. So fortunately, my spine was fine, but they put me on a board and everything treated me as if I might have a spinal cord injury.
So I went to a small hospital and they stabilized me there, and it was very evident that I was going to have to have extensive surgery and work done. So a day and a half or so later, I was flown to the University of Utah Burn Center, and that was an amazing thing because obviously they're some of the best in the business. And so I spent I spent a month there and then I came back later and had another. I spent another month, so I spent two months. In your view, Burn Center had a total of seven operations. I couldn't do anything activity wise for about three years, but I think the thing that was interesting for me in this whole dynamic was, you know, they ended up covering my feet with grafts, with skin grafts. And so they took large strips from the side of my thighs about this wide all the way down to my knee, up to high on my thigh. And they took that skin and they covered my feet, which had the worst third degree burns. So my feet had burns clear to my heel bone. And so they had the first surgery. They had to address that and then they put grass skin grafts over that. Later, they had to attach my foot to my calf for a month and hold that so that they could actually rebuild my left heel, which was the most damage. So anyway, obviously traumatic, life changing, you know, and the thing that was interesting to me is that. The doctor told me he did not know what my prognosis would be. This was a really unusual situation. He had no idea these were skin grafts on your feet, right? You're going to be walking on for the rest of your life. So he said, I have no idea what your prognosis will be. I have no idea if you will be crippled. I have no idea if those will fail and you'll have to be in a wheelchair. I can't tell you what your long-term prognosis is.
So I'm 25. I'm single, and my biggest fear at that point was my slightly receding hairline. I've lost that battle now. But anyway, so at that point, you know, it was a complete rug pull. Everything was up in the air, career, everything, all these important decisions. My confidence was zero. I was scared to death. So that was, you know, that was kind of the background of what I was facing. And then a lot of great things happened in there and afterwards that helped me to get through that. But that's kind of some of the background. Hopefully that's helpful.
Hilary: You hear these stories, and your story is one of those stories where I think. You probably shouldn't be here. I mean, based on the event, based on what happened based on the severity of injury, like a true miracle to have you here with us. Wow! So, I can only imagine the journey that you have taken throughout your life to get to where you are today. I've got a few. I want to find out a little bit more about that journey. So let's start with the thing that really stood out to me that you made mention of right before was just that unknown. The unknown of will I be able to do certain things? Will my career need to change? Will this affect having a future family? And I know there's many people that have that unknown in their lives. So how do you deal with that? And was there anything that specifically helped with kind of with that process, that emotional process?
Jan: Yeah, a couple of things come to mind, I think. One of the thing things that I have to deal with was my feelings about the man who had been you were inebriated and contributed to my accident. So I got some great advice from my mom and I said, You know, I don't know. I hope that I and planned to, you know, to forgive at some point because I know that, you know that's you can't keep that poison in your body. You end up destroying you, too. But so I asked her, I said, What? What do you what would you advise me to do? And she said I wouldn't rush the process. She said, I know that you will eventually find the right time to forgive them. But she said, you know, you have a lot of healing to do emotionally and physically. And she just said, Why don't you take it one day at a time and this entire process? And that's what my parents advised me to do, also with my physical injuries because, you know, I was I was home and in Vernal with my parents, and every day was an adventure and that sometimes my skin grafts would turn blue and I would worry and I would call the burn center. And so it was all of these ups and downs during that process, data time. But I think, you know, I think the things that helped me most were a I had had a supportive family structure. I think that was one of the layers of protection. And even though they didn't know what to do necessarily help me, they approached us in a very common-sense way. Also, religion played a big part in this and just, you know, having faith in God in a higher power that , you know, there was something else working for me other than just physicians and other people.
