Hartford, CT – Patrick Evans is wheeled out of the hyperbaric chamber at Hartford Hospital. It’s his last round of treatment for carbon monoxide poisoning he sustained in a jeep while he was off roading.
“I was reaching for the door handle because I was going to get out into the mud and hook the chain up and I passed out and have no recollection of anything from there until halfway down the mountain,” Evans said.
Patrick calls it mudding, which is very popular in the spring time. He and a friend tried to cross a muddy swampy river. The truck started to fill with water and carbon monoxide since the tailpipe had become clogged.
“My buddy jumped out and got me out of there I guess I don’t even know what happened really. I woke up in a side by side four wheel drive type thing on the way down,” Evans said.
Doctors say Patrick is very lucky his friends got him out of there when he did, others haven’t been so fortunate.
“This activity is very common, and if you recall in the past year there was a guy on the MTV show Buck Wild, that died of the same thing,” said Dr. Kelly Johnson-Arbor.
Patrick was placed in the hyberbaric chamber and treated for co while his mother watched and worried.
“I was thinking he was probably close to dead,” Patrick’s mother Sherri said. “Because you hear about carbon monoxide poisoning and I know what it can do. How fast it can happen.”
One of the reasons that the hyperbaric chamber is so effective is that it puts the patient under pressure and speeds up the recovery time, which is important because carbon monoxide poisoning can cause brain damage.
“Initially they will recover and seem fine but they can go on to develop problems with memory and attention and concentration and this is what we call delayed brain damage that occurs after carbon monoxide poisoning,” Johnson-Arbor said.
“I didn’t expect it to happen that fast, it was a matter of minutes, and I had been stuck a million times in the mud and never thought twice about it,” Evans said.