Miracles Really Do Happen

Up before dawn, it was our usual race to grab hard hats, safety vests, and for our whole family to jump into the company pickup. We all slumped into our seats, barely awake, while my husband punched the accelerator, merging into the busy pre-dawn line of construction vehicles headed toward a new day in dusty Bakersfield, California.

Turning west off Rosedale Highway, we veered off the main road and stopped before a padlocked gate. While dialing the lock numbers we quickly scanned the petroleum fields for a special breed of foxes, a local endangered species that inhabited the few acres of abandoned dirt hills. If we saw one of these animals we were obliged to cease working, contact the local biologist, and supposedly halt all operations until the security of the animals was assured.

No visible foxes were in sight, so we left the gate wide open for dozens of dump trucks to enter behind us and drove into a restricted hazardous waste materials clean up site.

Our boss had challenged us, "Can you load out 30,000 tons in the next three weeks?" Randy, my newlywed husband of 4-months, replied, "Not a problem." You see, "No" and "Impossible" were two words that just didn't exist in his vocabulary! Very quickly the job turned into 15-hour days of adrenaline-charged activities as we pulled together as a family to once again complete an 'impossible' job assignment.

Two of our sons, Larry and Jeff, were soon joined by their step-brother, Robbie, and together with our three sons we loaded the first 30,000 yards of inky black petroleum coke. Petroleum coke is normally the consistency of sand or ash... but we were to soon discover what none of the scientists and engineers could have predicted... that under the soft layer of coke was a nearly petrified strata of very heavy, solid pet-coke. With the right machinery we could have drilled and broken up that immovable strata, but all we had were loaders. This should have been a red flag for what was about to happen...

Randy was an expert operator of heavy machinery, but the rest of us were so green we needed to be taught everything from lubrication to building ramps. I was a middle-aged mother who had previously spent more than a dozen years home schooling children and volunteering at church.

I had never before stepped foot on a construction site let alone operated machines that required a ladder just to get into the operator's seat!

I was challenged with operating a CAT 962 loader and Robotrack screen plant - solo! Larry got the CAT 980 loader, Jeff pulled water truck duty, and Robbie shoveled pet-coke on the rail cars.

Learning to live together as a blended family is normally a hurdle that requires a few years of diligence to master, but for our family we were not only living together but working in a dangerous environmental cleanup project together. Let's just say we elected for the accelerated course!

Our boss enjoyed the million-dollars-a-month our little family crew was producing for him.

We were working together like a well-oiled machine, loading out as much as 204 large dump trucks in a day. It became necessary to hire more men, so we went out and recruited some more green people... and trained the new guys, who became like family to us. Except for Randy, none of us had gotten our hazwhoper certification yet and we were not outfitted adequatelyfor the job. We hadn't even received our entrance medical exams! It was a rush-rush job and at a million dollars a month profit we couldn't afford to slow down for things like that, is what our out-of-state project manager explained to us.

Our boss had thrown down the gauntlet - 30,000 tons of pet-coke to be removed in three weeks!

Randy had just come off of 4 months straight of 24-hour days working in a very stressful hazmat environment with high level toxicity in Chicago. The newborn company wasn't yet set up for the required medical checkups so despite massive exposure to high level toxins on a 'round the clock basis, Randy was pushed to his physical and mental limits at the Chicago hazmat site without the standard safeguards in place.

It was like he was driven... not really a man, but more like a machine. He gave everything he had to his boss, and there was nothing that could stop him. Randy accomplished everything put in front of him to do, even if it meant staying up all night in a dark, lonely shop putting machinery together so the work could continue at top speed. You would have thought we would recognize the warning signs... every machine breaks down now and then, even the human machines! But we were consumed with keeping our noses above water and just surviving from day-to-day.

We passed the 30,000 ton mark in the first month and we were almost half-way through the pile!

We didn't have the proper machinery, but the job was flying at such a pace that it had become impossible to slow down. Our bosses were watching those dollar signs flash between computer screens... it was truly amazing what one little family crew could do!

After breaking through to the petrified layer we began deliberately crashing our loaders into the solid pet-coke in order to break off pieces small enough to load. It was back-wrenching and head-ache producing work. We were getting hurt every day, but there was no slowing down. We had daily production quotas to meet.

One day Randy picked up something off the ground and white dust flew everywhere. The screen plant is a giant roaring, bellowing red monster that blows air like a land whale. If you get near the controls it's like a sand-blaster in your face.

We never knew what we would find in the pile - it had lain there for decades, accumulating garbage of every kind possible. There were times when I was loading into the dump trucks and I would see things like brown bottles you would find in chemistry set or in a pharmacy. It's just one of the risks you run in hazmat... but our job was so fast-paced that none of us had yet gone to hazwhoper school!