So I think those things, but there were a lot of dark days, you know, a lot of really scary times. I know the best in some of the best advice I got was back in the day. You know, they because I was so far away, they gave me a huge container of Demerol, narcotic pain reliever. And so I took that home and my therapist, my physical therapist in the hospital, came and sat down. That day I was discharged and he said, he said, Jan, I know that you're going to have a lot of pain. In fact, burn injuries are some of the worst for years. You're going to have pain. And he said, Well, I advise you to do is to, you know, he said I would dump out 90 percent of those pills into the toilet and flush them down the toilet, get rid of them and keep 10 percent of them, which were still enough. When you're pain is extreme and you can't deal with it with other things. So I really tried to learn to deal with my pain through, you know, they gave us exercises to do ways to . Sometimes you concentrate on the pain, sometimes you concentrate on everything but the pain. But I had a lot of tools like that, and he said, you have probably a burn patient has like a 75%-80% chance of being addicted to narcotics for life. And he said, if you don't do something major and you don't take it very seriously, so that will be your, you know, your plight. So I think that that to me, was a one of those tender mercies. I think he helped to save me from a life of addiction by doing that because I did indeed have that. I did have the, you know, the pain. I also had pain from where they took the grafts. And every time I would stand out from that for several years, it would be like a thousand pins and needles. Because the nerves were growing back, the blood was trying to find its way. So but anyway, I think that was some of the best advice is to be very, very careful about, you know, about narcotic drugs.
Jen: That was wise advice on his part. Because it is very easy to get addicted to those and you don't want to deal with the pain, so you just go the other route of taking the medication and sometimes it. Helps, and sometimes it creates lifelong things, so I'm grateful that you had that person in your life that was like, OK, I'm going to be real with you. And this is what we suggest. So yea, yes, like you said, a tender mercy.
Hilary: And such an intuitive doctor to be able to know that, to know that this is going to be difficult, but by continuing to take these medications when it's unnecessary, it's going to be the more difficult of a journey if you go that direction. So I just the power of that of that doctor knowing that that's amazing. You know, we talk in this particular series, the story of resilience. I think for our listeners that our regular listeners, you guys are starting to notice a pattern here. And one of those patterns is that finding that social support is so incredibly vital. Most of these trials that we go through in life, I won't say most. I will say all of these trials that we go through in life we can't do on our own. And so being able to find that sense of social support, whether that be through family or friends or religion or school neighborhood groups, whatnot, it's incredibly vital to have that. So, I'm glad that you brought that up because I do. I think that that is one of the keys in finding success.
Jan: I still remember to this day every single person. Honestly, almost 40 years later, I remember every single person, friend, family that came to the burn center during those two months because I was, you know, I was living a life of quiet desperation, not knowing what my future was. So every person who came in and said anything, you know, any encouragement. And you know, it was just became incredibly important to me and help me through those initial days. And, you know, when I came home, obviously the same thing people that came to visit, but I didn't hold it against my friends who didn't because it was I was a long ways away from a lot of friends. But for the people who made that effort to come and see me, it meant they meant the world. And to your point, there was , you know , none of us survive in this world with , you know, alone. We've learned that during COVID, we can't we can't do this alone. We just can't do this journey. And I'm an average person. I'm so glad that, you know, regarding the pain reliever, I'm an average person. When I'm in pain, I want to get out of pain. I mean, had I have not had that advice, I would have not. I'm sure I would have not avoided, you know, a really serious addiction. But yeah, I think that's the other aspect that I would like to just mention, I think is really important is the burn. The burn unit had a professional counselor that was there all the time, 24 seven hours for the staff and for the patients, right. Because what they dealt with every day and we were in this basically in ICU for burn patients and there were horrible things. You know, there are people who have full body burns are horrible things that they were dealing with.
But it was interesting back in the day. Now this is this is 19. You know, this is 19, the early 1980s and I remember going to fill out job forms. And I said back then it said, have you ever had a counseling? Have you ever had professional counseling? And they would never say, and now I. But I was worried in my, you know, young 20 year old, my 20 year old mind that I wasn't going to be able to be employable if I ever check that box. And now people encourage, you know, physicians, family, church leaders encourage you to get counseling , professional counseling. But I was so worried about getting counseling that that person would come by every single day. I was in there and she'd asked me if I wanted to talk and I said no. And I, although I have recovered and, you know, in an amazing way, in my estimation, I could have sped up my recovery and healed a lot quicker, emotionally and more effectively. Had I been willing to talk to somebody. Now, even though it's encouraged today, there are a lot of people I know that still avoid for whatever reason, either they say, I'm going to be OK, I don't need it, you know, whatever it is, but a lot of people still avoid that because it's scary. And but I just know that I would have been helped immensely and been able to make quantum leaps in my emotional recovery because obviously that damage was as serious as the physical.
