This topic touches my rather ENLARGED HEART. I will try to make this brief. I am a female Sr RP (10+) that fell-out during an outage fall of 2005. No big deal right … Wrong. When you are understaffed, working the bottom two elevations and can hear yourself walk into containment you know you are in trouble. I was in contact with the powers to be during my jump making them aware of the situation and that people would be falling out if something did not change. No fluids available, CMT elevator OOS. I do not know how many people I sent out of CMT due to heat stress; one did exit the plant via ambulance. Lucky for me I had an exceptional Junior or I would have never walked out after my jump. I was told five people fell-out during our shift (at least the reported ones) including me. All lower containment, two were boundary guards. When I came out I was soaked, by then my Supervisor was (very aware of the situation) waiting for me and was in the process of at least getting water to lower CMT. By the way, I think very highly of this individual and have no doubt he did everything in his power, unfortunately the people he answered to said if we needed water we could go to the refuel floor, they had water there. Yes sir, let me understand, I should stop work in lower CMT (cause my Junior, no matter how outstanding, is not qualified to cover work), then in heat stress conditions, I should tackle the steps (elevator OOS) from lower to upper … Right … that is not a production, dose or safety issue.
With heat stroke on the paperwork, I was transported by ambulance to the hospital. After being packed in ice for four hours, they decided to take my core temperature, how convenient, my core temperature fell right under the cut-off for heat stroke so I fell into the category of heat exhaustion. Doctor’s orders, I was off for two days recovering (three days and workers’ comp enters the picture) then back to work like an idiot still in a daze. The utility did address heat stress during the following safety meeting and did indeed put out the fact that the reason the female Sr RP fell-out was due to the fact she did not have anything to eat or drink for two days … how interesting … need I say more.
After lay-offs I went home, I thought I had walking pneumonia since my chest hurt, it was difficult to breath and I was extremely tired. Long story short … I ended up in the hospital with an ejection fraction of 10% and the doctors telling me for some reason my heart was so enlarged and weak that I needed a heart transplant. They know it happened suddenly; I tested negative for every test under the sun. Diagnosis…Idiopathic Cardiomyopathy. I am unable to work or do almost anything I used to do. I have responded very well to medication to strengthen my heart, I have an ICD and will do the best I can for as long as I can. So ask the permanently disabled me if I would have minded any of the temporary consequences of a convenient water station.
Bat Man, I also have never encountered a problem concerning water stations and your opinion should not be humble. You said it all … “I would rather run the very low risk of a small ingestion of radioactive material as apposed to falling out from heat...any day”
Let me add my lifestyle has always been extremely healthy. Never smoked, social wine drinker, low-fat diet, no fried foods, no red meat, no salt, no coffee, no drugs, a very physically fit 5’3” size 5. The doctors told me if I was not as healthy as I was, I would not be here … end of story.
