A New Zealand truck driver blew up like a human balloon and believed he would explode after accidentally sitting on a compressed air hose.
Steven McCormack, from the Bay of Plenty, has now been informed he was lucky to live after the nozzle started pumping air into his behind. The accident causing his neck, feet and hands to swell up.
He said: “I felt the air rush into my body and I felt like it was going to explode from my foot. I was blowing up like a football. It felt like I had the bends, like in diving.
“I had no choice but just to lay there, blowing up like a balloon.”
He had been working on his truck when when he slipped between the cab and the trailer. The compressed air hose that feeds the brakes was dislodged and the brass fitting it was attached to pierced his left buttock in the fall.
As the air, compressed to 100 pounds per square inch, began rushing into his body and he started screaming.
His workmates were fast to help, turning off the compressed air and packing ice around his swollen neck.
His mate Jason Wenham lay McCormack on his side and was credited with saving his life, alongside colleagues Ross Hustler and Robbie Petersen who helped lift him off the nozzle.
At hospital one of his lungs had to be drained as it had filled with fluid during the ordeal. Doctors also told him fat had seperated from his muscle – they were surprised his skin had not burst.
McCormack remarked his skin felt “like a pork roast” — hard and crackly on the outside but soft underneath.