Hilary: Now, I think we're doing better at debunking that stigma associated with mental health and therapeutic services, but we've still got a ways to go and that's why we love having even a platform like this where we can talk about that and help to normalize that. Talking helps. Talking is one of the steps to help in that road to recovery. So thank you for bringing that up. And I'm glad that you brought up the Jen you mentioned. Those individuals that helped you and how oftentimes we as individuals on the outside, don't necessarily know how to help, I think we've all felt that way before where we have a neighbor, a friend and even a family member that we know is dealing with something hard. But it's like, Where's my place? I'm not afraid of stepping in and saying something wrong of overstepping my boundaries as you look at this experience. Are there any particular people or maybe particular situations that come to your mind that you think that made a difference on that day or on that week? Anything that stands out to you?
Jan: Yeah, a couple of thoughts. It's interesting. You know, you write about people don't know what to say when somebody is, they've lost a loved one or they've had a, you know, a terrible injury. But you know what, I what I advise people is, is that just talk to them. You don't have to say anything magical. You don't have to say the exact right thing. Think all you have to do is be positive and talk to them as you normally would your friend or associate. You know, I think the things I didn't appreciate were people that came in and immediately told me their, you know , the electrocution story of a person they knew and how they died or how they were burned. I mean, those things weren't helpful , but anything else, anything else where, you know, I know somebody is hurting. All we have to do, that person doesn't know what to say. They just need to drop that fear and say, I'm going to go engage with this person because I love them or care about them, or I want to help them. And I'm just going to be my normal natural self and everything's going to be OK and I will benefit as well as them. I had a I did have an uncle who kind of stepped forward and was kind of an advocate for me, and he was somebody who helped me deal with insurance and medical issues because he lived out there very close to my parents still lived three hours away, but he kind of stepped up and was willing to be kind of an advocate and speak for me and talk to people, be gatekeeper a little bit, you know, like was coming out of surgery or something. Maybe this is not a good time, but I think people, you know, people that had that skill need to not be afraid to offer their services and whatever that may be, if it's medical or even to just help people with, you know, the things in the background pay their bills. Or I remember getting, you know, a bill one day when I was home, you know a $20,000 bill said, do immediately. And that just scared me to death because I did know, you know, the U of U was going to be ultimately patient with me and everything . But I didn’t. I didn't know. If I know if I was going to be paying this off for the rest of my life, if I was going to get help, you know? And so those things, you know, people really need to not worry about saying the wrong thing as long as they're, you know positive with that person in any format, even joking with them the things, the stories and things they have in common, you know, the things that they can laugh about from their past. I think all of those things are extremely important, but I know the people I've experienced that, you know, having fear of talking to someone who just went through a tragic thing.
Hilary: So I think I'm going to speak on behalf of the entire group. And that is tell us how you are today? I know that was quite a while ago and so you have had this long road to recovery. But how are things now physically, emotionally?
Jan: Yeah so you know, it's interesting. I spoke with a doctor in the last six-eight months and I just said, What's your experience been with burn patients where they had serious burns, where they've had chronic pain for years and things like that in any way? They asked me about my story, this one little bit background. And anyway, they said, You know what, Jan, actually, you should be a complete mess today, emotionally and maybe even physically. And because of the dynamics of having an uncertain future, having a medical diagnosis, it was not known for a long time that had to play out and the pain, the chronic pain. So, you know, the thing here is, is that I'm not any kind of Superman at all. I just had all of these layers, like an onion, of people around me. I had known blessings of family and good friends. And sometimes you have to, you know, as a victim, you're victimized, you have to reach out and establish friends, and they sometimes they don't necessarily come directly to you. So, you know, avoiding having been, you know, I don't have PTSD, which I'm grateful for. I think part of that is because I didn't see the thing coming at me, right? I don't have bad dreams. But I think, you know, a lot of tender mercies in my life. But most of the tender mercies came in the form of people. Right, people that help me encouraged me, I got encouragement, you know, from friends and trusted individuals to jump back into school, you know, get busy as soon as you're physically able to. So I got back into school and I wanted to get a master's degree. I thought I said, I'm not going to let anything, you know, defer me from doing that.
