Kerry gave me a lovely Tag Heuer watch many years back after we got engaged. I wear it all the time and it was on my wrist when I had my accident.
I remember at the clinic I was first taken to in Colombia that they had to take the pin out of the strap to get it off my wrist, my hand was bunched up and they couldn’t get it over it. I remember the skin peeling away as they took the watch off and then forgot about it since I had other, rather pressing, matters to deal with.
It wasn’t until I was in hospital in Miami that it occurred to me to ask Kerry what happened to my watch. Luckily she had picked everything up at the clinic as we left for the main hospital, so at least it wasn’t lost…however I figured it would be pretty fried by the electricity. The surgeons at Miami had commented on how the burn damage was pretty extensive all around the wrist, the theory being that the watch had conducted the electricity and perhaps contributed to the extensive damage (if you plan on flying into power lines please wear a plastic watch!).
Anyhow, Kerry brought the watch into the hospital and to our amazement it was still working. OK, it smelt of burnt skin and there were tiny bits of blackened skin still in the wrist strap, but apart from some tiny melt marks on the casing it seemed fine. That was until the next day when it suddenly stopped…oh, well what do you expect.
When we finally got back to San Francisco we looked at it again and lo and behold it was working. Once I got back home I took the watch in to be cleaned and it came back as good as new, you’d never know what it had been through (shame the same can’t be said of me). All in all it’s a pretty remarkable watch and who knows, maybe the watch was the reason the electric current didn’t stop my heart and kill me – which is what most doctors expect should have happened when I describe the accident to them. Thanks Tag Heuer!
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