We were not even certified to work on a hazmat field!

By early July 2003 the Bakersfield desert was immersed in a broiling heat wave. Daily temperatures were rocketing into the triple digits, so we began working as early as possible in the pre-dawn hours before the heat became unbearable. Working as fast as possible, already exhausted from months of stressful unrelenting work loads, Randy was operating his CAT 980 at full-throttle. Loading the dump trucks was his primary task, as it was a delicate operation and none of us "greenies" were capable of filling the loads as quickly as was needed.

Then it happened. Going in full-throttle for the inevitable shaking, grinding bite into the petrified coke, Randy's machine broke - the bolts sheared right off. Randy's body hit the steering column and pain exploded through his chest and back. Pain was normal for him and he thought he could shrug it off. "Impossible" was not in his vocabulary, so he continued working.

Randy was usually very patient and gentle with all of us "greenies" but from that day onward he became edgy with a slow fuse that often resulted in verbal explosions.

After a very grouchy weekend, my husband told me, "You might want to take me to the emergency room - I think I'm having a heart attack."

We arrived at the Bakersfield Heart Hospital early Sunday morning. Randy collapsed and the emergency team quickly took him in and ran a battery of tests. When I was called in the doctor was finishing writing his report and didn't look up at me. While continuing to write he told me that he was prescribing an antibiotic for acute bronchitis.

Intuitively I knew something was wrong with that report, so I attempted to get the doctor's attention. I wanted to look him in the eye, but he was in a hurry. This patient's heart was perfectly healthy and he was ready to move onto a real emergency, seemed to be his perspective. Why bother to interrupt a busy emergency room with such a dramatic entrance when his heart was perfectly fine?!?

I interrupted his hasty departure by saying, "Doctor, do you want to know what he was doing when this pain happened?" The doctor, barely giving me a glance, replied, "Just have him take that antibiotic for 10-days and he should be fine."

I knew something was wrong but I couldn't figure it out!

On Monday, we returned to the job site, but Randy just wasn't right. Our project manager had just visited our site a few days prior and had already returned to Indiana. We stayed in close contact via phone and email so I let him know what had happened and he advised me to take Randy back into ER. Tuesday morning we left the job site for a couple of hours to visit a different emergency room.

Running the same battery of tests, the doctor was pleased to tell us that Randy's heart was perfectly fine. This man looked me in the eye when I asked him what he thought it was, and then he commenced a long speech... about the perils of working on a hazmat site without a face mask. He told us that he sees refinery workers come in all the time with lung problems as a result of working without respiratory protection. He diagnosed Randy's pain as "chemical pneumonitus" and told us to see a pulmonologist.

No one seemed to think this was an emergency case, and being out of state we had no medical resources who knew us personally. We arrived at the medical building and saw the pulmonologist who sounded amazingly confident (after x-rays and CATscans) as she explained that Randy was suffering from Valley Fever, a common but serious malady affecting the Bakersfield area and causing similar complaints. She advised us to go to Scripp's Clinic in LaJolla for further testing and diagnosis.

Nothing felt right to me. It seemed like every doctor was looking through a certain pair of eyeglasses - called by the name of their particular branch of knowledge, or specialty combined with their personal experience. So I thought to myself that we needed a primary care physician, an internist or general practitioner who could help us put the pieces together. Our pastor referred us to a very capable, mature doctor who examined Randy from head to toe, leaving no body part unturned. She assured us that it was simply a matter of eliminating all the possibilities and getting to the root cause. We felt relieved that someone was going to bat for us, even if it did mean sitting in her waiting room for hours on end (she was that thorough for all her patients!)

By then our company was alarmed. They purchased two airline tickets (one-way) to bring Randy and me to Chicago so that their own doctors could treat Randy. By then we had been to so many doctors and we didn't think Randy's body could tolerate the trip so our project manager was able to convince the corporate executives to allow us to stay and continue to receive treatment in California.

Because Randy remembered breathing in the white dust near the screen plant, it was suspected that a contaminant had affected his lungs (he had a lot of trouble breathing, along with severe chest pain extending to his back). So everything suddenly changed at the job site. Yellow and black striped tape was posted all around the "contamination zone" and everyone, including truck drivers, were required to wear face masks at all times on the site.

All of us "greenies" were directed to hurry up and register for hazwhoper classes at the local college so that we would be legally certified to be working at a hazmat site. The company didn't want to get caught with their pants down. Also, it's the law that all hazmat workers must receive a physical checkup upon entering and exiting a job. We all got our checkups except Randy - and his 'illness' was to be kept secret. Our partnering company could not see Randy in his condition or know how seriously hurt he was. By the time the tape was put up and the face mask rule was put into effect it w