So, I got back and that was great advice to get active, getting get involved now there are a lot of things I didn't want to do because, you know, I mean, I didn't walk very well for a while. I had symptoms, but I noticed the more I got out around people, the more I got out and got over my fear of, you know, having people think that there's something wrong with me, the better I felt and the more and the quicker acceleration of my healing was. And that was long term, emotional and physical. You know, honestly, you know, I would attribute to where I'm at today, having had a successful career, raised a great family. I've been very blessed, even economically and having security. All those blessings to me came from other people that were there in my path out there at the right time to, you know, to encourage, to advise, you know, because this changed everything about my life. You know, my occupation, who I would marry, what felt, you know, everything and not my basic personality. But you know, all these things were added important critical time in my life when I was going to make all these important decisions. So, you know, to me, it was it's been in a way it's been a great blessing to because to this day, I still have, you know, so many talks about having like a heart attack and then being stable for the rest of their life. They there's a silver lining. Now here's the here's the thing about, you know, one thing about having this horrible accident all these years later, my entire life, I've always had a little bit of a silver lining that has always been in my psyche and knowing that, you know, one, you can do hard things. But otherwise, you know, there are there are blessings, there's a higher power. There are people out there. There are resources to help you. And always just something I think an insider person that you've done a really hard thing. And so you've done about the worst. Yeah, you've overcome some of the worst things possible.
So when you go and have a hard day at work where you have a relationship problem, you know, there's always just a little bit of a glimmer of saying, I can get through this somehow some way, you know, the universe has blessed me and God has endowed me, and friends have supported me to the point where I can really go on. So I'd love to have this. I would love to have not been electrocuted. But, you know, this tender mercy of having this silver lining my whole life has been a great blessing, so I think that's the thing. I've tried to find the good in this and to the lessons learned, humility gained, the friendships made, you know, the insights gained. I've tried to hold on to those just tender mercies because I'm not sure we can gain those without doing really hard things sometimes. And we all have really hard things that you know to deal with.
Jen: And this just reminds me and a lot of these stories of resilience really remind me how we are so hard wired for connection and how that is so important is to have those connected people. I mean. It can be so much worse, the trial that we go through is if we isolate ourselves, then we don't have that. We need that so badly to help us through those hard times of life.
Jan: Yeah, and I think for me that, you know this experience encouraged me to hold on to my childhood friends, you know, hold on to those people who always been there for me. Even, you know, you get even some distance from those people and you know, you live in different towns and you don't see each other. But for me, you know, I've reached back to them and we've had a connection with, you know, a handful of childhood friends for the rest of our lives that have been extremely important. I don't think without having this experience, I think I would have discounted that more and just thought, Well, we go on, you know, we get separated. We don’t. Maybe in, that's okay. But there are certain relationships you I think there's only a handful of relationships with certain people that are, you know, we become extremely close with we're connected in some deep way. And so for me, this this caused me to want to hold on to those relationships and those people. Now, if you know, if it just didn't work for some reason, you know, if they didn't reciprocate, that's fine. But you know, the people I was really connected to did reciprocate and we did maintain a relationship. And even if it was going to dinner once a year or texting back and forth with a joke or a thought, you know, those things became incredibly important in my life to the people aspect. Having a few people that understood you, even your goofy side or your, you know you're they appreciated you loved you and it went way back. And so I think that was another thing is, you know, I was encouraged to really cherish my relationships with people.
Hilary: Well, Jan, I appreciate you so much for sharing your story because I think you have hit upon so many different things that we We want our viewers, our listeners to hear, and you are a true example of resilience so thank you. Thank you for sharing your story and thank you for reminding us of essentially what is most important in life. So we appreciate all that you do. Jen, I'll turn the rest over to you.
Jen: Yeah, this has been a great episode, and I think one that we can all learn from. Just keeping those people close, looking at the positive sides of things, helping or having those people remind us of those positive things and how we can maybe move forward going through these trials. I want to just remember or have our audience members remember to be kind to themselves, be kind to those that are trying to give us a little bit of help throughout our lives. And we appreciate you coming and talking with us today, and we will see you back here next week.
Thank you for listening to the Parents' Place podcast, if you would like to reach us, you can at parent@thefamilyplaceutah.org you can reach Jen on Facebook. Jen – The Family Place Please check out our show notes for any additional information. Our website is the family place you taught. If you're interested in any of our upcoming virtual classes. We'd love to see you there.
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