Man cut in half by forklift opens up on horrifying surgery after tragic accident
In September 2019, Loren Schauers was driving a forklift across a bridge in Great Falls, Montana, when he had a tragic accident.
The then 18-year-old American was sent plummeting 50 feet to the ground when it veered off course and his pelvis was completely crushed.
Schauers had to have a hemicorporectomy surgery, amputating everything below his waist and also had half of his right arm amputated.
Over the years, he has been very open about his life since and recently spoke about some of the horrifying complications he experienced.
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The lad was doing a Q&A on YouTube with his wife, Sabia Reiche, when a user asked: “Why didn’t they cauterise your nerves before they closed you up?” This procedure is carried out to essentially deaden nerves in order to block pain signals from reaching the brain.
Sabia previously explained that doctors were planning to do this after his first surgery but as he was put in ‘hospice care’ the outlook of him surviving was really low.
Having then recovered, she said that it was then ‘too late for them to back in’ and cauterise the nerves.
And in this recent Q&A last moth, Schauers said the procedure didn’t happen: “because there were so many complications, at least that’s from what I understand.
“So, what I mean by complications is my lungs collapsed during surgery.”
Sabia quickly corrected him to add: “I don’t think during the surgery – it was after the surgery.”
“Ok well, anyway, my lungs collapsed,” Schauers continued. “They had to intubate me. I ended up getting intubatation-induced pneumonia.”
He went on to list the complications that followed, including a pulmonary embolism. This is when a blood clot blocks a blood vessel in the lungs and is life-threatening if it’s not quickly treated.
“And then from the surgery, I also had an abdominal infection,” Schauers said.
He explained this was ‘honeycombing and slowly spreading’ towards his spine, which would have killed him if it ‘hit the bone’.
Schauers explained that following his initial surgery, they thought he was ‘going to die’.
And Sabia added that she assumes that they ‘just didn’t want to risk anything that might allow’ the viable skin tissue left ‘to die’.
“So my assumption is once they knew that that skin was alive and wasn’t going to be like necrotic or die off, they just wanted to get him closed up safely without risk of affecting that skin,” she said.
“I know that the original plan was to revisit cauterising the nerves but like Loren said, he had all of those post surgery complications.”
Jess Battison