Partner of man who was cut in half by forklift shares sobering reality about aftermath of accident
The partner of man who was cut in half by a forklift has revealed what sort complications followed on from his first surgery.
Aged just 18, Loren Schauers was involved in a life-changing accident at work when his forklift mistakenly veered off a bridge on 27 September, 2019.
The Montana labourer was pinned under the vehicle after it had dropped 50ft to the ground, and everything below his hips had been smashed to pieces.
This resulted in a total amputation of everything below his waist, as well as half of his right arm.
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After the incident, Loren and his wife Sabia Reiche started a YouTube channel called Sabia and Loren to provide regular health and life updates.
On Monday (5 May), the pair were streaming live from a hospital bed, as Loren said he'd been dealing with kidney stones for 10 months.
"Loren came down with a kidney infection including such severe pain that a trip to the E.R. was warranted, where it was decided to admit him to the hospital to fight and conquer this infection as fast as possible," Sabia explained in a post on Facebook last month.
"Loren is prepped and scheduled to go in for surgery Monday," she said in a follow-up post.
During the hospital livestream, however, Sabia opened up about how the accident totally 'messed up' Loren's nerves.
After his first surgery, doctors were planning to cauterise (burning a part of a body to remove or close off a part of it) all of his nerve endings so he wouldn't feel pain.
But because 'the outlook of Loren surviving was really low,' he ended up 'going into hospice care, because he was pretty much on his way to dying'.
"And then once he was sent to hospice care, he actually started recovering very quickly," she said.
"But by then it was too late for them to go back in and cauterise all of those nerves.
"They weren't willing to reopen him after, all the infections and stuff that happened after the first surgery.
"And so standardly, those nerve endings where he's cut would have been cauterised, which would have avoided a lot of pain for him.
"But because of how everything played out, they didn't end up getting cauterise. And now, no one's willing to open him back up."
A day later, Sabia provided a positive health update following Monday's surgery, telling her followers: "Loren is done with his procedure, everything went smooth and the kidney stones are gone."
Anish Vij