- John Pendleton, 36, was at work when he was electrocuted by 4160 volts
- The freak accident melted his face and left his brain exposed, but he miraculously pulled through
- Now the dad-of-two speaks to survivors of workplace injuries around the world
Here he shares his story in his own words.
Putting on my hard hat and steel-cap boots, I walked along the terrain of the open rock mines.
A mechanic and machinery operator, I was trying to work out what was wrong with a piece of heavy electrical machinery. The size of a small house, it ran off 4160 volts.
I’d been in the industry for five years, and my wife, Tiffany, then 29, and I had just bought our first house where we were raising our daughter Khloe, then nine, and son, Korbin, one. I’d left them all sleeping when I’d headed off for my shift which began at 1am.
Looking at the broken machine, I got to work.
Then everything went black…
When I came to, I was in a bed. A lady I didn’t recognise was tightly gripping my hand.
‘Who is this woman?‘
‘You had me so worried,’ she said through tears, explaining I’d been in a coma for nine days.
I stared blankly at her.
Who is this woman? I wondered.
Wrapped in bandages, I listened in shock as she explained I’d suffered a massive electric shock – it had hit my head and left my body through my neck. I had no memory at all of the accident, and no clue how it had happened.
Worse still, I had no memory of the woman holding my hand – Tiffany. She said she was my wife and that we had kids. I was completely confused.
She told me fireys had dragged my smouldering body out from under the machine I’d been working on, and I was airlifted off the job site to the hospital.
At that point, I’d begged fireys to ring Tiffany before becoming unresponsive.
Leaving the kids with her dad, Tiffany raced to my bedside. I was given an emergency tracheostomy and stabilised, then transferred to a more specialised hospital and placed in an induced coma.
I’d suffered third and fourth degree burns to 30 per cent of my upper body, had a fractured skull and bleed on my brain, suffered traumatic brain injuries, and my organs were shutting down. I’d also lost my right ear and 40 per cent of my left one.
‘John has a five per cent chance of surviving the night,’ doctors had told an inconsolable Tiffany.
While I was still in a coma, skin grafts from my right thigh were used on my face and neck.
After being hit by more than 4000 volts, it was a miracle I was still here at all, let alone that I’d now woken up.
‘I was struck with enough electricity to kill a hundred men.’
The medics were in for an even bigger shock. When the doctors who’d saved my life came to the ICU to see me, they were amazed that I was talking – and also walking!
‘You were struck with enough electricity to kill a hundred men,’ a doctor explained.
I really should be dead, I realised.
After Tiffany left for the night, I was so confused.
Staring blankly, I fixed my eyes on a calendar hanging on the wall. Looking at that day’s date, the past suddenly became clearer. For some reason, a switch flicked in my brain.
She’s my wife! I realised.
As all my memories and feelings flooded back, my thoughts went to our kids.
After 11 days, I was moved to a burns unit.
Seeing my injuries for the first time was heartbreaking.
‘I could see my brain…’
Terrifyingly, I’d lost almost all the skin and tissue from my head, leaving my damaged skull exposed and open.
I can see my brain, I thought, horrified.
And the right side of my face had completely burned off.
‘The skin is melting off my face,’ I said in disbelief.
There was significant damage to my skull, so surgeons drilled holes into it in hopes that tissue would grow.
‘My skull looks like a honeycomb,’ I told Tiffany, trying to lighten the mood.
While the treatment had started to work, it was taking far too long.
So in a tricky 12-hour operation, surgeons removed part of my latissimus dorsi – the large, flat muscle covering the width of the middle and lower back – to reconstruct the flesh on my head.
Afterwards, it felt like my head was in a vice and being beaten.
Through it all, Tiffany barely left my bedside, racing between a local hotel where she stayed with the kids, and the hospital.
‘I don’t know what I’d do without you,’ I reminded her often.
She’d place Khloe on my hospital bed and Korbin in my arms and, even though I was wrapped in bandages, they still snuggled into me.
‘Daddy had a really bad accident at work, but the doctors fixed him,’ Tiffany explained to them.
After 60 days in hospital, I went on to continue recovering at home.
Tiffany juggled the kids while caring for me. As my head healed, Tiffany rubbed compounds into my scalp to stop keloid scars from forming.
One year later, I started painful laser scar revision to increase motion in my neck after the tightening effects of the skin grafts.
Now six years on, I still struggle with short-term memory loss, but I’m sharing my story to raise awareness of the dangers of electricity and workplace accidents.
‘Now I speak to survivors across the world.’
And while I no longer work in the mining industry, I’ve started a podcast called Forgotten Working Class, where Tiffany and I speak to survivors across the world about their workplace injuries, or those sustained in accidents or through illness.
When people ask about my scars, Korbin, now seven, says, ‘Dad got electrocuted!’
Over time, I’ve learned to love my scars.
Tomorrow isn’t promised. I’m so grateful to be alive and I owe it all to the first responders, doctors and nurses who saved my life.
